-

Laugh at Clocks

There is a ticking—

Tock tick tock tick

There is a ticking, from the hall—

Turns to tick tock tick tock

Yes, a pretty sort of ticking—

Tick tick tick tick tick

And it sounds like bells and child laughter and screams.

Seymour likes it when children laugh.

It is open like tock tock tock tock tock and all first-grade smiles, all teeth and gum and crinkled eyes and wide cheeks. He might have smiled like that. He might have smiled like that, would he like to have smiled like that?

His eyes are watering, but that is because his head is very fuzzy and he is not thinking properly and he does not cry, but they water because he does not sweat and he feels off-balance like tick tick tick tick tick.

There is no hall.

Why did he think—

Tick tock tick tock tick tock

How very strange.

He lets go of thoughts and memories of rooms and wood palaces with long halls filled with clocks and they drift away as lights.

Time is running out, Seymour-love, and maybe it is his imagination running rampant or maybe not, maybe he feels her arms embracing him or maybe he is just cradling his own cheek tenderly with his claw because his own contact is the only contact he needs like the tick-tock of the clock of the clocks in his head, in his brain

Tick tick tick tock tick tick tock tock

His hand breaks off, he notes with dull interest. It turns to pyreflies.

He isn’t supposed to be here, anyway. He was Sent. He should not be here.

But he wants to see and maybe that is why his head feels like many clocks ticking time away because he is on borrowed time that is more like stolen

and their time is all but gone.

Their time is all but gone, and if he could move his legs that are like the iron of a grand metal clock tower ticking tick tick he would want to move towards the silent entity that looks like it is crying and heaving and slowly receding into waters, and why would the victor be crying? You won, dear Sin, lovely Sin, he thinks, you won and you must be happy for such a victory because now you can – now you can tick tick tick kill and save and tock tock tock, the clock is humming.

Weak and sick, old and dying, why do you weep?

He cannot think properly much more. Patiently, blue blue blue eyes turn instead to the ground before him, the ancient city behind him and the afternoon sun beating on the whale and himself gently like tick tock tick tock goes the cuckoo clock with a little white bird.

The ground is very pretty, he thinks with transfixed, mellow gaze, the ground is very pretty with lots of wine red draped across lovingly like a bedtime quilt from days long since past, and the clock keeps ticking.

The woman, the guardian woman, is pretty pretty pretty with purple painted lips and done-up eyes all fancy like she dressed up just for the occasion. She is leaning against a rock, pretty pretty pretty with shining bare shoulders with pearls around her neck and ornaments decorating her hair that shine in the late gold sun like chimes going chink. Her dress of belts and laces and fur is elegant. Very elegant, poised and proper even like this, just for this, head tilted back like she is sleeping.

And from just below her breasts, a piece of elegant, poised white beam from the dead city delicately protrudes like another ornament, decorated with a stream and another of wine red falling down like drapery, falling down and she is pretty pretty pretty in death.

Something stirs.

His attention filled with tick tick tock tick tick tick tock tock turns, and he deceived himself, for it is just the young man with the bright orange hair and tan skin, quietly slipping away into the obscurity of lights that say nothing but sing like clocks clocks clocks. His ball slowly rolls and falls into the water to float.

The blue one is nowhere to be found, Seymour finds, but there is the remains of a broken horn beneath his feet. He nudges it and it rolls away with a ting like a bell and screams and children’s laughter that falls into the clockwork of tick tick tick—

The boy with blonde hair is placed neatly in the sand near the beautiful girl, beautiful girl with closed two-colored eyes lying in the sand with the sun on her lips, her hands curled gently around her staff across her belly with blood seeping from beneath her head, beautiful girl who is not breathing and the ticking stops for a moment

and it starts again, slow and easy after a while, as if it had never stopped at all to make sure that she is not breathing with unblemished skin and clothes and no slashes or hacks visible but she has stopped like broken clockwork anyway which makes Seymour a little sad because she was very beautiful. She was very beautiful, and she is even more so in sleep in death in stopped ticking just like the rest of them.

Tick tock tick tock time is running out, Seymour-love.

His mother used to be beautiful his mother is very beautiful—

Long lashes turn and there is a ticking, yes, a ticking—

Tick tock tick tock

The last two of the fallen group are huddled together, cold and unmoving and wrapped around each other.

He observes them with interested silence.

The blonde one – young one, the princess of the race of machina users – her eyes are glassy and half-open, swirled like the shing of a clock in one continuous cycle, leaning against the Unsent who is leaning against her, both side down in the sand, and they are both farther off, bodies half-immersed in the waves lapping at them like ticking tick tick with saltwater in their hair as the blitzball swirls past them.

Their faces are close, noses brushing. Her feathers float in the water, and his long hair all tied up with old ribbon flows past the red red wine that sits stagnant around them that floats with them that lightly coats their bare arms all covered in water covered in wine. They are wrapped around each other tightly with a giant slash that smells like spice in his back and a hole the size of both of his fists in her stomach that leaks red, and the man’s glasses slowly detach themselves into the waves to begin drifting. They touch her cold wet body and withdraw, back and forth back and forth until they leave both to the water that sounds like ticking ticking ticking of the clock.

They are dead like a stopped clock, and it is enticing, it is beautiful, it is utterly, delightfully morbid.

They all had stories, didn’t they?

Good, love.

They all had clocks of different colors with ticks and tocks and tick tocks and tock ticks and maybe very fast or very slow and they are all smashed now and the glass falls around them.

Pyreflies begin to pour from him.

Now scream. 

He smiles.