The city that forgot time

 

Experimental Short Story Series #56
Title: The City That Forgot Time
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

They called it “Nehir.” No one remembered why. Like everything else in the city, the name had always been there—etched on street signs, scribbled in dusty ledgers, whispered like a lullaby.

But there were no clocks in Nehir.

Not on towers. Not in homes. Not on wrists or walls or phones. Time had once mattered, surely—but somewhere along the line, it had slipped, like a loose thread tugged from the hem of history.

No one noticed.

People woke when the sun told them to. They worked until the sky turned amber. Shops opened and closed when they “felt” right. Meetings happened “later.” Birthdays were vague approximations—celebrated when the flowers bloomed or the snow melted. Children didn’t ask what year it was. They asked how tall they had grown.

In Nehir, everyone was always now.

Except the Watchmaker.

He wasn’t from Nehir. At least, that’s what they said.

He lived at the edge of the city, in a crooked little house stitched together with brass and silence. No one remembered when he arrived, but rumors trailed him like stray dogs. Some claimed he was cursed. Others said he had once stopped time and was punished for it. Children dared each other to knock on his door. None stayed long enough to hear the ticking.

Because ticking was what he kept inside.

A thousand clocks lined his walls—cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, wristwatches, sandglasses, atomic counters, digital beacons blinking like dying stars. None of them worked. Their hands hung frozen, suspended mid-second like dancers caught in an eternal pirouette.

Until the day he found it.

Buried beneath a rusted sewer grate was a pocket watch. Not his. Not old. Not broken.

Ticking.

He heard it before he saw it—a crisp, clean beat, steady and defiant. When he picked it up, the air around him shivered. The ground felt aware.

The next morning, things in Nehir were… different.

A woman looked up and said, “The sun is late.”
A baker burned his bread and blamed “bad timing.”
Children played and asked, “How long has it been?”

Time, it seemed, was returning.

And with it, memories.

A man remembered his mother’s funeral, suddenly aware he had never mourned. A teacher realized her students had been twelve for far too long. Couples aged in their reflections. Photographs faded. Graves multiplied.

The city stirred—and began to ache.

They came for the Watchmaker. Not with anger, but desperation.

“Take it back,” someone whispered.
“Stop the ticking,” another wept.
“I don’t want to remember the years I’ve lost,” said a third.

But he shook his head.

“You were never without time,” he said softly. “Only the illusion of escaping it.”

Then he opened every clock in his house.

The sound was deafening—like a million heartbeats reawakened. Time flooded in. Streets cracked. Trees grew brittle. Children sprouted taller. The sky darkened to dusk and brightened to dawn within minutes.

And then… it settled.

Clocks began appearing again—on wrists, in windows, even on the city’s tower bell. People adjusted. Some mourned. Some danced. Most simply began living again—with time, not against it.

As for the Watchmaker?

He vanished the next morning.

But they say if you walk past his house on a quiet night, you’ll still hear a single watch ticking beneath the floorboards—holding the moment, reminding the city it once forgot what matters most:

That even if you bury time, it remembers.

Why We Tell These Stories
Welcome back, dear readers, to Experimental Short Story Series #56. We thank you for stepping into yet another surreal corner of our narrative universe. Each story is a spark—a reflection of worlds you’ve never seen, but somehow already feel.

As we approach the 60th installment, we promise more mystery, more wonder, and more doors into the strange.

Keep reading. Keep imagining. Keep remembering time.

Visit us anytime:
farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Twitter: @drarshadafzal1


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