Tick... Tick... Tick.

You happen upon a strange pocket watch. You pick it up, dust it off, and tap it a couple times. It’s ticking normally. You pull the crown and everything around you freezes. You press it back into place and normalcy returns. Amazed, you wind it forward, then backward, and impossibly, the world speeds up, then rewinds. Time is now yours to control.

But it isn't.

not really.

Because time doesn't have rules.

It doesn't make sense.

It doesn't follow patterns.

It doesn't tell you what it means.

Time likes to change its mind.

And sometimes forward means back

and back means forward.

And sometimes start is stop, and stop is start

and the world begins to fall apart

because you were there

but also here

and once this happened, but it changed

you changed

time changed

but time doesn't change

it doesn't follow rules

so it happened and it didn't happened

all at the same time

and time didn't understand

and it didn't like being meddled with.

It didn't want to stop and move,

rewind and move forward,

start, and stop,

up and down, back and forth,

across the timeline of the world

and eventually time grew angry enough

was changed one too many times

by your hand on that strange pocketwatch

and time acts

it fizzles and pops

it goes back to that day

where you first dusted it off

and time changed

and you never picked up a pocketwatch

never dusted it off

never moved back and forth

never stopped

never started

and time went on.

Tick...Tick... Tick.

Constant.

Unchanged.

On and on and on...

Tick... Tick... Tick.