The boy who bottled time
Experimental Short Story Series #49
Title: The Boy Who Bottled Time
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)
In a narrow alley where old clocks coughed and chimed out of rhythm, nestled between a tea shop and a forgotten bookstore, lived a boy named Saif who could bottle time.
Not metaphorically.
Not in poetic clichés.
Literally.
He found it by accident—tinkering with the gears of an old pendulum clock while it rained so hard the world outside seemed paused. A twist too tight. A spring pulled too far. And then—click—the second hand stopped… but the rain didn’t. Everything else outside his shop slowed to a syrupy crawl while he moved freely inside.
When the second hand ticked again, it all returned to normal. But Saif had changed.
He began experimenting. Trapping five minutes in a jar. A whole hour in a crystal flask. He built shelves. Labels. Sealed lids with wax. And soon, in the back of his clockmaker’s workshop, stood row upon row of time—bottled and humming with invisible energy.
At first, he used them on himself.
A few extra minutes before school. A leisurely hour for reading while others raced through the day. He saved time like money. Then he started selling it.
The wealthy came first.
An artist bought 30 minutes to perfect her masterpiece. A lawyer purchased two hours to prepare for a trial. Lovers exchanged flasks of time to extend their final kisses. Word spread. Demand grew.
He was rich.
But one evening, an old woman arrived—not to buy, but to warn. She had no shadow, no reflection. She said nothing at first, only stared at the jars glowing faintly behind him.
“Where do you think this time comes from?” she asked finally.
“From the clock,” Saif replied.
“No,” she said. “From people.”
That night, he couldn't sleep. He opened a random jar. Listened. And heard something terrible.
Crying.
A child’s voice saying, “Where did my afternoon go?”
He opened another. Screaming. A man pleading, “I was almost home—”
Every bottle held stolen time—ripped from strangers around the world, unknowingly robbed of seconds, hours, days. Some missed bus rides. Some missed final goodbyes.
And shadows began to gather outside his shop.
They belonged to the stolen.
People left behind in mid-sentence, mid-dream, mid-life. Faceless, murmuring, reaching for their moments bottled and sold.
Saif tried to undo it.
He smashed jars. Uncorked flasks. Let time flood back into the world—but time doesn’t return where it came from. It poured into empty spaces, into clocks, into clouds. It filled nothing. It made no one whole.
And his own time began to slip.
Now the shop is closed.
But if you ever find yourself losing time—misplacing minutes, forgetting entire afternoons—you might be near one of Saif’s old flasks.
And if a shadow follows you home tonight…
Don’t open the bottle.
Why We Tell These Stories
With this 49th tale in our Experimental Short Story Series, we invite you—dear dreamer—to reflect on how time defines our existence. What would you pay for one more moment? And what if someone else was paying for your seconds?
Our stories open doors into thought-world
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