The Backward Tick

Arthur didn't notice it at first. Not really. The old grandfather clock, Thomas's clock, had stood in the corner of the living room for fifty years, ticking with the measured, steady rhythm of a man who knew his place. It had been his father’s; a hulking, dark oak beast, a wedding gift from a cousin in the old country. When Thomas died, the clock just kept on, a constant presence, a silent sentinel in the house Arthur now rattled around in alone. For weeks after the funeral, Arthur had barely heard it, lost in the fuzzy quiet of grief and cheap whiskey.

Then, one Tuesday, the silence broke. He was polishing the worn wood of the mantelpiece, a dull chore, when the tick-tock seemed… off. He paused, rag in hand. The pendulum swung, a lazy arc, but the small second hand on the clock face wasn't moving. No, it was. It was moving, alright. But it was stuttering, jerking, ever so slightly, counter-clockwise. His breath hitched. He squinted. The minute hand, barely perceptible, had nudged itself back a hair. Three-fifteen. It had been three-seventeen only moments ago.

He stared at it for a full minute, heart thudding a slow, heavy beat against his ribs. He blamed the whiskey. He blamed his eyes. He blamed the lingering exhaustion. He tried winding it tighter, though it had been fully wound just that morning. He jiggled the pendulum, hard, a desperate, childish jiggle. Nothing. The clock, defiant, continued its slow, silent retreat. Three-fourteen. Three-thirteen. The sound, if he listened hard enough, wasn't a tick-tock anymore. It was a tock-tick. A soft, relentless pull against the flow.

Arthur didn't tell anyone. What was there to say? 'My father's clock is broken, it's running backward, and I'm losing my mind'? His brother, Robert, would just cluck his tongue, offer to call a repairman, or suggest Arthur needed more sleep. So Arthur kept it to himself, the secret a heavy, strange stone in his gut. He started watching it, obsessively. He'd find himself sitting in the dim living room for hours, a cold cup of tea forgotten beside him, just tracking the slow, agonizing journey of the hands. Four in the afternoon would become three, then two, then one. Mornings bled into yesterday’s evenings.

It made him remember. Not like a vision, nothing so clear, but the backward movement of the clock seemed to tug at the edges of his own past. He'd find himself thinking about things, old arguments with Thomas. One in particular. He was seventeen, fresh out of school, wanting to go work on the docks like his buddies. Thomas, face grim, calloused hand slamming on the kitchen table. 'You'll finish an apprenticeship, boy. You'll learn a trade.' Arthur had yelled, a rare outburst, about freedom, about his own choices. Thomas had just stared, a cold, hard glare that iced Arthur's blood. He’d signed up for plumbing school two days later.

He remembered the sting of his father’s words, not the words themselves, but the raw, choked feeling in his throat, the way his hands shook. And then, watching the clock hands creep back, it was almost like the weight of that anger, that disappointment, lessened. Not gone, never gone, but it felt… distant. Like the clock was slowly, methodically, erasing the sharp edges of the past, sanding them down until they were just smooth, worn stones.

He remembered Thomas in other ways now, too. Thomas, younger, before the worry lines etched themselves so deep. Thomas, sitting on the porch swing, humming a tune Arthur couldn't quite place, a rare, soft sound. Thomas, teaching him to tie a perfect knot, his big hands surprisingly gentle. These weren't memories he'd tried to bury, just ones that had been overshadowed by the decades of gruffness, the unspoken expectations. The clock, moving backward, seemed to draw these softer moments forward, putting them back into play, one quiet minute at a time.

The clock, now, was nearly at the beginning of the week. Monday morning, almost Sunday evening. Arthur didn't know what would happen when it reached the beginning, when it couldn't go back any further. Would it stop? Would it reverse again, start going forward? He didn't know. He didn't try to know. He just sat, a man in a quiet room, watching time unfold itself in reverse, a silent, solitary vigil. He picked up his cold tea, took a sip, grimaced. The grandfather clock tock-ticked softly, a constant, strange comfort now in the fading light.

He traced the worn grain of the wooden armrest on his chair. Dust motes danced in the last sliver of sun slanting through the window. The house was still, save for the old clock. He hadn't polished the mantelpiece since that Tuesday. Didn't feel right to. Some things, once broken, don't just stop. They go another way entirely. And sometimes, you just sit with it. You just watch it go.