The Pocket Watch

by Michael Shaw

  He stood still.

  I dropped the keys. They didn’t stay suspended this time; they just fell to the floor. I took a step back, still staring at Trevor, and took the pocket watch back out. I exhaled, looking down at the hands, still paused at 4:01 pm and seventeen seconds. The I.T. counter advanced forward, now at one minute, three seconds, and increasing.

  Taking another step back, I gripped the watch more tightly, and pushed the button again. Another flash. Another jolt of pain. And this time, nausea. I held my stomach and squinted. The stillness was gone, the air around me moved again, the low hum from the fluorescent lights resounded, and Trevor started moving.

  He bent over and picked up the keys. When he stood back up, he saw me and jumped a bit.

  “Jon, uh…” he rubbed his eyes. “You startled me.” He saw my open door and raised an eyebrow. “Man, how’d you walk over here so silently?”

  I put the watch in my pocket. “I…” I realized that my eyes had not been tricking me. What I saw had really just happened, which meant that the watch wasn’t the only thing to stop. If this watch could really stop time with just the press of a button, then how did it end up with all the nostalgia stuff in the box of my parents’ belongings?

  I blinked and remembered that I was in a conversation. A conversation with a suspicious sophomore who had nothing better to do. I scratched my head. “Yeah, I just walked out here. Guess you didn’t see me when you dropped your keys.”

  He fumbled around with them, a confused look on his face. “Yeah, I guess…”

  I turned to walk back to my room, trying to get out of the situation as quickly as possible. “I’m just packing some stuff up. Sorry to startle you.”

  As I vanished back into my room, I heard Trevor slowly walk away.

  I closed my door and leaned against the wall. My eyes spun a bit as I adjusted to the surroundings. Colors, images, and sharpness had all returned to normal. Nothing popped anymore. I rubbed my eyes and shook my head. The headache was finally beginning to fade.

  I took the pocket watch back out. The cold steel attached itself to my fingers and palm. I opened it up. The second hand now moved. I exhaled a silent laugh. My back slid against the wall as I slowly lowered myself down to the floor. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. Something I didn’t think was possible had just happened before my eyes.

  That did just happen, right?

  After checking out with my RA, I left the pocket watch in my front-right pants pocket and headed out the door with my last box.

  “Jon!”

  I turned. Coming out of the dorm behind me was Alex Nelson.

  “Alex!” I stopped to talk to him. Alex and I had been friends since elementary school, and we both had graduated from the same college, too.

  “Didn’t get my text?” He took out his phone and, with his other hand, pulled his blonde bangs to the side.

  “Text?” I took my phone out. “Oh, yeah. My bad, I was just finishing up packing.”

  “Are you heading back now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Luna?”

  I smiled. Alex and I had both applied to work for the same company after college. He wanted it because it was the smart choice. I applied because I wanted to be like my dad. I nodded, and my smile grew. “I got an interview.”

  “Great!” He patted me on the shoulder. “Mine’s on the seventeenth.”

  “Same,” I replied.

  “That’s great.” It was said with a sincere smile, and I knew Alex really meant it. We were two different guys, applying for two different positions. There was no competition under the surface. We both wanted each other to succeed, and we both hoped to be able to work together.

  “When are you heading back?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow. I still need to pack some stuff.”

  I walked toward my car.

  “Safe travels,” he said as I went.

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Hey, one more thing.”

  I turned and looked back at him.

  “You’re always welcome at our home,” he said. “You know that.”

  I nodded. “I do.”

  “I don’t know what I would’ve done without your help… you know, when-”

  “Thank you, Alex,” I smiled. “Tell your mom hello for me. Could I come visit you guys after the interview?”

  He nodded back at me. “Definitely.”

  ∞

  I packed up the last box into my low-riding blue Mercedes and headed home. I felt a bit groggy and disoriented, but at least the headache had gone away. Images of my parents’ death kept flashing in my mind’s eye, as though I had just experienced the memory for the first time. I blasted the music loud and forced myself to stay awake on the drive all the way back to Sacramento. O’Connor College and University was a technical institute in Los Angeles. The trip always took about six hours. I hated wasting time, so I always just did the whole drive in one day.

  When I had gotten about halfway, I stopped for some gas. As I sat in the car, waiting for it to fill up, I reached for the touch screen in the dash and closed the GPS application. Holding down a button, I spoke, “Show me the house.” A screen came up displaying camera footage.

  The house had security cameras placed at the front door, the foyer, and in the kitchen. Jason had them put in not long after my parents’ death. Right now, I just wanted to see it.

  I tried to forget about the watch on the drive home, but I couldn’t help getting excited about it. It felt odd to just accept that it had really happened, to accept that I could pause time. It was the stuff of fiction, something I would scoff at if someone else had told me. But I saw it myself. I saw someone freeze in time. Not just standing still, but actually frozen. I saw keys stuck in midair. This was real, and I didn’t have a reason to argue against it. But on that road, thinking of my future, I couldn’t think about eternalizing the present. I tried to forget about the watch once again. I had a trip to make, a house to get back to, and a career to begin.

  A few rest stops broke up my trip back home. I picked up some painkillers for the headache, in case it returned. I usually enjoyed trips like this. Silence. Stillness. Being alone was something I enjoyed, and something that I had plenty of time to do growing up. But this time, I felt terrible. During a quick trip to a gas station bathroom, I saw myself in the mirror. It turned out that I looked terrible, too. My eyes were a bit bloodshot, and my skin was paler than usual. I fixed my brown hair and washed my face.

  I reassured myself that I was fine. The drive was always a bit tiring, and I had just finished finals, goodbyes, and ceremonies. I just needed some rest. I wished that Jason could have been at graduation. He wouldn’t have missed it for anything, but a recent fall had put him in the hospital. He was an old guy now, on the outside.

  Arrival time was about 10:00 pm. The house looked the same. Big and boisterous. Just one thing my father’s legacy had left for me, on top of some inherited money. The money from my parents didn’t last forever, though. Jason stayed and obtained legal custody; he was the only one around to raise me. He returned to one of his previous jobs in order to provide for the both of us.

  I opened the front door and stepped into the large foyer. Everything dark. I took a deep breath. “I’m home!” I called out to no one. Silence. Welcome back, Jon.

  After moving all my stuff from the car to the house, I fell onto my bed and stared upward. Batman and Joker still stood on my bookshelf. I rolled over and pulled out my cellphone, but I quickly dropped it when I felt a sting in my hand. Looking at my palm, I saw a red mark on the base of my fingers and thumb, looking a bit like burn marks. What are these? I rubbed them and picked up the phone with my other hand. My thumb scrolled down the screen to Jason’s contact information. The time at the top of the screen said 10:30 pm; it hadn’t taken long to unpack. I scrolled down the screen further to the number for the hospital Jason was staying at, Klara Medical. My finger hung over the call button for a moment. Another week, they had sa
id. Another week, and he’d be able to come back home. I put the phone back in my pocket and walked out the door. I had to pay him a visit.

  ∞

  I never liked hospitals. Granted, that categorized me with just about everyone else, but the thought still crossed my mind as I entered Klara. White walls, hanging heads, and desperate faces.

  When I walked into Jason’s room, his eyes were closed. I lowered myself into one of the stiff, uncomfortable chairs. My right hand itched. I rubbed it against the chair cushion.

  A few minutes went by. I sat next to him quietly. This man had become my father by default. He did it himself. There was no note in my parents’ wills. Everything went straight to me. I would have been completely alone. But I wanted him to stay. He was all I had. I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t stayed for me.

  I didn’t notice, but as I sat there with him, with my head down and my eyelids beginning to shut, Jason woke up. He cleared his throat. “You look pretty bad.”

  I peered over at him. His eyes were slightly opened, a smile on his face.

  I leaned forward and smirked. “That’s not usually what you hear from the one in the hospital bed.”

  He chuckled and looked up at the ceiling. “You drove the whole way back today, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. I always do.”

  “And what’s with the arm?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Your right arm. Were you lifting or something?”

  I examined my forearm. My veins popped. Not just a little either. The blue lines ran up from the back of my hand and stood out against the skin of my arm. I flexed my fingers, viewing the oddity. “No, no I wasn’t.” Looking at my left arm, I saw that my veins were not nearly as visible there as they were on the right. My palm began to itch again. The watch…

  “Congratulations, Jon,” Jason exhaled.

  Our eyes caught. “Thanks, Jason.”

  “I really wish I could have been at your graduation.” He angled his head to look at me.

  “I know. I do, too.”

  “I’m really, really proud of you, you know.”

  I nodded. “I… I do.”

  The lines in his face were deep, but he still looked great for his age. Still looked like the man who had called me Master Wayne when I was young. Who had tucked me in at night. Who had wiped the tears from my eyes when there was no other hand to do it. Who had iced bruises, bandaged cuts, and treated black eyes when the scrawny little technology geek didn’t fit in at school. He had always been there.

  On top of that, he always stayed in shape, too. But a fall is a fall. And his fall was down a flight of stairs. His hip surgery had been done just a couple days ago, and now he was going to be stuck in Klara for a little while.

  “So,” I adjusted myself in the seat, “how’ve they been treating you here?”

  He smirked. “Well, the food’s okay. Physical therapy is not.”

  We laughed together. But he was right. Recuperation wouldn’t be quick.

  “They said you should be able to come home in a week.”

  He nodded. “Thank goodness. I can’t wait to wear pants.”

  I grinned. “You’ll be able to do that sooner than a week, I bet.”

  He smiled and closed his eyes. “Plus, work isn’t giving me long to recover. I need to be back as soon as I can.”

  I pulled out the pocket watch to check the time. Its cold steel fit comfortably in my hand. In fact, my hand even seemed to feel better when it was gripping the watch again. I opened the cover. 11:24 pm.

  “Hey, Jason, do you know anything about this?” I looked up.

  His eyes were still closed. No response.

  I eyeballed the watch. This belonged to my father… I looked back at Jason. He needs rest, and he needs to get better. I stood up and headed out the doorway. I’ll talk to him about it another time.

  ∞

  Itching. Pulsing. Irritated. My right hand was still affected. I tried lotion, warm water, and just ignoring it. Finally, from exhaustion, I was able to plop into bed and fall asleep. I kept it in my pocket. I fell asleep to the rhythm. The ticking.

  I fell asleep to the watch.

  Chapter 3

  A dream is the most abnormal thing in the set of normal things we experience. Birthdays, deaths, and holidays are observed, celebrated, mourned, as though they are inconstant. Yet dreams pass through our unconsciousness with extraordinary realism, or surrealism, and they demand attention in such a way as though to convince the sleeping individual that they are real. Despite all this, we somehow still treat them as routine. To the unconscious, they are nightly oddities, but because we experience them when unconscious, we unconsciously throw them away into repression. We forget them. But they are the only things, excluding a true friend, that are consistently honest about us. Perhaps it is this honesty that prompts us to ignore them.

  I used to ignore my dreams. I tried to forget about the things that haunted me. I became an expert of ignorance. A problem is no longer a problem if it does not make contact with the mind.

  But this night, the dreams returned. This night, which should have been one of my happiest, most peaceful, most satisfying, was instead the night that those dreams returned from where they were buried. This night was a liminal stage of life. I had walked away from life as a full-time student forever. My future was ahead. But that night, my mind was behind.

  I dreamed of it again. I dreamed of January 5, 2026. I dreamed of my mother, telling me to play for a little while. I dreamed of my father, patting me on the shoulder. Of the gun shots that rang through the walls. Of the agony in my mother’s voice, the fear in my father’s. And I dreamed of the third voice.

  I dreamed of holes. Holes in my parents’ flesh. His head, her chest. My heart. All shot through.

  I dreamed of the killer’s face. The blood running down from that cut. His escape into the shadows. I dreamed of revenge. And even in that state of dreaming unconsciousness, I made an oath. I swore to never let myself run away in fear again. To never lock myself out from danger again. An oath to protect the people I loved, no matter what. I made that promise to myself because this man had taken away the two people that I loved the most. All on a calm night in January. That man would have a scar now.

  The Joker was never predictable.

  ∞

  I woke up sweating. The first sound I heard was my own inhaling. I sucked in deeply, incomprehensibly gasping for air. My fingers clenched tightly. One hand was gripping the sheet. The other held something else.

  The pocket watch.

  I instinctively dropped it, letting it fall onto the mattress. Even in the darkness, it seemed to shine.

  My breaths increased in depth but slowed in recurrence. I turned on the light and looked at the time on my phone. 6:12 am. I wiped my face with two hands and exhaled. Here I sat, in my bed at home, comfortably accommodated. But internally, I was in a state of vexation. Chaos. Reaching down, I picked up the watch and felt that strange sense again. The pull. A magnetization to continue staring at its intricate cover. Its cold, lifeless face. The infinity. I breathed out through my nose. What are you.

  I couldn’t sleep anymore. I got up, showered, and dressed. My arm and hand looked more normal, thankfully. The irritation had subsided.

  I took a drive to the superstore down the street to pick up a few things. A wooden baseball bat, a tube of tennis balls, and a mop.

  The cashier raised his eye at the mop.

  I smiled and paid.

  After fulfilling my odd shopping list, I returned home and went out back. The property had twenty acres of forest behind it. Odd for a suburb, but still standing because it had always remained part of the property.

  In addition to the things from the store, I brought a few other items I already owned. First, my 9x19 Jericho 451 pistol. It was my father’s before he died. Additionally, I brought the pocket watch and a small tarp. I stood in the middle of the forest, a shopping bag in one hand, a box
with the gun inside in the other hand. The watch sat in my pocket. I wore a light jacket around my shoulders. It was still morning and the air was crisp.

  I spread my items out on the tarp and took out the pocket watch. Inhaling a deep breath, I let it sit comfortably in my right hand. Let’s see what you can do.

  First were the baseball bat and tennis balls. I opened the tube, took out two tennis balls, and left the third on the tarp. With the pocket watch in one hand, and the tennis balls in the other, I threw the green spheres overhand. They spread in two directions. I gripped the watch tightly. While the tennis balls were still in the air, I pressed the button down with my thumb.

  I winced in anticipation of the flash. It hit my eyes and wracked my head with pain. A high pitched tone attacked my ears. But I planted my feet and stayed standing. No memory came except for a quick blur of my father’s face.

  After just a second, the flash was over. Silence. Stillness. Focus. I opened my eyes. The pain was just as bad, but my mind had not been pulled back this time. I checked the watch. Time was stopped at 9:16 am, and I.T. was at three seconds and counting.

  I put the watch in my pocket. My palm stung as I released it. The loud ringing sustained, holding tightly onto my ears. I turned my attention forward. Once again, it had worked. Ahead, in midair, hung two tennis balls. Absolutely still. Frozen in time. Suspended in space.

  It was time for the first test. Momentum. The tennis ball on the right was my first target. I approached it from the tarp and lifted my fingers to the sphere. I wanted to test what could happen to objects when I paused time; if touching the keys made them fall, would touching the tennis ball make it fall? Or would the ball just keep going in the direction it had been traveling?

  I contacted it with the tip of my index finger.

  Animation returned to the tennis ball. But it did not continue flying in the direction I had thrown it. Instead, it simply fell to the ground.