The Seldom Told Tragedy of the Timekeeper’s Wife

A Short Story by V. West

It was perhaps one of the most forgettable funerals ever held in the memory of the world. A woman lay interred. Three strangers, who stood over her white-grey form, performed an awkward and muttered vigil. They were an aged priest, a crow-like undertaker and a pouty young grave-digger bearing a shovel. None wore mourning colors. They coughed and shuffled and the priest checked his pocket-watch. They all had better places to be. As was the custom, they bound her chin in a cloth sling and set two pennies from the priest’s purse over her eyes. They dared not touch her. They exchanged nods and hastened off. They told themselves they had better places to be.

But it was the unsettling nature of the woman’s death, which made them loath to linger.

The townsfolk nearby all hissed chilling things about her, most of which the respectable sort shrugged off as gossip. But alone in the dark, when their wives lay sleeping, the respectable sorts hearts’ froze, startled by an eerie, frenzied ticking, muffled by six feet of earth.

The townsfolk said she had chocked, for she had swallowed a clock-work timepiece whole.

- - -

The Timekeeper’s wife was a woman who took twenty seconds to apply her lipstick before her looking-glass. She spent fifteen minutes of each day walking to the fountain in the town square, thirty minutes there reading a luxuriously purple-bound book, five minutes weeping over her deceased husband and five minutes daydreaming. She daydreamed sometimes, once her ungainly sobs ceased, that she was an actress with her chin held with such poise that the spotlight reflected upon her single tear. Mistress of Minutes, Temptress of Tick-Tock, Countess of Cogs and Gears— the Timekeeper’s Wife! Boomed a well-dressed narrator to a faceless audience.

Then five minutes was up and she folded and tucked away that particular daydream.

She spent five hours of her day minding her husband’s shop. Though customers hardly visited anymore, she made herself useful in winding-up, cleaning and oiling every timepiece on display. As she had never birthed children, the clocks gave her somebody to preen and worry over. Who was to say they weren’t her children? Didn’t they have faces and hands and grandfathers like children?

She spent another hour reading the purple-bound book in the gloomy shop, then spent five minutes locking up. She bundled up against the cold, and spent twenty minutes returning by horse-drawn cab.

She spent her time doing all of these things, but above all, she spent her time counting how much time she spent doing things. The little black dial on her husband’s pocket-watch, always a cool weight upon her collarbone, was more familiar to her than the shadows of his face. This became her curse. No-one’s certain exactly how it happened. Trauma they say. They know something broke within her in that cemetery beneath the dusk. Now her life plays out in twenty-four hour scenarios, where not a minute or breath can be wasted.

Before nightfall she spent ten minutes counting her wrinkles. She was still young, or so she assured herself. She liked to think the men in their tall dark hats gazed her way for her lips and her eyes, not because of the rumors they’d heard about her husband. She counted her wrinkles before bed—not when she awoke… tired eyes and semi-darkness were more merciful than stark-white mornings. It was her fortieth birthday. How many readings, daydreamings and shop-keepings in forty years? As she had never been educated, like the soft girls who wore ribbons, she could only guess the answer. A little crows-foot beneath her eye had formed on that fortieth year. She had counted every wrinkle twice—it had to be new.

And forty: a number to end girlhood fantasies once and for all; a number to end all things.

The Timekeeper’s wife was getting old.

She spent the first twenty seconds of her next day applying her lipstick.

She spent fifteen minutes walking to her fountain, thirty minutes reading her book, five minutes weeping for her husband and five minutes daydreaming a different daydream. The spotlight blared revealingly and the audience was shrieking with laughter… for she was old, ridiculous-looking in a girl’s short gown. Even the well-dressed narrator squeezed a snicker.

She spent five hours minding her husband’s shop. Her children were forgiving. They glinted and were silent as always. They could not laugh. They could click however, and each feverish click was a cold warning. They could also reflect, and in their clear faces she saw a woman eroded.

She spent another hour reading her purple-bound book in the gloomy shop. Five minutes locking up, then twenty returning home. She spent ten minutes counting her wrinkles.

She spent the first twenty seconds of her next day applying lipstick.

Fifteen minutes, tick-tick, thirty, tick-tick, five then five.

Tick-tick. Five hours.

One hour, tick-tick, five minutes then twenty.

Nightfall. Ten minutes counting her wrinkles. So many wrinkles. Too many wrinkles. And that feverish ticking, that terrible, terrible ticking! Where was it coming from?! She cried, tore at her hair, at the walls, at her old, puckered face. Tick. Tick. Tick.

It was the pocket-watch, his pocket-watch.

Tick, tick, tick…

She clawed at the thing around her neck, smashing it upon the dresser, willing it to stop. It would not cease. It only buzzed faster. Time was running out.

Tickticktickticktiiiiiiiiick…

Shoving it through her lips, she pushed it down, hoping in desperation that a fleshy prison would stifle it. Her eyes bulged and she shuddered. Once.

The purple-bound book lay open upon her duvet; she would not have bought it had the first sentence not caught her eye. The title was etched in gold: The Story of Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie.

Once upon a time, it read, there was a boy named Peter Pan who decided not to grow up.

But life’s no fiction; the ticking crocodile catches up with us all.