Trifecta: Week Sixty-Eight

Trifecta: Week Sixty-Eight

TIME (noun)

1a : the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues : duration

b : a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future

c : leisure <time for reading>

2: the point or period when something occurs : occasion

3a : an appointed, fixed, or customary moment or hour for something to happen, begin, or end <arrived ahead of time>

b : an opportune or suitable moment <decided it was time to retire> —often used in the phrase about time <about time for a change>

Please remember:

  •  Your response must be between 33 and 333 words.
  • You must use the 3rd definition of the given word in your post.
  • The word itself needs to be included in your response.
  • You may not use a variation of the word; it needs to be exactly as stated above.

The clock ticks; its tick is unremitting. The sweep hand, black and delicately tapered, moves around the silver disc.  Once, twice, three times – then a deep inhalation, slowly exhaled.

At this hour the sun has started to glint on the stylised numerals. Glimmers of light rebound, frosting the plainly painted walls with golden fragments. A thought barely registers: Magnolia is meant to be a soothing shade. Meg is not feeling soothed by her surroundings.

The minute hand makes an audible “click” and bounces slightly backward with its advance. She has been observing that clock for the eight sluggish hours that have passed since she arrived. The unvarying pattern of the clicking, minute by turgid minute, has become an irritation but is not as irksome as the absence of an anticipated tock.

Meg has a fleeting image of her longcase clock at home, it’s pendulum marking the moment with a measured and satisfying tick-tock.

The sweep hand passes twelve an additional second time; Meg takes another deep breath. One more circle, another, and the pain sweeps swoops through her once more. This time it’s different, searing through her, licking at her body like flame, like the coloured flames on her Bargello.  She tries to conjure an image of the needlepoint.

Perspiration trickles from forehead to eye, stinging a little and making clock-watching difficult.

Tick, tick, tick; never a bloody tock! The pain seems synchronised with the damned regular click of the minute pointer. Meg struggles to focus on a soothing image: her bedroom,  littered with cushions in blue and green with cream; her Grandmother’s Grandmother Clock – she finds it in her to giggle a little and wonder what that actually means in terms of generations…

Meg fumbles for the bell push: “NURSE!

She can no longer see the clock on the magnolia coloured wall. The pain is big and red and is somehow outside her, enveloping her whole body.

Nurse Abbot brings a wheelchair in:  “Mrs Morton, I think it is your time!

333 Words

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7 Comments

  1. March 13, 2013
    Reply

    I liked the way you described that second hand on the clock bouncing slightly backward. Graphic observation – I didn’t know I’d seen that until you wrote about it. Well done.

  2. March 14, 2013
    Reply

    Great job building the tension; I was practically ready to beg for a “tock” myself!

  3. March 14, 2013
    Reply

    I’ve impatiently watched the clock before, so I could relate to the irritation of waiting for the ‘tock’.

  4. Draug419
    March 14, 2013
    Reply

    At work, at night near the end of my shift, I can hear the slightly-bent second hand of our office clock scraping against the plastic clock face >__< This reminded me of that. Awesome piece.

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