You are in an airport bookstore when the realization hits, clear as a punch in the gut. Flipping through the crisp pages of some new-age self-help paperback purporting life revolution through positive thinking. Thoughts are like magnets, the words say; they draw upon universal energy and manifest into reality. Metallic bile rises in your throat and overcome by nausea, you drop the book and rush to the toilet. You don't get on the plane that day. You don't use any public transportation again.
You try not to think. But you can't stop them. Thoughts. The worst kind of thoughts. Horrible dark thoughts. Thoughts of death. Not your death, unfortunately, but the end of the ill-omened being you happen to think about. Don't think, you tell yourself. But the more you try, the worse it gets. You can't stop them, seeping in like roaches, swarming through the cracks of your mind.
You remember when it started. The day they took your father away. You must have been about fifteen years old at the time. You remember his bulging eyes, wild and crazed. He barred his teeth and screamed like a rabid animal struggling with the police and men in white coats. Shouting phrases in a language only known to him. He breaks away from his captors for a moment and rushes to you. His sweat stinks; you don't flinch. He is your father.
He kneels and secures it to your wrist. His watch. The watch he never took off, that he said was your grandfather's, taken from the old country. The worn black leather band is soft on your wrist, and the silver watch hands tick in nonsensical directions. For a moment, you meet your father's eyes; there is some remorse but more relief. Then, one of the men in white coats injects a long needle into your father's neck, and he collapses on the floor.
You made the mistake of falling in love once, in your twenties. Before you made the connection, you were causing all of this. One day she was late coming home from work. And the image in your mind, clear as day. In every abysmal detail, the nightmarish crash, the blood, the corpse. It repeats in your mind, your drink whiskey to make it stop, but it doesn't until the phone rings the next day.
For a while, you thought you were just unlucky. Death visits some more than others, you tried to convince yourself. But friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors began to pass at impossible rates. They die precisely the way you thought they would. You know this is not some perverted foresight but powerful influence, the manifestation of reality. And you have no control.
You figure it must be the watch that gives your thoughts this power. But you're unable to take it off. The leather band never wears out; it expands as your wrist grows. The gentle hum and tick of the watch become your only comfort. You can never let it go. You try to seek help from doctors, mystics, and shamans, but no one listens or believes you.
Eventually, wandering the streets late at night, you come across the neon sign of an old fortune teller. She listened, and she told you. The timepiece was cursed by a malicious enemy of the old family long gone. There is no hope for you, she says. The wearer will age and never die, the timepiece passable only from father to son. She looks at you, eyes in disbelieving fear. You see her, trapped and suffocating, surrounded by burning flames.
You resolve to never pass this reprehensible fate on. You would take this upon yourself and be the last. You begin walking, taking refuge in nature, getting as far as you can from civilization. Your deathly powers of thought only seem to extend to humankind and do not work on rabbits, squirrels, and deer. Unable to manifest food, you scrounge for what little you can find, your body withers, and you can not move anymore. But you do not die.
You lay on the cold forest floor. Your head resting on your hand, your flesh long became the soil around you. . The watch ticking with a soft hum, comfortably wrapped around your wrist bone. You don't know how long it's been. You stopped counting after one thousand nights. It is lonely, and you are always cold and hungry. But at least you are alone, away from humanity. You've thought about most people you met in your life, and you figure they all must be dead. At least there is hope for the future, those not doomed to have crossed your path.
No one will ever find you here, now a pile of bones covered in soil. You begin to find peace in the quiet and darkness. And then you hear the sound of machinery, digging, and human voices.
Thank you for reading. This story is my submission to the S&S Invitational: August
with the parameters:
Genre: HORROR
Thematic Prompt: TIMEPIECE
Thumbnail Source: Ai generated and Canva
Peace, Thoth442