Other stories for this prompt

Puck looked at the watch and pondered on the nature of time.

It was almost as fickle as he was.

What marriage - or a good binding spell brought on by too many intoxicants and a serious lack of judgement - had bound together, time would tear asunder. At least it would if Puck had anything to do with it. Robin Goodfellow was not a fairy that would remain tied by one woman for long, no matter how fun that bondage might be.

Buttercup lay frozen on the bed, a beautific smile lightened features that would otherwise have appeared harsh...

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As he felt the air spin around him, he stood up. He could no longer see anything except the pocket watch that he had been swinging above his head. It helped him relax, but he had not wound the old clock in several days, and it was getting slow. As he looked at it now, he realized the arms of the clock had melded into a number. Four numbers. 1264. He didn't know what they meant, nor what was happening, but he knew one thing. He was going to find out. He took a step foreword, and felt a million...

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Hypnotised. It was one of those moments I'd never forget because I inflicted it all on myself.

Thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what would happen, never imagining that I'd be lying on the forest floor so many hours, luckily it wasn't days! Paramedics couldn't help, hospital doctors baffled until finally someone realised what was going on and called in a professional to snap me out of it.

What was even worse, I couldn't remember a damn thing afterwards. What place my mind had travelled to. All I recall was that I had wanted to try out...

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Summer at my grandparents was an endless game of imagination, lying in the grass with army blankets tented across the clothesline, the sacred tie give over to Grandma's "shows" in the afternoon, my grandfather on the back porch with a baseball game on the radio and the smell of cigarette smoke in the air, grasshoppers caught in a jar with holes poked in the lid, and tart cherries from the tree out back. I had no sense of time passing and the memories still leave a taste of bittersweet on my tongue.

We'd sit across from each other for hours,...

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everything flows

Time lay scattered everywhere. In the depths of the forest he could hear the 1700s exploring; somewhere to his left there were the ancient druids.

everything is meant to flow

The watches had stopped. All of them. Then again, everything was happening all at once, and there is only so much that clockwork can stand. Mechanisms are man-made and they can be broken, just as man can.

time is meant to flow

He was aware that this couldn't last - not that there was really a concept of lasting now (not a meaningful one, anyway). The universe would...

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The movies always told me that it's the girl who usually hurts. It's the girl who usually waits, and the girl who usually feels lost in love.

My life isn't a movie.

I'm here in the forest, like Bella waiting for Edward, staring at the clock she gave me, counting down the days, the hours, even the minutes. Like a teenage girl pining over a college boy, I want nothing more right now than her in my arms, curled up on the grass beside me.

She can be thousands of miles away. She can be attending classes and working her...

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After years of experience, Todd knew that the best way to eat a pocket watch was in the reclining position. It aided with digestion. This was already his fifth watch of the afternoon, but his hunger was nearly insatiable. His favorite parts were the delicate gear mechanisms; they cracked between his teeth like the fine bones in canned salmon.

After he finished his watch, Todd hopped up and hiked back to the trail. He hid among the underbrush and waited for the next group of passers-by. It was just sheer luck that he was in the forest this weekend at...

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Some people think there is a trick to self-hypnosis. There isn't. The whole thing is a trick. You need to want to be hypnotized, let yourself be hypnotized. But you can't want it so much that you are unable to be hypnotized. It's like living in a zen koan.

There are many different ways of hypnotizing yourself. Some people can meditate themselves into a trance. Some people use drugs. But most people use recordings. And for many people, self-hypnosis works because they can hear their own voice, it works better than a stranger's. Your own voice, some comfortable and common,...

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Rip Van Winkle was a story that I never understood. How could a man that slept for forty years in a forest, aging all the while, just waltz back into town and have such and unremarkable story? Imagine having an absolutely perfect memory of the incidents, the setting and the culture of a time before this. I've always loved history, so I guess I'm just gushing out of a personal fetish, but if I was to lock myself away for years and come out of it, I would like to think that someone would really appreciate my particular knowledge.

Walking...

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Time is right in front of me a constant reminder of where and when I need to go,go,go. Time tells me how to be according to my calendar.

We stopped along the path and he leaned back into the tree as if it were a place to rest. He deemed it so and there I took a photograph. We were late and time wasn't on our side so we were going to thank time and hold it tight against ourselves. We would rock it to sleep so that we could be free to enjoy the path. At the end of...

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About the prompt

Originally displayed on:
October 17, 2010

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