Borrowed Time

Table of Contents

Ethan first noticed the sound three days after returning from his hike in the Grey Spine Mountains. It was faint. So faint he thought at first it was his neighbour’s old mantel clock bleeding through the thin walls of his house. Just a soft, even tick from somewhere nearby. He ignored it the first night. Hikes always left him sore and hazy, and he chalked the sound up to exhaustion or some residual ringing in his ears from hours in the wind. He’d trekked farther than planned, climbing down into a shadowed valley where the air was unnervingly still. It was in one of those valleys that he’d found the cave.

It wasn’t marked on his trail map, and he wouldn’t have noticed it if a shift in the sunlight hadn’t caught the gleam of something metallic just inside. A battered pocket watch sat on a rock shelf, its cover engraved with looping script he couldn’t read. When he picked it up, it was ice cold—colder than the cave air. He gave it a gentle shake. Nothing. No ticking, no movement of the hands. He pocketed it, telling himself it would make a nice curio to clean up.

Now, back home, that same steady tick seemed to follow him from room to room. By the fourth day, it had grown louder, no longer something he had to strain to hear. It was always just behind him, like a second heartbeat. When he mentioned it to friends over drinks, they laughed it off.

“You’re just tired,”

His friend Marissa said.

“You’re hearing your own pulse or something.”

“Or you’ve finally lost it,”

Connor added with a grin. He didn’t tell them about the other thing, the glimpses. Always at a distance, never clear. A shape in the far corner of his yard when he took the trash out. A shadow retreating between the trees at the edge of the property. Tall. Bent. Watching.

By day five, the ticking had become unbearable. It was louder than the refrigerator hum, louder than the traffic outside. Louder, even, than his own thoughts. He pressed his hands to his ears, but the sound didn’t dim. It was inside his head now, every second hammering like a nail. And the figure he saw it in full daylight. It stood in his yard, still and crooked, limbs impossibly long and jointed wrong, skin—if it had skin—gleaming like tarnished brass. Where its face should have been, there was a smooth white clock, the hands spinning far too fast to follow. Ethan stumbled backward, heart thundering, but when he looked again, the yard was empty.

That night, he found the first scratch on his forearm. Thin and precise, almost like it had been carved with a razor: a single Roman numeral—I—just below his elbow. The skin around it was pale, numb. He woke the next morning to find II carved beside it. He didn’t remember doing it. Didn’t remember feeling it. The third night, III. The fourth, IV. The marks weren’t scabbing; they were etched, as though his body had grown them. Each new numeral came with the figure closer.

On the first night, it had been at the far end of his street. By the fourth, it was standing at the edge of his driveway, the clock-face trembling with a soundless shudder, the ticking swelling until it filled the air like the roar of cicadas. On the fifth night, he woke to find it standing outside his bedroom window. The morning after, Ethan went back to the cave. He told himself if he returned the watch, this would stop. The air was colder in the valley than it had been before, and the cave felt wrong—narrower, darker, as though the stone itself had shifted to close him in. He placed the pocket watch back on the shelf where he’d found it.

The ticking didn’t stop. In fact, it seemed to follow him out of the cave, through the forest, into his car, and all the way back home.

By the sixth night, the numeral VI had joined the others on his arm. The figure was at his front porch now, the clock-hands jerking like a seizure, slamming past numbers faster than any clock should move. The ticking was no longer a rhythm—it was a frenzy, a countdown. That was when he realized what the numerals were. Not days. Hours. He had been marked since the moment he touched the watch. Each numeral wasn’t just counting time—it was taking it.

On the seventh night, Ethan woke to silence. No ticking. No hum from the refrigerator. No sound of the wind outside. Just absolute, smothering stillness. He sat up. The room was dark, but he could see it anyway. The figure stood over his bed, brass limbs groaning as it bent lower. Its clock-face was still now, the hands frozen at twelve. Midnight. Its voice was like gears grinding through gravel.

“You took time that wasn’t yours.”

Its cold, jointed fingers closed around his wrist. The numeral VII burned into place, blood welling like ink from a pen. He felt something inside him tear loose—not a muscle, not a bone, but something deeper. Something that had always been there, counting quietly in the background. The last thing he heard was the clock screaming, a single, endless chime.

When his landlord came to check on him a week later, the house was empty. The bed was neatly made. The only sign anyone had ever lived there was a pocket watch sitting on the kitchen counter, its hands spinning backward, ticking faintly. At the base of the brass chain was a fresh engraving, neat and precise. VIII.