Biological Clock

Every time I blink, I see the Countdown.

An hourglass behind my eyelids. A clock on my corneas. A digital timer in my temporal lobe. A cerebral stopwatch, surrounding my subconsciousness.

Day and night, I hear the ticking noise that no one else can. The thought of hearing that dreadful beep that will come after all of these clocks strike midnight, in four days now, haunts my dreams.

The doctors call it anxiety.

I know that it's a prophecy.

Tick, tock, tick, tock...

I woke up last night from another nightmare, only to find that it was a prelude to an episode of sleep paralysis. The images of timers were temporarily gone from my head, but so was the ability to move my muscles.

The main cause of this was a shadowy man kneeling on my legs, his cold skin bringing goosebumps on my own.

I don't like the looks of this.

Just as I was about to make suggestive assumptions about the nature of this incubus, he opened a clawed hand to reveal a pocketwatch.

Not another one.

He showed the time to me (3:00 precisely, witching hour) and placed the watch in my frozen hand.

"Change them," he hissed.

With that, he disappeared into the night, and my paralysis did too.

As I slip off into another sleep, the numbers and noise return.

Tick, tock, tick, tock,

I didn't think much about the pocketwatch he left me until the morning, when I still felt its smooth, metal shape in the palm of my hand.

I think about what he said now, rubbing my fingertips against its glass.

I pull the latch on its side to turn back the time. Not pushing back the button for the hands to keep moving, I leave the clock on 12:00.

That's when it all ends. Doomsday.

Was that it? Was that all it took to stop our ends?

I will myself to close my eyes.

No, those timers stay 94 hours, less than three days.

Then what now?

It's when I get home from my regular 9-5 when it clicks.

He said them, not it... do I need to change multiple clocks?

That thought leads me into resetting everything in my house: my alarm clock, the oven clock, the microwave clock, everything.

It's not enough. I need to change all of them!

The next day at work, my boss doesn't notice the changes to the office clocks, and my coworkers just look at their phones instead. I try to change the time on my own devices, but realize that I'm not a hacker. That being said, I can't get another other clocks after this.

The nightmares are getting worse.

I can't change them all! Will this even save us?

All I can do now is wait and find out.

Tick tock tick tock

I'm deciding to stay up all night to see what will happen. There are 2 hours left now and counting. Stay tuned (or sleep through the end of the world, whatever suits you best).

Tick tock tick tock--

Nothing's happened yet. For the past 15 minutes, nothing has happened. My mental timers have reached 0. The time has matched the one I set. I decide that I should get some sleep, since I will probably have work tomorrow.

***

I woke up this morning and found emptiness. The streets, my office, the Internet, the city, all vacant. Besides the ones I set, all of the clocks now read midnight.

Had he not been with me, I would be all alone.

"While this is not ideal," Shadow-man had said to me. "At least I helped save one of you from... well, I'll get to it later. For now, how does it feel thwarting the end of time, Human Girl?"