Episode 1: The Clock That Runs Backward
261 Words
Mira Okafor had walked past the bell tower at Ashwood Academy every day for three years, and every day the clock on its face read a different time than the one on her phone. Nobody else seemed to notice. When she'd mentioned it to her roommate, the girl had just laughed and said, "It's an old building, Mira. Old things break."
But clocks didn't run backward when they broke. They just stopped.
Tonight, it read 11:47, ticking left instead of right, and Mira stood frozen on the gravel path with her breath fogging in front of her.
"You see it too."
She spun around. A boy from her Literature class — Theo Marsh, quiet, always sketching in the margins of his notebook — stood a few feet away, hands shoved in his pockets, staring up at the same tower.
"See what?" Mira asked carefully. Three years of being the only one who noticed strange things had taught her caution.
"The clock. It's been running backward since September first. I've been counting the days." Theo's eyes finally left the tower and found hers. "I think it's counting down to something."
A gust of wind rattled the dead leaves at their feet, and somewhere above them, the bell — the one that hadn't rung since a fire supposedly destroyed its mechanism forty years ago — let out a single, low, impossible toll.
Neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed.
"September first," Mira said slowly, "was ninety-four days ago."
Theo's face went pale under the security light. "Then we have six days left."
- Writer
