Litnet

This short story was completed during the Kommadagga workshop and residency at Paulet House in KwaNojoli in the Eastern Cape. The workshop was presented by the Jakes Gerwel Foundation in cooperation with LitNet and Huisgenoot.

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The clockmaker’s paradox

In a small, forgotten town at the edge of nowhere stood a shop that no one remembered opening, yet everyone knew existed. The townspeople couldn’t say when it first appeared, nor recall ever seeing anyone enter or leave. It had no sign, no windows, no marks of trade, just a narrow door wedged between two crumbling buildings, as if the town itself were trying to crush it into nothing.

The door was always ajar, leaking a faint glow that flickered like an oil lamp on the verge of dying. If you stood close enough, the air carried the scent of oil and old wood, something preserved beyond its time. No one spoke of the shop openly, but it lingered in whispers, in bars, at church steps, in hushed warnings. Mothers told their children to avoid that street. Drunks swore they heard a faint ticking in the dark. Once, a boy touched the doorframe and claimed his hand stung for days, as if it had been burned.

Sebastian had lived in the town all his life, and the shop had haunted his thoughts since childhood. He had passed it countless times, never daring to enter. The stillness around it filled him with a quiet dread, but curiosity persisted. The clocks visible just beyond the doorway seemed to beckon, pendulums glinting faintly, like eyes that watched.

Though not yet old, Sebastian felt the weight of years. His life was a pattern of repetition: mornings at the tailor’s shop, evenings at the diner where food tasted of nothing, nights spent staring at the ceiling as rain tapped the glass. Each day blurred into the next. At times, he thought the clock on his wall jumped backward or the church bell rang twice in an hour. He told himself it was fatigue, but deep down, he feared something was wrong with time itself.

One rainy afternoon, curiosity won. The sky hung low and grey, thunder trembling above as Sebastian walked with his collar pulled tight. When he reached the alley, he noticed the shop’s door wide open, its glow unusually warm, its scent sharper, almost sweet.

Something inside him whispered: now.

He pushed the door. It opened without a sound, as if it had been waiting for him.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the rain stopped, not outside, but for him. Beyond the doorway, drops still fell on cobblestones, yet within the shop, the air was perfectly dry and still. His footsteps echoed too loudly, as though the space were far larger than it appeared.

Then he heard them. The clocks.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, lined the walls and hung from beams. Grandfather clocks carved with grotesque faces. Pocket watches gleaming like small suns, their glass polished but holding shadows within. Pendulums swung out of rhythm, some fast, some slow; some were perfectly still. The ticking was discordant, a chaotic symphony that made his skin crawl. Beneath it, he could almost hear whispers woven into the rhythm.

Behind the counter sat an old man, his wide-brimmed hat shadowing his face. His oil-stained hands worked delicately over the insides of a small watch. He did not look up.

“Looking for something in particular?” the man asked softly, his voice carrying strangely through the room.

Sebastian hesitated. He hadn’t planned to speak. Standing among the clocks, though, he felt a pull, as if this moment had always been waiting for him.

“I – I’m not sure,” he said. “How long have you been here?”

The old man chuckled without lifting his head. “Time’s a tricky thing. Some say I’ve always been here. Others forget me the moment they leave.”

Sebastian frowned. “But the clocks, they’re all off. None are in sync.”

The old man finally raised his head. His eyes, sharp as cut glass, seemed to pierce through Sebastian. “That’s because they don’t measure your time. Each belongs to a different thread, a different world. Every choice you make creates another, and here, they converge. Some move forward, some backward; some stop altogether. This place is their meeting point.”

The ticking shifted. Or perhaps his hearing did. Now, Sebastian could make out faint voices: laughter, weeping, whispers of choices never made.

“And mine?” he asked quietly. “Where is my clock?”

The clockmaker’s hands stilled. He set the watch aside and stood, movements unnervingly smooth. “Come. I’ll show you.”

They walked deeper into the shop. The clocks grew larger, stranger. Faces warped, hands multiplied, gears spun in impossible directions. Some bled sand. Others had pendulums of bone or shifting smoke. The air vibrated with each tick, as if the shop itself breathed.

Finally, they reached the furthest wall. Sebastian’s clock stood there.

It towered above him, its face swirling between numbers, sigils and fleeting landscapes. Gears turned against logic, grinding yet never breaking. Its pendulum swung diagonally, freed from gravity. Each second felt both too fast and too slow, a rhythm beyond comprehension.

Sebastian felt it pull at him. Within its shifting surface, he saw himself.

Flashes: walking roads he never chose, holding the hand of a woman half-familiar, dying alone, laughing with a mother not his own. A murderer. A hero. Countless selves. Infinite threads.

The vision filled him, broke him. “What – what is this?” he whispered.

The clockmaker’s eyes reflected the glow of the gears. “These are the lives you didn’t live, the futures that still might be. Every tick is a possibility. But be warned: stare too long, and time will notice.”

Sebastian couldn’t look away. Visions came faster, violently, endlessly. Drowning. Burning. Holding a child. Falling into darkness. Each life demanded his belief.

Then the pendulum faltered. The ticking slowed. Hands spun wildly, then froze. The world went silent.

“What does it mean?” Sebastian cried.

The clockmaker’s lips curved faintly. “It means your time has stopped. You’re no longer bound to the thread you knew.”

The shop dissolved. Clocks melted into mist. The floor vanished. Sebastian fell into darkness.

When he awoke, he was back on the street. Rain fell, people hurried past, but no one saw him. His hands passed through a lamppost, through a stranger’s sleeve. No heartbeat. No breath. He wasn’t dead, but he was no longer alive.

He had slipped free of time.

He wandered. In his apartment, he found himself sitting at his own desk, muttering: don’t stop the clock. Don’t stop the clock.

At the library, his shadow lagged, smiling when he didn’t. In mirrors, reflections wept blood or grinned with too many teeth.

And always, the ticking followed, in walls, beneath stones, inside his skull.

He saw other versions of himself. One limped with a cane. One knelt in an alley, trembling. One wore fine clothes, eyes empty. They looked at him, reached for him, but only one made contact.

In an abandoned inn, by candlelight, a gaunt version of himself whispered, “You shouldn’t be here.”

Sebastian begged, “What am I?”

“You’re unmoored,” the double rasped. “Cast adrift between threads. You belong to the gaps. We all do, once the clock stops.”

The candle went out.

He drifted through endless days, perhaps years. He frayed, not in flesh but in essence. Whispers filled him, sometimes in his own voice.

Then, he saw him again.

The clockmaker stood upon a black river, its surface writhing. Sebastian fell to his knees. “Bring me back! Please! I didn’t choose this!”

The clockmaker watched him, unreadable. “Back? There is no back. You stared into your clock. Time stared back. You were chosen.”

Sebastian wept. “Then what happens to me?”

The old man’s eyes gleamed like brass. “You wait. You drift. Until the clocks claim you. As they claimed me.”

The river boiled. Mist rose. The clockmaker dissolved into it, leaving only ticking. Then Sebastian felt it, faint at first, then stronger. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Not a heartbeat. A clock.

His veins burned. His bones groaned. His eyes blurred with visions of infinite selves. The town vanished, replaced by corridors of brass, gears stretching into eternity.

He screamed as his body twisted and reshaped. His mouth opened; only ticking came out. Skin split to reveal brass beneath. His thoughts fractured into whispers, each a different life. And in that forgotten shop, at the edge of nowhere, another clock gleamed faintly in the dim light, waiting for the next curious soul.