The Clock and I

            The clock winked at me as I walked out of the dark abyss of my bathroom. The face on the grandfather clock, just winked at me. Was that face always there? I thought it was just all numbers and a few spinning hands, since when did it get a face? As long as I have lived in this house it’s never grown a face. I cut my staring contest with the clock to observe the walls melting around me, I felt the cloud like carpet flow like a river beneath my feet, and looked back at the clock.

It didn’t wink this time. Instead the face had melted into itself. All swirly and disfigured, it made me think of those funhouse mirrors. Its form kept on changing, the minute hand sped up at an astounding pace but the hour hand remained cool and collected, never moving from the clock’s rippling while surface. I wanted to tell Jordan, but the size of my house had grown significantly in the past few hours, and I didn’t want to interrupt her journey.

My eyes drifted downwards to the pendulum. I watched the pendulum swing back and forth, and then back and forth again. It was behaving oddly, well differently than I thought it was supposed to, but I never really paid attention to it. At the peak of its swing, the brass pendulum moved at rocket like speeds as if it were trying to escape its eternal servitude of the clock. It reminded me of life, how we’re all slaves to the machine known as society. As it made its journey downwards the giant brass lever’s velocity plummeted to just a fraction of its speed, all the while phantom-doppelgangers of the pendulum followed suit behind it. After what felt like life time, a life time I envision I spent with Jordan, the pendulum sped back up, reaching the apex of its swing, leaving the doppelgangers behind.

I sat and stared at the fascinating mechanism for a child like curiosity, but an old man’s wisdom. I wondered how something so simple could measure something so complex and mysterious like time, but yet I knew the struggle of the pendulum. It wanted to break free, but it also knew it was important for the clock to live on. It was the heart of the machine, the reason the elaborate series of gears could turn the hands on the face. That’s a weird thought, why would a face need hands? I have forgotten about the face of the clock, how could I? It did complement me with a wink earlier. I stood back up to gaze at the face.

The face on the clock was back on the clock’s face. I observed every detail of the face, the perfectly beautiful face. It was the pale face of Jordan embossed into the blazing white background of the clock. Her eyes, next to the ten and two positions were large and full of life. Her lips hovering just right above the six bore her signature smirk. And her nose sat cutely in the middle of the face.

I took a step back to gaze upon the beauty; it was the most beautiful clock I’ve ever seen. I soaked in the moment for a few swings of the pendulum, a few lifetimes with Jordan. Then my eyes spied something I didn’t notice before, the hour hand laid near the three positions and the minute hand laid a few ticks ahead of the nine. I suddenly saw Jordan baring an awkward mustache. A chuckle escaped my lungs, followed by another. A picture of Jordan’s face with Mario’s mustache invaded my head, and a tsunami of laughter escaped my mouth.