Creative Writing Collection

The 10th Hour

       “I’ll still be there.” His hands held tightly onto mine as the large bells ahead us began to clang against each other, but I couldn’t hear it. I only heard him. “I’m keeping my promises this time.” His eyes were wild as we stood there, at the roof of an old cathedral, whose base was beginning to crumble beneath us — I could feel the tremors.

       “No, please, wait,” I shouted as he dashed over the edge, not even glancing back to look at me. But he was gone. Gargoyles blocked my view from over the ledge, and I couldn’t see him. “You didn’t even promise…”

-

       I waited every day. London was quiet, our fixed location, and where I moved to. I had been living here for a few months now. Every day in Big Ben’s clockwork, I would wait from 9 to 10 o’clock in the morning. The clockwork was something I came to admire, enjoy, love. As if each click and clunk and churn and tick were words. His words. I hadn’t forgotten about him over the years — it was impossible to. I’ll still be there. But where are you now…?

       The larger cogs were able to crush the small stones I would toss into them. Toss. Chink. Crunch. Clink, clink, clink…

       “That’s not good for the clock, you know.”

       I turned by head back from my seated position, surprised by the voice. It was a man with a scruffy, tired look to his worn face, a large scar going from the bottom of his right eye, above his lip, to his left cheek. There were holes at the two ends, but the skin elsewhere had moderately healed.

       “Can I help you?” I asked calmly as I stood, caution coursing within me.

       He looked at me for a moment before looking at the clockwork, a light smile to his lips. “It’s March 17th. I told you I’d be here, didn’t I?”

       I frowned lightly, heat rising in my chest. “Don’t say that. Do you think this is a game? That you can pretend to be someone that I knew?” My voice was rising, but the man seemed to maintain a sort of stoicism.

       “Jenova, it’s me…” He outstretched a hand, palm up, showing an old whistle that was all too familiar. This couldn’t be him. He looks nothing like him.

       My gaze and tone were cold. “Who gave you that?”

       His grey eyes seemed to be searching me. “Allister. It’s Allister, Jenova — don’t you remember?”

       I wanted to believe, but I didn’t want to be disappointed. Lied to. Bamboozled.

       “When’s my birthday?”   “April 3rd.”

       “What day did I graduate?”   “Wednesday, May 36th.”

       “How old was I when Rennae died?”   “Ten.”

       I had been walking towards him as I spoke, taking in his features. It could be him. It may have been him… Is it him…?

       “… It’s you…” I breathed out, my throat struggling to let me inhale or exhale, choked by past memoires. “Oh my god, it’s you.”