"The Room Without Clocks"

"The Room Without Clocks"

Nobody could remember when the clocks were taken down.

At first, the staff told Anna it was part of the renovation—something about minimalism, reducing distractions, encouraging mindfulness. But days stretched thin, indistinguishable from one another, and the absence of time turned the psychiatric hospital into a liminal space where people floated, unmoored.

Anna sat on her bed, knees to chest, staring at the white wall opposite her. The walls were white, the sheets were white, even the ceiling had that hospital-issue blandness. She had been here for what felt like months, though her mother said it had only been two weeks.

She didn’t trust her mother. Not anymore.

It started with the incident at school. One moment Anna was sitting in calculus, the next she was on the floor, knees bleeding, screaming at a voice nobody else heard. They said it was stress. Or maybe it was depression. Or PTSD. A cocktail of possibilities, none of which explained why her own reflection sometimes blinked when she didn’t.

Dr. Keller, her psychiatrist, believed in grounding techniques. He often reminded her to count objects, to focus on texture, to name colors in the room when she felt the world start to tilt.

“What color is the wall, Anna?”

“White.”

“How does the sheet feel?”

“Like sandpaper wrapped in cotton.”

He smiled at that. He liked when she showed humor. “And what do you hear right now?”

She paused. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Anna leaned forward, dropping her voice. “That’s the problem. Even silence has sound, doesn’t it? This place… it’s too quiet. I think it’s hiding something.”

Dr. Keller scribbled something on his notepad.

One night, Anna woke up to whispering.

She sat up, her eyes scanning the dark. Her roommate, Marcy, was asleep across the room, snoring softly. But the whispering continued, too deliberate to be wind.

“Anna…”

She froze.

“Come to the mirror.”

The hospital room had no mirror. That was another rule. Nothing reflective. But Anna knew what the voice meant.

In the hallway bathroom, above the sink, there was still one left—a small oval mirror that had been cracked once, now glued and bolted to the wall.

She found herself walking barefoot down the hallway, the linoleum cool under her feet. Everything was too quiet again, as if the hospital itself was holding its breath.

The mirror was waiting.

At first, she saw only her reflection. Pale skin, hollow eyes, hair frizzy from sleep. But then the image shifted.

Her reflection didn’t move.

It just stared at her. And then it smiled.

Anna stumbled back, heart pounding. She turned, ready to run, but something stopped her. A voice in her head. Not like before, not madness—clarity.

"Look closer"

She approached again, slowly.

This time, the mirror didn’t reflect her. It showed a room. A different one. It looked like her old bedroom—back before the incident. Posters on the wall. A stack of books. Her record player spinning.

Then she saw herself in the reflection, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

And her mother standing at the doorway, yelling.

“You’re not sick, Anna! You’re lazy, and you’re looking for attention. You think the world revolves around your sadness?”

Anna’s real breath caught in her throat.

She remembered that day. It was the first time she had tried to disappear.

Not die. Just… vanish. Leave her body. Become something else.

Back in her hospital room, Anna didn’t tell Dr. Keller about the mirror. She told him about a dream instead. A dream where she couldn’t tell what was real.

“That’s a common experience,” he said. “Especially for people who dissociate. Your brain is protecting you from something too overwhelming to face head-on.”

“Then why does it feel like it’s showing me something I forgot?”

He tilted his head. “Memories are tricky. They resurface in fragments. Sometimes they come dressed as ghosts.”

That night, Anna went back.

This time, the mirror didn’t show her bedroom. It showed a hospital room—hers. But from a strange angle. She was sitting on the bed, but her face looked… vacant.

Then someone else entered the reflection.

Her mother.

She walked over and sat beside Mirror-Anna, stroking her hair. “You have to stop making things up,” she whispered. “We can’t afford this. You’re ruining everything.”

The voice in Anna’s head returned, stronger this time.

**She made you believe it was your fault.**

Anna stepped closer to the mirror. She raised her hand. So did the girl in the reflection.

But not the same one.

This reflection mirrored her movement, her breath. This one was real. And for the first time, Anna realized something profound:

The mirror wasn’t showing her hallucinations. It was showing her pieces of herself. Fractures.

Buried memories, silenced truths, the self she had suppressed to survive.

Two weeks later, Dr. Keller noticed a change.

Anna was more grounded. She smiled occasionally. She no longer flinched at the quiet.

“What changed?” he asked during their session.

Anna thought for a moment. “I remembered something.”

“Something good?”

“No,” she said. “But it was true. And I think that’s better.”

"Epilogue"

When Anna left the hospital, the clocks were still missing. But she had learned something more important than time.

She had learned that healing wasn’t about erasing the past. It was about recognizing every piece of it—especially the ones hidden behind mirrors.