Frozen at 7:37

A story I wrote back in 2019, refreshed for my Substack.

Tick. Tock. Tick.

7:37.

That’s when the clock stopped. The abrupt end to the familiar ticks had awoken him from his morning newspaper trance.

“Damn clock,” he grumbled. He folded his paper and placed it on the kitchen table, careful to avoid the ring of coffee left by his mug. With effort, he eased himself out of the wooden kitchen chair and shuffled over to the wall.

The clock was ordinary. Orange-brown wood framed a white face with bold numbers and thin hands. A thick layer of dust coated it, smudging onto the old man’s fingers as he took it off the yellow-papered wall, and leaving behind a halo of gray where the clock once was. He gave it a shake.

Tick, said the clock.

“C’mon,” he growled, shaking it harder. The clock remained silent. Frustrated, he tossed it onto the table where it landed with a clatter. His leathery hand caught the back of a chair, steadying himself as he moved to the drawer in the lower cabinets. Inside lay the clutter of a life: pens, phone bills, loose nails, stale dog treats, scattered photos. His hand hovered over one. He had left the photo buried in the drawer, as if forgetting might change what it was. A reminder of the before.

He could hardly recognize himself in that photograph. A man of thirty, dark-haired and strong, not yet bowed by white hair and arthritic joints. Margie stood beside him, smaller by a head, radiant in the dress she had sewn with a hundred tiny daisies. Her hands rested on Alex, their eldest, already a teenager then, his shoulders broadening, his face beginning to mirror his father’s with the same dark hair and sharp jaw. Julie was seven, small enough still to wrap her arms around his leg, though her smile suggested she already knew how to demand the world’s attention. All of them were smiling, captured in a single bright moment, while above them, the same clock kept its steady watch from the wall.

His thumb traced the edge of the photograph, and the morning returned to him. Margie hummed as she plopped pancake batter into the sizzling pan. Alex sprawled across the table, scribbling sentences between spoonfuls of syrupy pancake. Julie picked the blueberries from hers, stacking them into a pyramid before smashing them flat with her fork. He had his newspaper in hand, coffee on the table. He hadn’t eaten his wife’s pancakes that morning. He wished he had.

She had been gone for many, many years now, and with her had gone the best parts of him. Whatever remained drove his children away, and he had never found the right words to bring them back.

“Why do you take everything from me?” he demanded, glaring at the clock. But when the silence pressed back at him, his eyes filled, and his voice broke low. “Why are you so cruel?”

He slid the photo into his breast pocket, the weight of it pressing against his chest. The drawer still yawned open, and his fingers closed around a screwdriver and a pair of batteries. He gathered them and shuffled back to his chair, as if fixing the clock might mend more than its hands.

He glared at the clock, his hands twitching with the urge to hurl it across the room again. Instead, he picked it up and set the screwdriver to its back. The batteries clicked neatly into place; the screws tightened as they always had. Anger wouldn’t mend it—any more than it had mended anything else.

He turned the clock over. Still silent. He shook it once more, and this time it rattled. A cog had come loose, jarred free when he had thrown it onto the table. Broken by his own hand.

“I’m sorry I broke you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I broke everything.”

Without thinking, he rose and hung the clock back on the wall, where its hands stood frozen at 7:37. When he sank into his chair again, his hand drifted to his breast pocket, where the photo pressed heavy against his chest. He unfolded the newspaper out of habit, though the print swam before his eyes. All he could hear was the silence where the ticking should have been.