How Time Flies

Prompt: Write about something magical
Word Count: 648

Moving was quite a dull chore. Richard was painfully aware of this as he pulled, shoved and grunted a couch through the rather unaccommodating door of his new house. The couch came to rest beside an old grandfather clock that had been left behind by the previous resident, bless her old soul. Richard was quite content to leave the couch there as he settled on it and cracked open a warm beer. The clock struck three.

Brrrrrrrring!

Richard spit out his beer as the chime of the clock echoed down the halls.

Brrrrrrrring!

The clock chimed again; a silvery sound full of old anticipation. Richard stared at his wasted beer, now a line of spittle down the front of his shirt.

Brrrrrrrring!

Richard gave the clock a bemused look.

Suddenly the room was absent of the deafening ring and an uneasy silence followed. The damn thing isn't even ticking, Richard considered, still staring up at the face of the clock. He stood on the couch to take a closer look at the antique and unmoving hands. They were set on twelve o' clock on the dot. He leaned closer to hear if some old mechanism still whirred within the oaken case. Nothing. Not a tick, nor a tock. He gave the hands a twirl. 8:48.

BRRRRRRING!
And then it was dark. Richard yanked open the front door and found the night sky staring back at him. The moon shone brightly, perfectly naturally, as if it had not just arrived in the middle of the day, bringing with it the cloak of night. Stars twinkled, winking at him from their nightly perches. Closing the door, Richard looked back to the clock. He could not resist the temptation to give the hands another spin. This time he slowly shoved the hour hand back to its original position. 12:00.

BRRRRRRING!

All of his worldy posessions which had filled his living in toppling boxes slowly vanished from sight, as if someone had taken an eraser to them. Cursing, he flung open the door again. Sunlight beat down on his yard, where his boxes and furniture sat, waiting to be moved indoors. Again. Richard would have been annoyed if he had not discovered the mastery of all time pieces in his very own living room, and if his head was not filled with the wonder of it all. He spun the hands around, one, two, three times. 3:00.

BRRRRRRING!

His living room was nicely furnished, everything in its place. Time, it seemed, had an excellent sense of interior design.

And so it was, over the next couple of weeks Richard passed the time, literally. When something could not happen soon enough, he made it happen immediately. When something was broken, he would go back a couple minutes to fix it. When he was bored, he would play with his clock simply because he could. He did not have to work, of course, because that part of the day was easily enough passed by a few simple adjustments of the old hands. Richard was the Master of Time, and that was a delightful thing to be indeed. Until the day the hands of the clock, growing worn from use, snapped.

He stared at the small metallic pieces in his hand, and a sudden chill came over him. Something was not right. In fact, everything was very, very wrong. He could feel the weight of it bearing down upon him, making it hard to reach the front door. Opening it revealed a world stuck in perpetual motion. Cars froze in the streets as if caught in a phantom traffic jam. A plane hovered in the sky as if it were painted there. His neighbor eternally mowed the lawn, and a cat hung in mid-pounce in pursuit of a perfectly still leaf. All the universe crashed to a halt.

The end of time had just arrived.