There was nothing wrong with a clock that stopped moving hands. At least once a day, for at least 1 second, it would be correct. You could never say it was completely wrong, as it’s on time for at least 2 out of 86,400 seconds. It was the same concept as sleeping with a knife underneath your pillow – at least one night you won’t regret it. And I watched her never throw away that broken clock.
The alarm starts to blare, displaying the start of a new day. Waking up groggily, I slump down to the empty kitchen. She always gets up after I do.
When she does wake, she wakes up slowly, surly, like the whole world waits for her to finish her morning ritual. Descending gracefully down the stairs, she always takes 2 pieces of toast, lightly buttered and jammed. My roommate is a creature of habit, of always following the same steps of the day before. But then again, I did too.
As always, I ask her about the day, the night, and the journey ahead. The weather will be brought up, as well as anything possibly worth mentioning. Somehow the clock will be brought up too, as “why do you keep that raggedy ol’ thing,” or “that darn bastard was looking at me funny,” or even “you should just replace the ol’ coot.” And she will smile ever so slightly and respond in good faith: “Oh, surely not as raggedy as the two of us,” or “I’m sure it’s just smiling at you in its own way,” or “I don’t think I shall, not before I replace myself.” She always deflected why she kept that abominable thing, so I never did find out why that clock with broken hands stayed above the door, always watching over us as we went to class.
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As we descend to class, it almost seems like we are marching, as sooner or later our feet would start to follow each other like lovers, stepping in time with one another. We never walk slowly, as that means time wasted and never returned, so we always walk with a purpose. Along the way, we talk about meaningless things, about so and so, who and what and where.
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There was a party happening later today, and I begged for us to go. We’ve been to a few, but never one of this magnitude. The school had just won a football game, and I knew it was going to be the greatest thing in the whole world that ever happened. She didn’t want to, content to stick to her schedule, but I was slightly bored of the way we walked through time each day, as if we repeated the same beginning every time.
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Once class ends, we link back up as if we never left. But then, we separate once more as the day goes on. We have different activities, as she likes volleyball while I prefer debating. We have different friends, and we were not totally dependent to the point we couldn’t be separated. We had our own lives, but then again, our lives were so interconnected with one another’s as we will always link back up once more for the next day.
Even if we have different interests, I will still see her everywhere. For instance, while I’m studying on the couches, she shines like the sun outside, always playing all sorts of different sports, while I stay behind and watch through a layer of glass.
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The psychiatric hospital was all sorts of quiet I did not like, as I scurried past dozens of doors of the same color. As I went, I passed by withered sunflowers, still stretching to the sun with the little strength they still had, but just missing the grainy rays of light by a few inches. One of the petals fell, like it had given up on trying. I didn’t want to think anymore. I continued forward down the endless hall.
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I swear if we were born of the same mother, we would have come out holding hands. It was always the two of us, me and her and her and me.
Of course, we were not always together, as we went to different undergraduate colleges. I was never as good as her, so she went to an Ivy League school when I went to a state school, but we rejoined each other for grad school. She had changed a lot in the 5 years since I had seen her. She was a lot quieter, more withdrawn, but still breaking out in a smile whenever she saw me. She shied away from touch more frequently, only liking it when she initiated, and she always insisted on walking back from class or any activity she had together even when it wasn’t dark yet. I remembered a time when she was never afraid of anything, as if no one could touch or even claim her.
She had taken an extra year, but never told me why, so I assumed it was probably because she got too excited and took too many courses or something. I can still picture the day when she suddenly appeared at my grad school, despite it being out of state, breathless with a suitcase with all of her belongings in one hand and that darn clock in the other, already broken when she showed it to me for the first time.
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The party was loud, noisy, but also very fun. Music boomed so loud I thought it was pulsing through me as my body vibrated with the rhythm. She was out there, like she belonged there all along, swishing and swaying on the dance floor. So many eyes, some with less than good intentions, were watching her, but she paid them no mind. As the world started to slow down, she joined me against one of the kitchen islands to rest, smiling and chatting like we had all the time in the world. The party was starting to be overrun with people from another school whose team we had just played against, joining the festivities despite their loss. Our opponents were from my home state, but I didn’t recognize any faces.
A shout, so unintelligible that to this day I don’t know what was said, echoed as the world slowed down. Her face slowly turned towards the source of noise, and she went ashen white. A deer in headlights, her body started to slightly tremble as if bracing for impact as her pupils dramatically shrunk. Confused, I turned as well, to see what was troubling her so badly, only just to see a couple of dudes from the other school looking at her, almost leering. Confused, I turned back to look at her as I did not recognize these newcomers, only to find her already gone, vanished from the scene. Confused, I lapped the party multiple times, not finding her anywhere, no matter where I looked. Confused, I go stumbling into the night after an afterimage.
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As we walk back from class, I stop dead in my tracks. She turns back, confused about why I have paused our routine but then says nothing, seeing this wild fright in my eyes.. This does not happen, where I mess up the perfect fragility of the scene before me. We are scripted to be back to the comfort of our dorm, where no troubles lie. But I cannot move on.
“Will we be together forever?” are the words never said, only voiced in eyes. But she understands, the same way she understood when we were 6 and just learning about death, when we were 13 and just had a huge fight, when we were 15 and growing distant, when we were 16 and reconciled as if we never had fought, when we were 18 and going to different colleges-
“Always.”
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I asked her why she didn’t move the clock’s hands to at least be symmetrical or at least aesthetic. The hands haven’t moved since the clock broke. She did not want to disturb its final resting place. I don’t want to change where it decided to lay. There was a dignity to its death, she remarked.
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The alarm starts to blare, as I stumble towards the empty kitchen. A kitchen that will only ever hold one now.
Indeed, there was nothing wrong with a clock that stopped moving hands.
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