One Fourty Three

The third time Colin looked up at the clock on the packed city bus, it still read 1:43 PM. He realized it was stuck on 1:43 PM the second time he looked at it, but instinctively glanced at it again a few minutes later to make sure. It still read 1:43 PM. No one else on the bus seemed to notice, or care. Crammed in between two large men, with their puffy winter jackets noisily scrunching with their every move, Colin figured people were probably too miserable to look up from their phones to check the bus clock. Colin’s own phone was lodged securely into the back pocket of his jeans, far out of reach, unless he wanted to seriously disturb the fragile balance of the burly winterized men he sat between. Just the thought of accidentally elbowing one of them while trying to reach for his phone, made Colin sweat. Though, they likely wouldn’t have noticed a nudge under the many layers of their absurdly large puffer jackets. On the warm, stuffy city bus, Colin was overheating. 

Luckily, Colin was wearing a watch. An old one his father had given him on his eighteenth birthday. Colin always took special care when wearing it, and it brought a smile to his face every time he put it on in the morning. He looked down at his watch and saw the time; 1:43 PM. Colin blinked hard to make sure he was reading the time right, then checked again. Still 1:43 PM. He frowned as he brought the watch close to his ear to hear for its smooth and constant tick, tick, tick. 

Silence.

The bus jerked to a stop. Colin shimmied past the winter puffer man to his left and walked off the bus. A cold wind blew past him, as he walked briskly down the street, heading straight for his apartment. He felt a sudden feeling of disorientation. 

Though he has walked this way home many times, he felt in this moment that he couldn’t recognize where he was. At a stoplight, Colin peered over to the wrist of a businessman donning a flashy watch. Colin craned his neck to try read the time on the businessman’s watch. It read 2:35 PM. He let out a small sigh of relief, and could feel the tension in his shoulders give a bit. His father’s watch will need to be fixed, then. No matter, Colin loved to tinker with small delicate mechanisms. 

Colin continued to walk towards his apartment. The sensation of hunger he had before getting on the bus had subsided, and strangely, the cold didn’t make his nose run as it normally did. When Colin arrived at his warm, homey apartment, he put a pot of tea on to boil. A cup of tea would help calm his nerves after the tumultuous day he had. As he set the pot to boil on his old white gas stove, he looked up to the clock on the kitchen wall. 

1:43 PM.

Colin was never one to believe in the supernatural. There must be a logical explanation for why all the clocks in his life have stopped, suddenly. But something small nagged at the back of his brain, and while Colin waited for his water to boil, he walked around his small apartment, and checked all the clocks. His alarm next to his bed, the clock in the bathroom, his grandfather’s old pocket watch (which was also in working condition thanks for Colin’s craftsmanship), even the creepy cuckoo clock that he inherited from his grandmother, all read 1:43 PM. The kettle whistled loudly in the background, startling Colin. He walked to the stovetop, quieted the kettle down, steeped his tea and took it over to the window.

Below him, the streets were alive with people. Time chugged along for them, never stopping, never taking a break. All these people Colin saw from his apartment window, were living their separate lives, moving along their own timeline, never slowing down. All around him, everything just kept going. But for Colin, it was different. His own time seemed to have stopped. It was as though he was observing life only as a spectator now.

Finally, Colin peeled himself away from his window, and flipped on his television. He switched it to the local news. In the bottom right corner of the television screen the time read 1:43 PM. The voice on the television chimed in, catching Colin’s attention…

… A man, thirty two years old, died today, on the 87 city bus travelling uptown, as a result of gang violence breaking out on the bus. The man was caught in a crossfire and suffered gunshot wound to the head. He died immediately. The police are investigating. A young woman caught the moments leading up to incident on her camera phone. We have the video here …

Colin watched the television screen as he saw the video of what happened on that bus. He saw an average looking man sitting in between two large men in huge winter puffer jackets. The two puffer jackets became a blur of moving bodies, the man in the middle trying desperately to get away. A BANG could be heard in the video footage, followed by screams from the other passengers. As the woman filming turned back to the front of the bus, Colin caught sight of the time displayed on the city bus clock right before the video went dark.

It read 1:43 PM.

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Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash