The Fourth Hour
18.
 Arthur sat in the plush chair, looking around. He held his palms against the arm rests, as if holding himself and the chair together. His hands felt clammy, and his heart beat faster. His breath came in short, painful rasps.
“Relax,” Cuphandle said, still sitting opposite him. “You’re perfectly fine, except that you are scared to death. Well, not quite to death. There’s that idiom again. Darn it!”
“I feel this terrible sense that a weight has descended on me.”
“That is the weight of terror, Mr. Latchloose. It’s nothing to worry about. We’re all terrified from time to time, but we only die once, and in that case it’s usually over in a second or two.”
Arthur saw his pale reflection in the parlor mirror, and gripped the seat with both fists. He said through gritted teeth: “I don’t want to feel this way.”
“The seconds keep on ticking. See, you are alive. It will go away of its own accord, if you can just relax. Focus your mind on what you have to do now. You have just hours now in which to decide whether or not you wish to live out your old life, or start an entirely new one. I think a new one sounds rather exciting, don’t you?” In his eyes danced a vision of a lovely houri in a little black dress and high heels. Her skin was pale as ice. Her long black hair swayed from side to side. She snapped her fingers, and made rumba motions with her rear end. Most importantly, she kept her face averted. Arthur knew, instinctively, that if she ever turned to face him, he would turn to stone. She was to beauty what Medusa was to ugliness. No wonder Cuphandle was so excited and looking forward to his date. Arthur was considerably less wrapped up in his own imagined cleverness, and more impressed with his djinni friend’s powers.
Arthur licked his dry lips. In an instant, Cuphandle the djinni made a glass of water appear in his hand, and Arthur drank the fresh liquid. It made his mouth feel less dry, and his throat less raspy. In fact, it seemed to drench his entire being in a kind of calm, cool state. It reminded him of the stillness of a pool in moonlight.
Cuphandle rose and walked to the clock. “Come here, Mr. Latchloose.” Arthur rose and stepped beside him. “Reach out and take down the little watch.” Arthur looked up at the silvery clock face with its gilded accents. He looked at its complex of tiny, whirring dials and the large, ornate black minute and hour hands. He looked at the steadily ticking red second-sweep, whose hypnotic rhythm drew him in until he was almost frozen. “Reach out,” Cuphandle urged. “Don’t let anything stop you from your purpose. Push on, Mr. Latchloose. Forge ahead. Take the time piece. It is yours, after all.”
“I don’t think the clock wants me to take it,” Arthur said looking at the clock looming over him, which seemed to cling to its inset timepiece.
“Of course it can’t bear to be separated from its heart, which is that ticking trainman’s watch. But the clock is your property, your slave as it were, and you have the right to treat your chattels as you wish. Take the watch, Mr. Latchloose.”
With trembling fingers, Arthur fumbled about the edges of the watch, until his fingernails caught on a faint ledge there. He dug his nails in and pulled. With a faintly audible sigh or a sucking sound, the vest pocket watch came free. It nearly fell on the ground, and both Arthur and Cuphandle lurched to catch it. Arthur caught it in mid-fall. Instantly, the exotic case-clock tocked more slowly, and almost seemed to droop in the shadows. It was sad, and wanted its heart back, but like the genie, it knew it had a job to do.
Cuphandle said: “Small as it is, it is the master of the larger clock, as the heart is the mistress of life and the master of love. It is also the boss of your time during these twelve hours. See the time on it? It is no longer tracking whatever time it is in the world around us. It is tracking your personal time now.”
Arthur noted that it read 3:30, and tucked it safely in to his pants pocket. “How did the time fly by so fast? Where do the hours go? Is there a heaven for bygone hours?”
“There you go,” Cuphandle said from across the room, applauding. “You have become the philosopher you need to be.” He stopped clapping. “Come, let me show you something.”
Arthur followed him from room to room, and Cuphandle did something strange. He lingered here, there, in many places, running a fingertip idly along a counter top, or tracing the edge of a glass-paned, wood-edged cupboard door. “You notice anything?”
“No. Should I?”
“It’s not what’s there, but what’s not there.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Pictures. Photos. Mementos of your past life. They are disappearing one by one. Fading. And along with them, both the happy and painful memories.”
“Good riddance to all of it,” Arthur said. “I’ll make a new start.”
“Feeling a twinge of regret?”
“No,” Arthur said stubbornly.
Then: “Yes,” he admitted.
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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