In a narrow shop squashed between two looming buildings, the air was thick with the tang of dust and oil. Timepieces of every shape and size were crammed into the shelves – a mad assortment of clocks with winking faces. The rhythmic ticking filled every corner of the shop.

Nobody ever came to the shop unless they had a particular purpose. Few were even aware that it existed. It was a place where time was not just measured but made.

Alexander didn’t quite recall how he had come to work for the Clockmaker. All he remembered was appearing on the doorstep one day while the Clockmaker was fiddling with a stubborn grandfather clock. Without asking, without question, Alexander had stepped inside, and the Clockmaker had simply nodded, as if he had expected him all along.

The Clockmaker was old, impossibly so, yet his sharp eyes caught everything. He never spoke much, only when necessary. He didn’t have to. Alexander had learned early that silence was as much a part of his apprenticeship as the gears and springs that made their clocks tick.

Today, the Clockmaker knelt over a small timepiece, his fingers deftly dancing through its intricate innards. Alexander polished the brass of a nearby wall clock as he allowed his mind to wander. It was easy to lose track of time here, surrounded by the pulsating tick of the clocks. The tick was like a heartbeat – a sound that never stopped, never faltered.

“Alexander,” the old man’s voice cut through the stillness. “I want to show you something.” The Clockmaker’s voice was softer than usual, almost reverent.

Dutifully, Alexander stood and walked to the table where the Clockmaker worked. Upon its surface sat a clock unlike one Alexander had ever seen before. It was the color of parchment and old brass keys, with a fracture running along its face. The hands of the clock were frozen in place, as if time itself had decided to stop right there and then.

“What is it?” Alexander asked. The odd clock held his attention.

“A clock,” said the Clockmaker, his voice distant. “But this one measures something . . . different.”

Alexander frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Angling the cracked little clock toward him, the Clockmaker replied, “This clock does not measure the time in a day, Alexander. This one measures the amount of time a person has lost.”

“Lost?” Alexander’s brow furrowed.

“Yes. Time that you can never get back. Moments slipping through your fingers. Pieces of your life that are spent and then gone. Time that goes unnoticed, wasted, slipping through your fingers like sand.”

A shiver ran down Alexander’s spine. The clock’s hands remained still, motionless. “But . . . how does it know?” Alexander’s voice was barely a whisper.

The Clockmaker smiled enigmatically. “You can feel it. Everyone can. The time you’ve lost haunts you like a shadow. The more time you’ve lost, the more the hands will move. But not forward. No, these hands will move backward.”

Alexander stepped back, his thoughts whirling. “I don’t . . . I don’t think I’ve lost any time.”

The Clockmaker didn’t respond immediately; his intense stare remained on Alexander. “You think you haven’t? You think you’re still holding on to every moment?”

Alexander opened his mouth to protest, but something in the Clockmaker’s gaze stopped him. The air felt heavier around him, as if the weight of the old man’s words had burdened the very atmosphere. Alexander glanced down at the clock, its cracked face staring back at him with an almost eerie intensity.

“But I’m still young,” Alexander said, his voice uncertain. “I haven’t lost much.”

The Clockmaker said nothing. Instead, he reached out and gently touched the cracked face of the clock. Slowly, subtly, the hands of the clock began to twitch, inching ever so slowly backward. Alexander watched anxiously as the clock ticked back into the past.

“Where’s it going?” Alexander couldn’t help but ask.

The Clockmaker looked up. “It’s not where it’s going. It’s where it has been.”

The words hung in the air between them, their meaning elusively out of Alexander’s reach, like a thought that lies on the edge of one’s conscience, just beyond.

Alexander’s throat bobbed as he glanced back at the clock. Its hands were visibly moving, ticking farther and farther back into oblivion.

“I never thought about it,” Alexander murmured. “All the time I spent here . . . working. All that time.”

The Clockmaker nodded. “Time spent is time spent. Once it’s gone, you can never get it back. We think we’re creating something here – measuring it – but we’re just consuming it. There’s no preventing it. We cannot hold on to it.”

Alexander felt like a sack that was slowly being filled with heavy stones, one by one. The Clockmaker’s words pressed upon him, filling him with dread.

Barely audible, Alexander asked, “What happens when it stops?”

The Clockmaker paused. “It doesn’t stop. It just . . . fades. The time you’ve lost remains, however. It will stay with you forever. Until there’s nothing left.”

A chill ran through Alexander. Before him loomed the shadow of the time he had lost, dark and unfathomable.

“I didn’t mean to,” Alexander whispered, more to himself than the Clockmaker. “I didn’t mean to waste it.”

The old man said nothing, but his eyes softened, as if he had understood something Alexander could not.

Alexander stepped away from the table and plucked the nearest clock off a shelf. The clock was shiny and clean, unlike the cracked timepiece on the table. He started winding it, his hands turning the key slowly, mechanically. As the gears began to turn, he felt the familiar rhythm of time flowing forward again.

But the thought hung within his head. What if he had never lost it?

The ticking continued. The clocks hummed in the otherwise silent shop, each one holding pieces of time that could never be regained.

And somewhere, in the quiet, a clock ticked backward.