Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock.
A flash of golden light lit up the darkened room.
Tick Tock Tick Tock.
Followed by a burst of silver stars that rained down over their castor.
Tick Tock.
They settled there and there they remained illuminating even the darkest corners of the vast room.
Tick.
They started to fade.
Tock.
Darkness. All except one had dimmed away into nothing.
A pale hand reached down and held it out like a torch. An old radio crackled into life and the hand spun around, pointing the make-shift torch at the rusting device.
He hadn’t realised it was that time.
Time.
Not like it existed anyway, it was all a figment of human imagination.
Imagination.
If time was a figment of human imagination then what did that make him?
Was he even a him?
Did pronouns even count if you didn’t even exist, just like time, just like everyone and everything in this made up world. Everything except the sound of that radio crackling into life was a lie that he was helping to maintain by keeping time moving and the clock tower working. He didn’t even know what would happen if he let the clock stop, he just knew that he couldn’t. He didn’t even know how long he had known that couldn’t let it stop he just knew that if it stopped then so would he, and then he wouldn’t be able to listen to the radio anymore.
“Hello, dear listeners.”
He jumped and dropped his torch which fell to floor and went out with a hiss.
“We have a report that the clock tower has been acting strangely today, listeners, which is very odd, it’s been keeping up with time (which well all know doesn’t exist and was created by the government a few decades ago for tax reasons) for the whole history of this town without problem or even apparent need for maintenance.”
What? A problem? The man looked over to the glass clock and saw nothing wrong, it was exactly as it was supposed to be, a lie, and around lunch-time.
“There’s been no problem with the” he paused pointedly to cough “time but it’s about a hundred feet south of where it was when we all simultaneously crept into our beds last night. Which is odd, clock towers don’t normally do that here in Night Vale. We’ve been trying to reach Akol who lives inside for a word on this event but everyone has yet to find any way of contacting him, or even proof that he’s there.”
Akol. So that was his name, and why didn’t they just come up there were stairs right over t-
“Hello Akol.”
“Cecil? Is that your voice?” He only knew one and it was the sound of the radio-presenter, he knew it well.
“It is.”
“But you’re on the radio.”
“Yes I am Akol.”
“But…how?”
“Shhhhhh……”
Akol’s head hit the floor with a smash and everything went dark.