Young Writers Society

He walked into the dry, aged house, and for some reason he had no clue why he was there. The cracked wooden floors were coated with a dust unlike any other, seemingly layers thick. The room was dark, holding in a dead silence incapable of making someone feel secure. The day's light was being blocked out by rugged, white, curtains, which hung from rusty metal poles, nailed to the wall, with even rustier nails. All of this seemed to increase the cluelessness of his presence here.

He heard a ticking, a ticking of a grandfather clock. The solemn noise filling the room, leaving his thoughts to keep him company. Yet the ticking was there to interfere with those thoughts, and stop them. Then the ticking would attempt to fill his emptiness with a black pit of fear, that when you tried to escape the wall only rose, driving you insane. Tick, tock, tick, tock. He looked around, unable to grasp what he was feeling. Was it fear? No. Was it insanity? No. Was it thrill? No. It was nothing. He was feeling nothing. This was the first time he had felt nothing, and he did not know, it was nothing. Tick, tock, tick, tock. And so the nothing, slowly, oh so slowly, drifted into fear.

He had an urge to find the ticking's source. Yet he knew what the source was. But that did not change what his urge made him do, not at all. Not one bit. He did not even reconsider it. So he walked, carefully, and came to one of the limp curtains. He grabbed the curtain, and pulled. And instead of the curtain pulling away, the curtain, along with the pole holding it up, ripped out of the wall. Pieces of wood fell to the ground, along with him. He hit the floor, landing of the pad of dust, and jumped back up, quickly brushing off the dust that had clung to him.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. But the good thing was, the light had finally, regretfully entered the dead house. He looked around the room, and spotted the grandfather clock. But it was not relief he found deep inside, but what he found was insanity. The fear, had finally came, but almost instantly, it became insanity. Why? Why was he insane? Or why did he think he was insane? Because, what he saw was the clock. The Grandfather Clock. But was the pendulum, held inside the glass, doing what a pendulum should be doing? No. It was still. And was the second hand, connected to the minute hand, as well as the hour had, doing what it should be doing? No! It was as well still.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. The noise was now like a death sentence for him. He wanted out. Now. Tick, tock, tick, tock. He backed up to the wall, and felt his way to the door, and grabbed the handle. Tick, tock, tick, tock. He opened the door, and without looking back, ran. He ran down the street, never to go back. But he didn't need to go back. Because he had been followed. But not by someone, but by something. Something he could not explain. Because it was nothing. It was nothing but himself that had followed him. He had followed himself.

And he never did act normal after that day. Because he did not know why he was at that house. He did not know why The Grandfather Clocked ticked, without the ticker. Because he didn't know that he had followed himself. And now, when he is alone, only with his thoughts to keep him company, the ticking would return. And it always would.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Tick, tock, tick, tock.