BHS Inkwell 2017-2018

Clock Tower By Alice Xu

the flat gray expanse of sky. It saw the squinting eyes of tired businessmen glancing up from their papers as witnesses to its awakening. It saw a small black- haired boy eating a white paper-wrapped sandwich clasped between two mittened hands, wide-eyed at the shining lense of a circle being fit into mortar-dusted stone.The clock tower watched the world just as the world watched its birth. And unlike the rest of the world, it kept watching as the world moved on. Tick tock. Two months in, it witnessed the robbery of a plump, elderly woman.The robber in question was a lithe young man in a common clothes, and he quickly disappeared into the evening crowd. A stout man in an expensive red jacket looked on with a small black- haired boy.The clock tower saw that as the red swathe turned away, the child peered at the movement, and then followed suit. Another week, and the great glass lense saw the scattering spill of marbles roll onto the pavement, in a game between a group of boisterous schoolchildren in the days before they would lose the sweet freedom of summer.The noisiest one of all, limbs flying and heels spinning to gather as many marbles as possible, cradled a shirt-full of marbles, yellow and green and blue, like so many harvested

In the far west corner of the town square, there lay a red brick train station. When passengers bustled on their daily commutes, sought refuge from the brisk wind under the station’s aged tile roof, or stopped at a coffee stand for a quick bite to eat, they often took a brief glance up at the looming clock tower in the center of the station, perhaps to check the time, perhaps on accident while checking the sky for rain, or perhaps just because they had little else to do. Whatever the reason, the clock tower, four flights of dusty gray concrete stairs, bells, and a glass face, watched right back. This is the story of that clock tower. Now clocks are not sentient.They cannot think, they cannot speak, and they cannot move, beyond the sure rotation of two hands around their faces. But a clock can watch. And when the great glass face was mounted into the gaping, stone-rimmed socket of the tower, the clock opened its eye and saw. It saw the shining red steam engines pull below the green tile roof of the station. It saw a “V” of birds silhouetted against

Hannah Tallant

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