The clockmaker's dilemma

 

Experimental Short Story Series #43
Title: The Clockmaker’s Dilemma
By Faraz Parvez (pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, former faculty, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

Blog Post:

Tick. Tock. Regret. Repeat.

Welcome back, dear readers, to the 43rd installment of our much-celebrated 60 Experimental Short Stories Series. Today’s tale bends time not through science, but through sorrow—and the ticking of a clock that doesn’t mark minutes, but missed chances. We bring you “The Clockmaker’s Dilemma”—a haunting meditation on memory, redemption, and the dangerous seduction of second chances.

Our protagonist is a quiet horologist named Yaqoob Mirza—a man whose life is a harmony of gears, springs, and solitude. One rainy evening, tucked in a forgotten drawer of his late father’s study, he discovers a peculiar pocket watch. Its glass face is fogged, its hands trembling. But what it reveals is no ordinary time.

This is a watch that marks regret—each tick echoing a moment Yaqoob wished he could change: the love he never confessed to, the brother he betrayed in silence, the mother he didn’t return home to in time. Every wind of the key grants him a sliver of the past—not to observe, but to rewrite.

But time, like guilt, is not easily handled.

As Yaqoob tumbles through his former choices, a strange pattern begins to emerge. Correct one misstep, and another fragment of his present warps. The bakery where he always bought rose-scented tea vanishes. The stray cat that waited outside his shop disappears. Friends forget him. His reflection grows unfamiliar.

Eventually, Yaqoob must choose: to live with his past, or erase himself from his own timeline.

“The Clockmaker’s Dilemma” doesn’t shout. It ticks—slow, deliberate, and devastating. It’s a masterclass in narrative tempo, where the creak of an old floorboard or the winding of a gear becomes a metaphor for everything we try to fix but shouldn’t.

As always, we invite you not just to read, but to feel. Let this story echo in your own moments of silence. Think of the clocks you've tried to turn back. And ask yourself: if you could change one thing, would you?

Or would you, like Yaqoob, dare not risk dismantling the delicate machine that is your life?

About This Series:
Curated with literary love and experimental precision, our 60 Experimental Short Stories Series continues to challenge, surprise, and enchant. Each story is a unique fingerprint of form and theme—tales that slip through genre and convention to reach your heart and intellect.

Stay with us. Collect them. Share them. Soon, these stories will become part of a much-anticipated eBook and limited edition print volume—a collector’s treasure for readers who cherish daring fiction.

Our blog isn’t just a destination—it’s a movement. A library of literary innovation where fiction is fearless, and storytelling is reborn with each post.

Till the next tick,
Faraz Parvez
farazparvez1.blogspot.com


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