short fiction · 2026-10-26

The Clockmaker's Apprentice

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The clockmaker's apprentice had never seen a clock that told the truth. Every timepiece in the shop — the grandfather clocks with their solemn chimes, the carriage clocks that ticked like nervous hearts, the wristwatches that clung to veins — lied in its own way. Some ran fast, eager to reach a future that never came. Some dragged, clinging to a past already gone. The clockmaker called it temperament. The apprentice called it fear.

One night, after the shop had closed and the streetlamps guttered in fog, the apprentice found a clock without a face. No numbers, no hands, no glass. Only a wooden box the size of a fist, warm as a sleeping bird. When they lifted the lid, there was no mechanism inside — just a single sentence written on paper, folded small: "You are not late for anything."

The apprentice carried it home. For weeks they waited for it to tick, to chime, to demand something of them. It never did. And for the first time, they slept through the night without dreaming of gears.