Another short story I wrote, for a class assignment.

The clock had been a gift from Alcott's mother. Alcott hadn't wanted the clock and that much was clear, but the problem with gifts from parents is that one is generally expected to keep them. And so the clock was positioned front and center in the family's kitchen, to watch over them as they ate their meals. Alcott had tried to move the clock one night after his wife had went to bed, to at least move it to a room he didn't inhabit as often, but no matter how hard he tried the clock wouldn't budge.

Alcott tried to ignore the clock. He liked to say that he had a natural sense of time, one that need not be tarnished by the artificial regulations of the grandfather clock his parents had given him. The clock had heard this many times as he stood in position in the kitchen.

As the clock struck seven in the morning, the family all came down from their respective bedrooms and gathered at the stainless-steel dining table for breakfast. It went as always; Alcott's wife fussed over him and his daughter's clothes and their breakfasts, Alcott settled down with his newspaper and flipped straight to the comics section, and his little daughter braided her hair and ate a bowl of cereal before heading off to school at seven thirty. At eight o'clock Alcott headed off to his job; he was some kind of nature scientist, from what the clock had heard from his place in the kitchen.

The clock stood there as Alcott's wife tidied up the kitchen; she, at least, was secretly glad for the old grandfather clock. She hadn't said as much to Alcott or anyone else, but the clock had heard her muttering about how there was never enough time in the day, and how she might for once get everything done now that she could actually tell the time.

The little daughter wasn't old enough yet to understand the importance of time, but she would, the clock thought, as she got older. She seemed to be a practical young girl with a strong head on her shoulders, but she still held on to that that pure, innocent fantasy that could imagine and believe worlds beyond the reaches of time.

It was Alcott the clock worried about. Alcott was generally on time, he'd give the man that; but someone who had such an aversion to paying attention to time never ended well. The clock, in the various homes he'd been situated in, had noticed that people who ignored time liked to pretend it didn't exist, that keeping the ticking out of their head would cease it from creeping along as it always did.

The clock discovered Alcott's reasoning for his hatred of clocks one day at dinner. "I had a father," he said, his voice growing serious, "You never got to meet him, your grandfather," he said to his daughter. "He was always worried about his schedule, about being exactly on time, not a second too late or too early, and eventually it was the death of him, quite literally. He was so intent on arriving to work on time that he ran right through a red light. He never made it to work that day at all, or any day after that."

The family was silent. It annoyed the clock how much the man hated and scorned keeping track of time, but in all honesty, the clock didn't care. He could hate time, he could love it, but it would go on the same regardless. Time could become an unhealthy obsession, the clock agreed, but there was also an immense danger to ignoring it altogether.

"Tick, tock," thought the clock. "Take your time, but time won't stop."

* * *

Everything changed on a Tuesday. It began as normal; the little girl went off to school at seven thirty, Alcott left for work at eight, and his wife tidied up the kitchen.

That night was the night of Alcott's daughter's school play; the clock had heard the family running through her lines every night as he stood in the kitchen, saw the excitement on her face when she had first run home a few weeks ago exclaiming about the part she had received.

Alcott came home early from work that day so that the whole family could attend the play together; his wife, who had been sitting at her spot at the kitchen all day putting the finishing touches on her daughter's costume, enlisted him to take a turn picking up his daughter from school. She suggested he leave soon; Alcott brushed her off, assuring her that he had plenty of time, without so much as a glance at the clock as it stood there in kitchen, ticking away.

"You should really go," his wife said again; she was looking at the clock, looking at with her eyes squinting and her brow furrowed in concern.

"I'd be terribly early," Alcott assured her, never once taking his eyes off the newspaper in his hands.

The wife sat impatiently; she kept stealing hurried glances at the clock, and he figured that she was considering going to pick up the daughter herself. However, the clock knew from everything he had seen that Alcott was a very stubborn man who refused to take orders from anyone: his wife, his daughter, or the old grandfather clock standing guard over the kitchen.

Finally the wife gathered up the courage to say something. "If you don't go, I will," she said, puffing out her chest.

"Fine, fine, dear, no need to get upset," Alcott muttered, putting down his newspaper, stretching, and slowly making his way to the door.

"Tick, tock," thought the clock, "Take your time, but time won't stop."

* * *

Stuck in his stationary location in the kitchen, it was needless to say that the clock could not see what happened next with Alcott and his daughter; all he knew was that when Alcott returned home he wore a shocked, grave expression the'd never seen present on Alcott's carefree face. He whispered words to his wife that the clock could not hear, and tears paved a slow but steady stream down her face. "If I'd been only three minutes earlier... I could have gotten to her before he did." The clock heard Alcott moan later. "If only I'd looked... If only I'd paid attention to the clock."

The clock never saw the daughter again.

* * *

Alcott was never the same after that day, but other than the grieving depression that had overtaken him, the changes came slowly.

On the first day, it seemed to the clock that Alcott was trying to avoid looking at him, as if the grandfather clock in the kitchen had done some purposeful and personal wrong to him. But it was also as if the clock held some magnetic pull for Alcott's eyes, as he kept drifting his glance ever so slightly toward his ticking hands. Although a part of him seemed grudging of it, Alcott began to follow the clock meticulously in his daily schedule.

On the second day, it worsened. Alcott had dropped the act of trying to keep his eyes away from the clock; he stared openly at it, stopping mid sentence and losing his train of thought to stare open-mouthed at the ticking hands.

Everyday he spent more time looking at the clock. He'd given up his hobby of reading the newspaper every morning and instead focused all his attention on the clock. Dinners slowly grew more and more silent, and without the cheerful chatter of the daughter the only sound that could be heard was the incessant ticking of the grandfather clock as he stood resolute in his place in the kitchen.

One day at dinner, Alcott began to twitch. It wasn't randomly; it wasn't a medical condition. But with every tick of the second hand of that old grandfather clock, Alcott's whole body spasmed in time. His wife watched him with worried eyes, trying to make forced conversation about the rainy weather that no longer bothered him or the work he no longer cared about or the newspaper he no longer read; needless to say, all of her attempts were made in vain. She'd ask him, occasionally, what was wrong, but the only response she would ever get is a wild muttering of something like, "But I might be late. I can't be late. I can't lose time."

"That's it," his wife finally said one day at dinner, when she had been ignored once more for the ticking clock in the kitchen. "I don't know what's happened to you, but you haven't payed any notice to me or anything but that wretched clock lately."

He turned his head slowly toward his wife, and for a moment both the wife and the clock both could almost see the black hands of the clock ticking in his widened eyes.

He blinked a few times and his eyes cleared. He looked directly at his wife for one of the first times since his obsession with the clock had begun. "We need to move it," he said urgently. "We need to move the clock. We need to get rid of it."

When the couple finished dinner that night, they agreed to move the clock. Alcott told his wife that he would do it, and he didn't even need her help; he didn't care if he broke it, at this point, he said.

The clock wasn't worried. He knew that he couldn't be moved. The harder they tried to push him away, the more present he'd become.

Alcott started by pushing. He gave the clock a light push, at first; then a harder one. The clock felt him pushing, but he didn't budge. After minutes of hard pushing, he retired to the wall to catch a breath. "I've just remembered something," he panted to his wife. "The very first night the clock sat in this kitchen, I tried to move it; I swore I knew, even then, that it would cause a problem. But I tried to move it, and it wouldn't budge. Not at all."

"Perhaps you were tired," his wife said consolingly.

Alcott resumed his relentless pushing. He pushed and pushed, shoved and shoved, kicked and kicked but the clock would not budge. Suddenly, his wife gasped from across the room.

"What is it?" Alcott stopped, eyes wild, on edge from all of the pushing and frustration.

"Surely you've noticed?" His wife said. "Come stand where I am."

Alcott joined his wife at the other end of the room.

"The clock wasn't always that tall, was it?" she asked. "There must have been two feet between the top of the clock and the ceiling; now there's barely an inch."

"It's probably an illusion. Thing's driving me insane. Damned clock," Alcott muttered. "We need to get it out. We have to."

He continued to push. It seemed to the clock that Alcott had lost the fiery mood he had adopted for a little while earlier, and while he continued his futile struggle, his body began to twitch once more with every tick of the second hand. Alcott would stop for long moments, drawing in deep ragged breaths and staring once more at the clock face with a look of frightening obsession.

Alcott's wife had tried to convince him to go to bed hours ago; she'd finally retired herself. But this battle was consuming Alcott, and the clock figured that the man would not give up until he succeeded.

The clock, however, knew this would not happen.

As Alcott pushed and the clock resisted, he began to see that what his wife had pointed out; the clock heard him muttering about it, muttering like a lunatic.

The more Alcott resisted, the more the clock grew. Through the night it widened, grew, touching the ceiling and pushing into it.

At some point during the night, in a fit of desperation, Alcott had grabbed a knife from the kitchen, stabbing and slicing and throwing at the clock. He made a few dents, a few scratches, but he couldn't break the glass, and the clock still continued to grow. Alcott disappeared from the room for a few moments and quickly reemerged, this time with an icepick in hand. He slashed and swung, pounding at the glass in a fit of rage, shouting, cursing, twitching, positively roaring as the clock struck a new hour and its ghostly song sang out. It seemed to Alcott that every noise the clock made was mocking him, every tick-tock ticking down the moments until he would burst in a fit of insanity.

Alcott was barely conscious anymore. He picked up anything he could find, slashing and sawing and throwing and pounding and screaming and yelling and muttering so that the clock could hear his every thought. Was his wife truly still asleep? The clock was growing quickly now, its mahogany base and the sound of its ticking spreading like a plague of locusts in Biblical times and it was mocking Alcott, he knew it, it was breaking the house, shaking the foundation, it was protruding into the upper level, into his bedroom, it was eating up everything in its path and all Alcott could do was stand there screaming, shouting, cursing, muttering, failing...

"Tick, tock," said the clock, "Take your time, but time won't stop."

* * *

The clock never saw Alcott or his wife again. Somewhere in the night as they tried to overtake the clock, the clock had overtaken them. People always resisted time; he'd seen it time and time again and still no one learned their lesson. Blame it all on time, they thought.

In fact, when the police came to investigate the wreckage of the home, the clock had seen one of them stop in and look around shaking her head. "It's too bad to see them go," she said. "It wasn't their time."

But time would trump them all, the clock new.

"Tick, tock," said the clock, "Take your time, but time won't stop."