My Grandfather's clock...

This story is either fiction, fact, or a dream. I don’t know which. Sometimes I believe a thing, live and breathe in the solid fact of it, only to be told by someone I thought that I could trust that it isn’t so. Other things that I’m sure I’ve dreamt turn all too real. Reality is a moveable feast. It all depends upon the light and where you are standing at the time. Fiction, fact or dream? I’ll allow you to decide. After all, I believe that people must have choice.

I awoke in the night to the sound or a clock ticking. Strange, we have no ticking clocks in the house, none that are wound at least. I lay listening to the tick for a while until I found myself back in sleep.

What lies. That grandfather clock was never really going to be mine despite what he said. Not that it should have been his anyway, like everything, he stole it. Money, eggs, ideas, hopes, dreams, innocence – it didn’t seem to matter to him. He took it anyway. Well, it was there for the taking. Besides, he could do what he liked. Who was going to stop him?

For a while the grandfather clock seemed to stand at the bottom of my stairs, slowly tick-tocking the minutes, chiming the hours. But then it was gone. Time to move on. He needed a change… find the money or sell. No warning. No notice. What he really meant was that it was time to run. Time to run again. Yes, a runner; a thief, bully, liar, cheat, and far, far worse. Well, there was a hefty profit in it for him, easy money. Thieves are like that. They take what they want, finding excuses and reasons for their bad behaviour. Take their money and run and run and run. Always the same, always something in it for him – a Ruby, a revenge, thirty pieces of silver. Then run.

The grandfather clock ticks on, passing from grandfather to grandson, generation to generation. But spotting his chance he took it wrapping it up in lies and making liars and thieves of those around him.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

I listen to my grandfather clock ticking on like a diseased heart. One day that clock will stop, and so will he.