It has been 8 accursed years since I picked up the watch which has robbed me of the privilege of death. He convinced me to buy the watch — golden and intricate, beautifully crafted —, and I eagerly set it to the time and day in a running fit. But an accursed protuberance in the sidewalk made me stumble, slipping the sensitive instrument from my hands and breaking it. At the time I had not known what a simple stumble would inflict upon me.
I did not notice the effects at first, I was an older fellow and was already prepared to be at rest with my wife. But time, as it wants to do, dragged on. The weariness of my knees stopped worsening and remained as it was that day. At first, I thought it was a simple stroke of luck — but the "luck" only kept piling up. My heart no longer deteriorated. I was no longer shrinking, as men of my age do. I was not the healthiest man, but I was certainly not getting any worse. Any other abnormality absent, I believed God had blessed me with grace in age. The true nature of my affliction became more and more apparent as time went on. My wife was rendered bedridden after some more time had passed. I took care of her, as any good husband should. We watched as her condition worsened while my own had become too obvious to ignore. We would sit in each other’s presence, comforting each other, never speaking of the horrible truth that lay thickly in the air. I had refused to part with the watch, or even attempt to work its mechanisms again in fear of what foul effects it could have on either the world around it or me.
Eventually, she passed on, in her sleep, without pain. I am thankful every day she did not suffer in the end. I wept all day, paralyzed with grief. My one and only was gone, all the memories I had with her were the only things I had left of someone I had spent most of my life with. I wept all night, crushed by the realization that I would never be able to join her. Doomed to spend every moment trapped in a mind that longed for death, but trapped in a body that would forever refuse to give it. The next morning, I had traveled back to the building where I had met the watchmaker. Perhaps if I convinced him to fix the watch, this affliction would be cured. Fate had other plans, the building that the watchmaker resided in was gone and replaced by a store that closed down decades before. A candy shop that I had frequented as a child, an impossibility. The owner had died, which led to the shop closing down and the building remaining empty until the watchmaker opened its doors once again. The police had closed off the building shortly after, but to this day I have no idea why.
The funeral for my wife was a quiet affair, only the preacher’s honeyed words and the soft crunching of shovels filled the air with useless noise that day. I had shed my tears already, I just felt tired. No one was there to honor my wife’s memory, despite the fact that she had touched many people’s lives. Some had an excuse, they had the luxury of passing on. Others were simply callous, content to ignore the strange man in front of an old lady’s grave. My fists clenched and I ground my teeth together, I should be laying by her side, yet I was robbed of it. And for what? Buying a watch on an impulse? Tripping on a curb? Were these sins so great that God decided to curse me for an eternity until I always made sure to watch where I was walking? I had talked to the preacher after the ceremony, asking what he would do if he were robbed of joining the kingdom of Heaven. He smiled at me and spoke the words which to this day I remember verbatim “Time marches on, everlasting. We march alongside it, eventually, all of us will stop marching and rest. Your time is not now, but when it comes, you will be welcomed into heaven just as all others of the faith are.”
My faith had already been shaken, but the preacher’s words did not comfort me, despite his intentions. Instead, they had ignited a passion within me. Time refused to notice me, granting the gift of mortality to all other creatures. So I simply had to force time to notice me. My only lead was the watch, tracking down the original creator had yielded no results. I quickly realized that the watchmaker was not the only person who could fix it. Samuel Morse had recently invented the telegraph, but others could still make and repair them. I simply had to go find other people to repair the watch. I lived in a small town in upstate New York, however, there were cities, places bursting with people, clockmakers all around the world. A man couldn’t possibly track down them all, there are too many, it’d take more than a lifetime. I just so happened to not have that issue.
I traveled down the east coast, stopping by every clockmaker I could find in New York City, heading down and down. All of them said the same thing. The watch was too complex, too many parts, almost impossible for all of them to be in such a small watch. All variations of “I can’t fix it.” I swung down to Mexico, learned Spanish. Traveled throughout all of Mexico, Central America, and South America just to hear the same thing but in a different language. I trudged my way to the docks of Brazil, picking up pieces of Portuguese. Everything was passing by in a hazy blur. The days were blending together, sometimes I would forget entire days had passed with me making no progress on my journey. That same dense blanket that smothered me and my wife was once again smothering me. I was losing hope, I had traveled half the world but was not actually seeing any of it. I was alive, but I was no longer living. My mind had died, but my body refused to.
My shambling corpse boarded a steamboat to Europe. A novelty. I had never even dreamed that such vessels would exist within my lifetime. It was a sobering reminder that they did not exist in my lifetime. I should have died decades ago. I was seeing wonders I was not meant to see. That my wife never got the chance to see. The hole she left in my heart remained unfilled and has remained so till even now. It appeared that others agreed with me in regards to the strangeness of my longevity. It started when I first arrived in Portugal. The feeling of being watched plagued me almost every day. Like I was only ever truly safe in closed-off rooms, but so much as a crack in the curtains made my heart race and my palms sweat. Was this just the symptoms of a mind that had lasted far too long? Or was there actually something to be afraid of?
I began moving around under false names, throwing false trails. Sometimes these strategies would get rid of the feeling, but other times it would only intensify it. Nevertheless, my crusade for death continued, visiting every clockmaker, hearing that it can’t be fixed but in Portuguese this time. Spain yielded similar results. The UK fared no better. Italy refused to break the trend. I was getting ready to depart for Yugoslavia when I had a conversation that cut my journey short and sent me racing back to New York.
I was sitting in a small Italian cafe one day. It was a beautiful morning and I was watching the sunrise when the waitress came and took my order. After I ordered my drink she noticed my wedding band and mentioned how she wanted to get married one day. I told her that marriage shouldn’t be rushed, you should grow old and die happy with the one closest to you. I informed her about my wife’s passing, and she shared her condolences.
Then she asked me what her name was.
I opened my mouth to answer, then stopped. I had a moment of realization. I pondered, thought about it. I became desperate, scratching my brain, sorting through fading memories of treasured moments. Her face, her voice, it all came so clearly to me, but what was her name?
I excused myself, slamming down money for food I never received before fleeing in a mad dash to the closest port. I boarded another steamship and made it back to New York. Only stopping for the bare minimum of food and rest I eventually made it back to my small town only to find it abandoned. The buildings were dilapidated and unmaintained. I looked down roads I had run down as a child. Into shops that I had gone on dates with my wife to. I saw the small pond where the ducks would bathe, the one I had proposed to her. I couldn’t remember names, voices were on their way out. Faces were becoming unclear in my mind’s eye.
It became clear to me as I trudged down the muddy road to the cemetery. The human mind was not made to last as long as I have. It wasn’t made for it. As one forgets the memories of their childhood so too does your memory of adulthood fade. The metal gates of the cemetery creaked open as I pondered what year it currently was. At first, I had thought it was 1860 or so, but after some thinking, I had realized that no, it was 1926. I would be over a hundred years old at this point. As I realized the date I came upon my wife’s gravestone. Time, as it wants to do, marched on without me. Her gravestone had deteriorated to the point that I could only read the year she had died, 1834. For the first time in over 90 years, I wept. Alone in a small town, forgotten by all but a scarce few. I fell to my knees, wondering if this was to be my fate.
I sat in front of her grave for a while afterward. Ignoring the hunger pains or my growing thirst. I don’t know for how long I sat staring at that same number. I looked down at the watch on my wrist. I tugged on its crown, and with some effort, it finally gave way. I suppose one of the clockmakers reassembled it wrong. I set the year on the watch to 1834, so that I would never forget what year my wife died. I stood up and began to make my way out, but as I did, a bit of mud had caught my boot and I tripped. I caught myself with my hands, and the fall caused the crown to be pushed down.
On the ground, being supported by my hands and knees. I looked down at hands that belonged to an old man. I struggled to my feet. My clothes no longer fit quite right, they were too big. My heart felt heavy, and I was no longer as healthy as I was mere seconds ago. I turned to my wife’s muddy grave, an elderly man. I like to believe my wife’s spirit tripped me that day, to teach me how to work the watch in a way that let me join her. I looked up to the heavens, wondering if this was some divine act of providence. Even as I sit here I am unsure of the answer. I struggled to get to my old home unassisted.
As it turned out, someone moved into our home while I was galivanting around the world searching for a clockmaker. Very little of the old furniture remained, which I suspect only stayed because it was too fragile to safely move it wherever the new residents were going. I looked around the house and found one of my old journals I had hidden behind a wall panel. Engagement rings and a journal resided inside, just as I had left it a century ago. I grabbed a pencil out of the study and moved to the living room. I sat down on an old chair that threatened to break under the strain of a frail old man and began to write all of this down. I do not know who for, perhaps the strangers watching me on my journey.
I set the watch to 2034, I want there to be no doubt that I will age to the point of death when I push the crown down. I have not yet built up the courage to do it yet. I spend so long on a quest to achieve death only to be terrified of it when I have the chance. I suppose I just wanted to die a natural death, and not one caused by pressing a crown down. It’s not so different from killing yourself with a pistol when you put it like that.
I do not know when I will finally gain the courage to join my wife in death, but I feel it will be soon as I feel her face fading from my memory. I do not want to forget her more than I already have.
