We are excited to announce the winner of last week’s flash fiction contest, titled Clockwork! We loved reading all your entries and we wish to thank everyone who participated!
The winning entry this week goes to Brad Bott! Congratulations Brad! Check out last week’s prompt and the winning entry below!
Prompt: Tick-tock, tick-tock, the sound of a healthy clock marking the seconds of the day. Mr. Crow loved listening to the sounds of his clocks, all of which he had carefully calibrated to keep time exactly. He was a surgeon with his instruments, so precise with his movements and methods that there had never been a clock in all of London that he couldn’t repair. Until today.
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Clockwork
By Brad Bott
Mr. Crow loved clocks. He could lose himself for hours working on the tiny mechanisms inside to get them running properly again. He had never come across a broken clock he couldn’t fix.
He had just opened up his shop when a swarthy man entered, wanting to sell a broken down contraption, resembling a clock.
Mr. Crow had never seen one like it before. The cogs, springs, and gears were all wrong. And the strange engravings should have tipped him off, but he had to have it. So, he wound up paying more than he should have for it.
After the swarthy man left with his money, Mr. Crow put the clock on his workbench and tried to forget about it until he finished for the day and had time to work on it. But, no matter how hard he tried, his mind, and eventually his gaze, would drift back to the clock. It began to consume his focus so he wound up closing early to work on it.
As he delved into the inner workings, time slipped away. He tried everything he could think of to fix the contraption, but nothing he did worked. Mr. Crow had spent his whole life tinkering with clocks and he would not let this one get the better of him,
After working on the innards for hours that stretched into days, getting all the little parts where he knew they should go, Mr. Crow tried one last time to wind it up. He held his breath as he gave one final twist of the key. Then waited to see what would happen.
Minutes went by and nothing happened. Mr. Crow scrubbed his delicate fingers through his hair, pulling out more than a few greying strands. He couldn’t take it anymore and threw the tiny screwdriver he was using across the room.
As he did, he must have nicked his finger because a pinprick of blood dropped into the workings of the clock. All at once, the gears whirred, the engravings lit up, and the clock started ticking. Mr. Crow’s sigh of relief was cut short as the clock whined to a stop.
On a whim, he squeezed a bigger drop of blood into the gears and to his delight, it started working again. He let our a hardy chuckle before the clock ran down again.
He now knew what he had to do to get the devilish contraption running, but how much blood would it require and for how long? Deep down he knew what it would take to keep it running for any length of time. He had sensed it in that brief whir of cogs and it was a price he wasn’t willing to pay. Mr. Crow knew better than anyone how precious time is. This clock would remain the one he couldn’t fix, for the time being.
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If you’d like to see more of Brad’s work, you can check out his blog at bradabott.wordpress.com.
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