A BROKEN COPPER POCKET WATCH

Author's Notes: Just something I had for a long time with me :) Hope you enjoy it! I promise to continue with it although it will take time to complete. 

A BROKEN COPPER POCKET WATCH :

It was an old artefact, not of much consequence to her. It was in fact a very old and rusty, copper pocket watch. It wasn't even hers.

It was under very strange circumstances that she had acquired it that very morning. Just after she had had that very strange dream in which, she had seen two things.

And one of them was about to pass.

Since that very morning, Amelia D'souza knew that her grandmother was going to die.

And at the moment she was standing beside a hospital cot on which an old shrivelled up lady in her seventies was breathing her last, at St. Angelo hospital.

Amelia had never liked her grandmother much. She didn't remember having any sort of bonding ever, with the long-time widowed Mrs. Mariana D'souza.

But the feeling wasn't mutual, because Mrs. D'souza had never disliked Amelia ever since she remembered. She had in fact, hated her. Perhaps it had something to do with her mother.

But under the current circumstances those feelings were meaningless. There Mrs. D'souza was, struggling for her life while she stood and watched. Did she feel any sadness or happiness? She couldn't place. Perhaps it was simply pity to see the old woman struggling so. Whatever the old D'souza's reasons may have been to hate her so, Amelia never really had much to do with the lady in her life. She hadn't even seen her for a very long time. Yet reasons untold, after ten years, led the lady to visit them.

But there was something else that did nag her mind. It was a certain paranoia which couldn't be placed. Amelia just felt that she was waiting for something to happen, which was going to happen eventually. She didn't know what or why or even at what time. 

The only perceptible clue that she had that could remotely justify her anxiety could be that one dream she had had this morning. 

 It wasn't a nightmare. It was simply a dream of no significance. Very ordinary. And it shouldn't have been a cause for worry but for that one instance, when right after she had woken up she had found a pocket watch on her bedside table. It was the same pocket watch, the likes of which she had been holding in her dream.

It was small. She had run her fingers over the intricately embellished and very rusty copper casing which had popped open to reveal a dusty dial that had frozen in time. There was a small knob at the top like the olden times. It was a broken watch, true. But the one she had seen in her dream was working.

She had been twiddling with the equally rusty thick copper chain to which the dial was attached when a strange feeling of unease gripped her. And then chaos struck with a scream from the downstairs' living room where her apparently healthy grandmother had collapsed that very morning. Since then it had been a rush up and down the hospital.

Amelia isolated herself from the other family members and retreated to  the far of the room, observing and trying to figure out the possibilities. Was it a mere coincidence? It wasn't exactly as her dream, yet the picture of her grandmother lying on a cot and about to die, was almost exactly the same.

And she knew that she would know the right moment when it happened. And she knew that it wasn't far, even though the others were oblivious  to that possibility. Even the doctors were under the impression that they could save her. And the painful gasping began.

Amelia knew, what she had to do, when the moment arrived. She knew it because she had seen it done. She felt a sudden jolt of adrenaline as she took out the watch from within the depths of her hoodie. For reasons she didn't part with it all morning. She was so nervous by now that she found her finger fumbling about the case clumsily. She almost dropped the artefact, but somehow managed to hold on.. 

She looked up at the wall clock that was hanging on top of the cot, which showed seven minutes to half past three, the time at which the broken watch had frozen. In her dream, she had seen the exact time. It was soon, any time now. She then started watching over old Mrs. D'souza as she took her ragged breathes, like the grim reaper would wait for the next soul to reap.

Finally, she knew that this was the last one that she was drawing.

With a jolt, she realised that the broken watch in her hands was working. Just like how it had worked in her dreams. She looked astonished. Was it really happening? How was any of this possible? But there was no more time left.

She pressed the knob.

The world stopped. Time itself stopped. Amelia watched in shock at the people who were frozen to their spot. The doctors and the nurses and her relatives, her father, all clogged around her grandmother's death bed with frozen expressions of dawning realisation that it might have been too late after all.

The hands of the wall clock had also come to a halt. Outside the window, the driving cars on the streets, the people walking on the footpath, the birds flying across the sky, everything had come to a pause. Amelia could see water droplets from the seepage on the wall beside her frozen mid-air as they were about to drop. 

It was some time when she notice the hovering shadow over the cot, just over the body of the late Mrs. Dsouza. It was a pearly white figure made of mist, and it looked exactly like the old lady herself. But the more she stared, the more distorted the shape got. It started to dissolve into a white misty swirl losing its human-shape and floating gently upwards.

“Smartly done.” said a husky deep voice from across the room.

Amelia jumped. A young and eerily tall and pale man clothed in black robes, walked out of nowhere. He wore the most eccentric ornaments, from the silver rings and bangles on his right hand to the silver crescent shaped earrings and piercings on his face and ears. Physically he had high cheek bones and a ghostly white skin and empty grey eyes and waist length raven black hair which fell elegantly behind his back. It was very hard to place this man. He looked young and yet she couldn't place his age. He simply looked ageless. He walked with a certain eerie grace. He didn't have a muscular build or a menacing aura, not yet at least, but there was a certain deadliness about him. There was an atmosphere around him which imposed dread, or at the least a lot of worry that a prey would feel if it believed that it was being stalked by a potential hunter in the shadows. 

She would be worried if this person was an enemy. 

“Hey Old lady! Before you leave, any last words?” he jeered in a voice quite unbecoming of him and it took Amelia by surprise. It was higher than a grown man's, more like teen's and with a lilt to it. She saw that he was calling out to the floating mass of white over the standstill populace.

Even more to her surprise, a voice responded. And it sounded exactly like her grandmother's.

“Just tell her what to do without wasting more time Sharnak. Otherwise I will have to pass on.”

“Nice.” chuckled the man or a deity or whatever called Sharnak. Then he addressed Amelia. “Just go over to your grandmother, put the watch in the mist, and push that red little knob.”

“What?” was all that came out of a dumbfounded Amelia.

“Humans . . .” tutted Sharnak. “Just do as I say. We can explain things to you later.”

And Amelia D'souza did, as she was told. She didn't know why, but it maybe because she didn't have much else to do. She felt like she was in a dream anyway. In fact the very same dream that she had before. Queer to have the same dream twice.

She walked over to the cot, where her grandmother's form or whatever was still floating upward towards the ceiling. And as the time passed, or whether it did or not, it was gaining more momentum. Amelia knew if she waited longer, it would be touching the ceiling, a height she wouldn't be able to reach.

So she pushed her hand through the misty form. It felt nothing more than touching someone's presence. She paused momentarily. 

“Hurry.” called her grandmother's voice.

And Amelia pushed the knob.

Time jumped back to life, as the world started to move again. the weird man and her grandmother's misty vapour-form had vanished. The water droplets floating mid-air resumed their fall. The birds outside resumed their flight as the sounds of cars honking reached her ears again. 

Amelia saw the wall clock's hands moving again.

But there lay her grandmother, dead and still. Amelia shut her eyes  tight and opened them again to see if it was real. 

And the drama started. People were realising the obvious truth by now that Matianna D'souza was no more. Some were breaking down in tears while others were reaffirming with the doctors who nodded their heads away sadly. One of the nurses covered the old lady's face.

But none of that reached Amelia, who just stared back at the little instrument in her hands in utter amazement.

Which, by the way, had returned to its normal state yet again.

A broken copper pocket watch.