The Clockwork Ghost

A clock in a classroom, and a college student go hand in hand. As the students each steal a glance from its face, waiting for the hour to pass. Waiting for the class to be over as their professor goes on and on. It is a routine for both the clock and the students, only one of them wants the time to be up and for the other, time is never up. Time never ends. Time is all one knows. Most classroom clocks are perfectly functional, they tell the time as their job would insist upon. In one classroom, well, it was more of a conference room than a classroom, had a very particular clock.

The clock never told the correct time, no matter how often the students tried to fix it. They joke, “A ghost must be in the clock.” They’d laugh and giggle among the fresh ink from newly written letters before each of them as they surround the table.

A ghost was in the clock however, the clockwork ghost.

His name is Noon.

Noon was an unusual specter, rather than simply possessing any old thing, he chose the clock in the conference room. He couldn’t tell if it was its white face decorated with emboldened numbers. Or its black hands that could point to any number it was made to, and a red hand ticking all around, every day, every second. Noon perhaps, liked, no, loved the clock whole. He could rest among the V shape the hands made when the fingers were between 11 and 1. He could hide under the tent shape they made when they pointed to 7 and 5. Oh yes, he loved the clock in all of its timely beauty.

Noon would sleep on the bottom of the clock, along its black frame. Whenever he raised his head, he could see the hands tick away as always. Oh how he loved the beauty of the clock. The beauty of his home. Even if the students would always fix the clock, trying to restore it to the proper time, Noon would always play around its hands. He would run, jump, dance and play, oh yes how he loved to play along the hands of the clock! Oh how the clock was his home, his love, his life.

Noon loves his clock, no matter the time nor time of day.

Oh yes, yes, yes, he loves his clock.