The Clock

Short Story Day 36 of 365

Tera sat on the couch early in the morning, thinking, praying, reading, meditating, and contemplating her day. The coffee had not started brewing and nobody else in the house was awake. It was her ‘alone time,’ a sacred time she had to just get alone and think. It had been this way for years.

Occasionally she’d hear a siren outside or a car with a loud muffler drive by, but normally the only thing she could hear was the kitchen clock 20 feet away.

Every second, every blasted second, it ticked.

Sometimes her thoughts wandered to her putting a permanent stop to the clock, but it was an heirloom so damaging it was out of the question.

Tera thought of moving into another room where the ticks would be muffled, but there really wasn’t any other room that she could have a light on this early in the morning without waking others up.

No, the clock would just have to be part of her new normal.

“In fact,” she later wrote in her journal, “it reminds me how fleeting my life is and to get busy doing the most important things in life.”

Now, when she hears the clock each morning, she smiles because it plays a prominent role in her morning festivities.

There are still days, though…