It was the color that infatuated him. There was no denying that the shade itself was accentuated by the swaying; made more prominent by the shape, but the way in which the color itself enamored him was more curious than he would sometimes care to admit to himself. And then—just like that—it was gone. Lost in the crowd.
When They had blessed him with his power, they'd cursed him even more so. The Clockmaster of the Subway was impervious to the abilities of the naked eye; a ghoul with flesh, an entity designed to watch, but not be watched in return. It made his task all the more dull. It was claimed arbitrary, the way in which the Ones In Charge delegated their tasks, but the Clockmaster felt slighted by it all the same. For where others had been given dominion over mountains and seas, and other locations where time truly seemed to matter, he had been given residence in a subway; a dingy, underground rectangle of bustling passerby, fluttering newspapers, and dirt. From his position in the corner the Clockmaster ogled the setting; the dreary, concrete promenade, the columns comprised of eroded stone. The railway where the underground shuttles would come speeding by. And high above it all, the screen. The screen flashed obnoxiously from its seat of power, blinking the sequenced numbers that human beings referred to as time. Time that could be changed with the click of a stopwatch. Even as he thought it, the vibration coursed through the pocket of his overalls, and the humanoid Clockmaster withdrew the archaic device with a sigh. Another change had been ordered. Nigh uncaringly, he clicked buttons on the side of the stopwatch accordingly, and within a fraction of the human second, the flashing sign above was blinking a time several minutes earlier than it had been a 'moment' ago. The Clockmaster watched, disinterested, as the denizens of the subway sped up in their bustling, moving at a speed that they did not recognize as different from their normal, interminable gaits. And yet, time had changed—a few minutes back, it was—and, as was decided by the Ones Who Made The Decisions, shuttle F6 came to a screeching halt in the passageway, an obedient, metallic snake, waiting to slither passengers away. It was a common misconception amongst humans that there was some semblance of communication between those responsible for the maneuvering of the shuttles, and those responsible for the flashing numbers in the station. They believed that, when a train was coming faster or slower than expected, that—by some technological magic that they did not bother to investigate further into--the sign simply changed accordingly. ‘Will be three minutes late’. ‘Seven minutes early’. The idea of it seemed simple enough to simple beings, ones that did not understand that "late" and "early" were nonsensical terms, devised to characterize time itself as an ally. In truth, the ebb and flow of time was constant, yet consistently altered; made as such by the Ones Who Wanted Things to Happen. Coincidence, circumstance; human afflictions of the mind. When They wanted something done—something ostensibly insignificant—it was tasked to the Clockmasters to ensure such a ripple. A shuttle speeds up. Everyone else notices the sign flicker—minutes have elapsed without them realizing it. A wealthy businessman catches his train, seemingly ‘on time’. Yet time, unchanged somewhere else, makes the planned business meeting either a success or a failure. Whatever They wanted. Though it was his duty to follow the instructions of his superiors dutifully, each Clockmaster of each respective area was given other tasks as well. In large part he was instructed to mind his own business, but beneath each layer of the world where time applied—and it was always below, never above—there lay a vault. Even here, in this subway, the area in itself below the boring metropolis above, the vault lay miles below. Made of a metal no human had seen, the expansive vacancy was designed to hold things that the Clockmasters found unnatural in the human world. Anything strange—anything out of place, or overtly unique—was to be deposited into the vault. Anything beautiful. And, infrequently—rather rarely, actually, by a human understanding of time—the vault was opened by a representative of those Those Above. The Clockmaster had never deposited anything, however, as far as he could remember. Or perhaps he had, a long time ago, but he only had vague recollections of it. Nothing unique or beautiful ever tended to grace the subway in which he resided. Except, of course, between the human intervals of nine twenty-three and fifteen seconds and nine twenty-nine and forty seven-seconds in the morning. That was where the fleeting, beautiful color that he'd caught sight of before returned. That was when the crowd in front of her dispersed, and she could be seen waiting on the bench. For those six minutes and some off seconds, the Clockmaster was actually pleased with the location of his usually unappealing task. Every morning for five of the seven human days, for these minutes and seconds—as well the scant glimpse moments prior, he could see this woman. Why he was drawn to her, he did not know—he could only assume it was the color; the hair. Streaks of sunlight cascaded down her back as she waited diligently for her shuttle, a single, tiny shoe tapping the ground absently, a heart shaped face smiling away into nothingness, though, as he only caught her at an angle, it was difficult to adduce that there was truly nothing of interest there. Whatever the scenario, his attraction to this woman was unsettling in its power, and even moreso, suspicious in its origins. The idea that an impromptu feeling of desire would arise with no prior stimulus to instigate it made him feel weak, positively human—though of course, he knew that there was none of that left in him. And yet, every day, he watched her. For as long as he could remember, he had watched her. For though he could do as pleased with time in this one environment—hasten it, rewind it, slow it as They saw fit--only she could truly bring it to a halt Only that shade of gold that curled down her shoulders could give him a truly human sense of time. Because when she would step on to her usual shuttle—hoist up her carrying bag, and glance behind her for that single, insatiable moment—he would know that she was gone until the next morning. That was when he would view time as a human would. As though to taunt his accommodated perception, the vibration in his pocket struck through at the very moment, signaling that a change in time was set to occur. The Clockmaster sneered, and reached down, but his fingers tarried a moment, then eventually went limp. His eyes were ensnared by the glowing shape so many meters away, the sounds of shuffling civilians and speeding shuttles only a backdrop to the spectacle, he ignored the message. He was a master of time; he could wait. He knew all of the times by now, after so long in his position. The girl's train was not set to come for several more minutes; whatever was requested, it was not so prudent that he could not savor the few cherishable moments of his day. But as he watched the scene from a distance, with the men and women walking by him, oblivious to his existence, he saw an aberration of the usual scenario. For there, in front of the track (which was several feet deeper than the level where the humans walked) a youth of short stature was bouncing a shiny red ball. A precarious bounce off the edge of a bench sent it soaring through the air, ricocheting off of a column, and then tumbling down onto the tracks below. The boy began howling to his disinterested mother at once—she ignored him, preoccupied by the book in her hand—and then, the angelic figure from the bench nearby stood up. The Clockmaster returned his attention to her at once—astonished that his eyes had ever left her—and watched as she glanced up at the electronic board; at the numbers flashing the expected arrival of her transport. Shuttle B9. Aware of the excess time, she gave a kind smile to the child, a heart-melting grin that sent the Clockmaster into a frenzy, and then she leapt down on to the track to retrieve the ball. That was when he heard the noise of the approaching shuttle. Bewildered—for the Clockmaster knew all of the appointed times of each individual transport, and had never known one to interrupt his gaze before—he tossed a glance at the flashing board above. There were no arrivals for a few more minutes! Not until the woman's B9! And yet, with a pang—almost without thinking—he reached his hand into his pocket and removed the stopwatch. There he read the characters that would make his fingers go numb. To a human, they would appear as such: B9. Four minutes early. But he had not changed the sign accordingly. And with great whistling and rumbling, the hulking vehicle known as B9 approached, and the woman, down in the trench, became aware of it too late. Panic overtook her beauteous face, panic and confusion, and the behemoth proved to be a moment—a wretched, human moment—too late in its cessation. The Clockmaster gave an inaudible cry, but even if he could have been heard, the sound would never have been known. What followed was another cruel trick of the human perception of moments, the transpiring of a second, yet the agonizing detail of an eternity. The sight of the collision; the cacophony of those bearing witness. His preternatural abilities of comprehension had never been more maligned. The woman's magnanimity had been her end, by his own error, and so he bounded forward immediately, passing through the gathering crowd as though a horrified gale. Leaping down into the scene, his eyes fell upon the mangled shape of the woman, and when he caught sight of her battered visage, he burst into unearthly tears. Others were crowding around him now, and it must have been a sight for them indeed, to see her body move even after death, as he cradled it in his arms. And yet he ignored the shrieks and shouts of those around him, of the clatter subsequent of any simple, natural wreckage. His gaze did not leave her, not one inch of her, least of all her hair. The golden hair that had inexplicably captivated him for so long. The golden hair that would never lure him again... He could not allow something so beautiful to die. Not when he wielded such great power as he did! But there were complications to be considered. An act performed without the permission of Those Who Granted Permission was an unstable act; the meticulous aspects of time as they knew it—as it truly existed—could not be controlled. A complete reset would have to do. He would have to take it all back—even the obsession that invigorated him—to save her. The mere thought of it brought him immediate anguish, and so, without thinking—without truly knowing what he was doing—he searched the area with his hands, eventually finding a remnant of the disaster; a jagged piece of metal from the front of the now halted shuttle. Slowly and methodically, he traced the tool through her molten locks, sawing at the strands. Those around him gasped, but what they were seeing and perceiving, he neither knew nor care. He instead completed his work with steady hands, now holding the tuft of severed hair firmly in his fingers. It's soft texture seemed to dance around his knuckles, and, still sobbing for the nameless woman that was his life, he placed them in his pocket; though he would not remember her, he would have the hair that had made him feel human. Then he removed the stopwatch from his other pocket, and he clicked it rapidly, faster and faster, as he'd been instructed to never do, and the scene traveled backwards around him, though those involved were none the wiser-- When the Clockmaster awoke, it was early in the morning. Leaning against a concrete barrier and unsure as to why he'd come to so suddenly, he surveyed a scene of tranquil darkness. It was four-thirty in the morning, as the humans knew it; soon, within the next hour or so, the shuttles would start up, and the activity would begin. Preparing himself for another tedious day, he reached into his pockets for his stopwatch, only to have his fingers recoil from shock. Intrigued by the soft caress that greeted them, he reached into it once more and pulled out what was among the most unusual things he'd ever seen; a tassel of the most opulent, golden curls. Both mystified and humbled by the soft, beautiful cluster of what may have been—if it were not so luscious—human hair, he coiled it around his hands. He was so keen on its grandiose presentation that he almost didn't know what to do with it. Almost. If there was ever something destined for the vault, it was this. What he held in his hands was so exquisite that it had to be precisely what Those Above meant in those overtly unique things that needed to be placed away for their investigation. Indeed, given its lack of discernible origin—he could not even say how it had ended up in his pocket—the wad of gold was almost seemed the perfect item for his vault! With a sensation of excitement that he scarcely felt, the Clockmaster sank through the very floor. He watched as he became encased in the ground around him, until finally, he saw it: the vault. A colossal structure of the most powerful, silvery hue imaginable, it seemed to beckon him forward with its foreboding facade. The vault itself was unseeable—only the door to it could be held in vision, as the expanse itself traveled back underground for what the Clockmaster presumed was at least another mile. The doors were also tightly locked; items were to be deposited only through the flap next to the doors. Casually approaching the entrance to the vault, the Clockmaster removed the tuft of would-be hair once more, to examine it. Even with no light, it was radiant. Slightly disconcerted at the idea of losing it forever, he forced his eyes closed as he placed it inside of the flap, to lose it to the vault forever-- But it would not take it. The flap would not open, and the Clockmaster, perturbed, had to read the flashing words that had appeared above it twice—no, three times—to fully comprehend them: Vault Is Full Such a thing was impossible, the Clockmaster knew! He'd never placed a single thing inside the vault, as far as he could recall! Irked by the inaccurate message, he all but attacked the locks, unraveling the thick chains around the handles of the entrance. When he was finally finished, he tore at the handles, and the door burst open to reveal the contents inside-- A sea of sunlight scorched his eyes.
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About MeVekin87 is the author of the Albus Potter Series, a 7-book continuation of the J.K Rowling's Harry Potter books. The Things I Write While You're Asleep |
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