Counting Clocks
Word Count: 1,236
Rating: PG
Comments: Cecille's imagination runs away with her while Aiden is at work.
When Cecille awoke to the cold, midmorning London gloom, she rolled onto her side to see an empty bed. Startled, she sat up fast, blinking away the sleep in her eyes to the corners, pale hands scrabbling out to pick at the white sheets. Realising the futility in this action, knowing full well that Aiden couldn’t possibly have compressed himself paper-thin to hide beneath the bed cloth, she left the sheets well alone and let out an enormous yawn. What now?
It definitely wasn’t the first time Aiden had snuck off to work while leaving Cecille in bed. Nevertheless, it didn’t mean she wasn’t irritated every time he did it. Casting a glance around the dark room, she slipped off the bed and pattered out of the room, down the hall to stand at the top of the stairs. For a moment she paused, looking down at the wooden steps that would aid her descent, and then after another brief moment, she sat down on the topmost step as quietly as she could.
And she listened.
The house was silent for a moment as she held her breath, and as though it realised what she was doing, it began to breathe. Distant sounds of Londoners going about their day filtered through the house, muffled by the walls. The rise and fall of voices as people passed. And slowly, ever so slowly, the sound of ticking crept up the stairs to Cecille and her ears.
She began to breathe again, though with some hesitation as if the sound of her breath would shy away the sounds of time’s progression. The ticking echoed round the house and she felt as though it was ticking away heartbeats, moments of her life. With that, a sudden overwhelming feeling of loss and fear welled up inside her and she nearly tripped over herself scrambling down the stairs for the source of the sound.
One antique clock perched on the wall to her right at the landing of the stairs. Cecille stood dutifully in front of it and looked at it with a somewhat stern expression. The clock blankly stared on, its hands swinging around and around. After a few more seconds of staring, Cecille reached up and unhooked it from its spot, tucking it under her arm as she walked into the kitchen.
Aiden was nowhere to be seen. The Spanish Londoner shrugged to herself, or perhaps even the clock, placing the device on the wooden table gently and plucking an apple from the fruit bowl to munch on. Her eyes swept to the other clock in the room; this one hung to the right of the window above the counter, near the archway leading to the parlour. Without thinking, Cecille strode over and unhooked that one too, placing it with the other clock. She regarded the two with untrusting eyes, munching on her sweet fruit before recalling other clocks in the house. But how many were there?
She quickly walked into the parlour, spotting another clock already and scowling. This one was settled neatly at the center of a table against the wall, a white doily pampering its brass talon feet as it ticked away seconds of Cecille’s life. Her arm reached out and snatched the clock from its place and she turned on her heel, heading back to the kitchen where the third clock joined the other two.
---
That evening, from the upstairs closet floor, she heard the front door shut and Aiden call out her name. She scrambled to her feet, pushing aside the clothes above her head so that she could crawl out and hurry down the steps. He met her at the bottom, embracing her as she threw her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. He smelled like sweat and hard work, of grease and metal. He smelled like home.
“Six,” she mumbled against his neck, and he pulled away to look at her.
“Six what, Cess?”
She regarded him with bright, curious eyes. “There were six of them and they were stealing my life. I couldn’t let them do that, not strategically placed where they were.”
Aiden gave her one of his looks, the one that said “Cecille, I hope you know you’re not making any sense and seeing as I’m not one of those psychics that work on the street corners at night I have no clue what to make of what you’re saying”. “Let’s sit at the kitchen and you can tell me what went on, yeah?” He tugged at her hand but she tugged violently back, throwing him off guard. “Whoa, hey!”
“No, no, no!” She shook her head at him, looking at him like he was crazy. “Don’t go in there; they’ll steal your life so much faster if you do.”
He looked at her hard again, his mouth becoming a thin line. “Okay…then where do you suppose we should sit?”
“The parlour’s fine,” Cecille declared, lacing her fingers with his as she led the way, “I made sure this morning.”
They sat in a twisted heap on the loveseat, Aiden stroking Cecille’s hair as she played with his other hand. “Why don’t you tell me what happened today, love?” he murmured.
“Nothing,” she answered, flipping his hand so that it was palm up. Aiden waited a moment and was duly rewarded as she spoke again. “I was just sitting on the top step and held my breath. The house began to breathe for me.” She paused and flipped his hand again. “But when it did, it stole my life to breathe. I heard the clocks ticking away at my heartbeat and I don’t know how to stop them.”
Aiden looked down at his lover with mixed amusement and concern. Wordlessly he gently pulled her chin up to face him and he inspected her eyes. Yes, there it was: he could see the wilderness settled in the rim of her iris, the unsettling black. He always hated when she became like this; her imagination seemed to run away with her, twist her reality into an hourglass and wring her dry until she felt all the sand had spilt. He then leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers briefly, pulling back and resting his forehead against hers.
“You’re fine,” he whispered, stroking her cheek as she looked up at him. “Take a deep breath and it’ll be okay.”
“But the counting clocks,” she protested, eyes full of concern, “They’re counting away my life.”
“Shh,” he replied, “close your eyes.” Reluctantly she did so, and he pressed a sweet kiss to each eyelid. “Inhale,” he instructed, and she did, deeply. “Exhale, slowly.”
At that she seemed to deflate a little, as if a bit of fight had gone out of her or the last grains of sand. When she opened her eyes again and Aiden looked into them, he saw that she had lost the wild, mad look in her eye and just looked drained.
She gave him a small smile. “Thank you.”
He smiled back and gently untangled himself from the couch, standing up and extending a hand to her. “Why don’t you come with me and help me put all the clocks back? Then I’ll make us a nice cuppa and we can relax after.”
Cecille smoothly slipped her hand into his, looking up at him, always grateful for him being there to ground her, and nodded.