Nano Bytes

Mr Tick has shaggy oiled hair like seaweed I think, he's pale like the moon. He is wearing one of my suits, one I purchased for a funeral of a friend long ago, one who has long since left these strange shores. It's dark and sleek and mirrors its wearer well. My jet cufflinks flash their teeth from under his cuffs. His long white fingers delve into my tobacco pouch and pull out a weft of weed.

He notices the broken shell on the floor and reaches down and throws it into the flames, instantly the fire flares a sodium yellow throwing grotesque shadows across the roughhewn walls of the little room. A fugue of evil smells fills the room, deep and earthy like something left slowly rotting for eons now disturbed. For a moment I feel dizzy, disoriented by the thick fumes.

'Like some?' He hands me my tobacco pouch. His fingers are cold to the touch like they have been held under icy water.

We sit in silence getting the measure of one another. Outside the wind bellows and roars and pounds its fists upon the walls.

'Your home is most…. interesting.' He is unconvincing. He stands and picks up a battered wood voodoo mask and inspects it, his bitter eyes flicking from it to me as he turns it in his chilled fingers. The mask seems to shrink and grow before him as if his touch has bought alive an extinct magic from within it. He drops it with a clatter and moves on, prodding, turning and checking. Like an inquisitive child looking for an entertainment to assuage his boredom.

'I travelled once, when I was young, I collected things. I still do here on the beach by the sea.' I remark. He is holding the plastic duck. He's going to ask what it means but decides not to, replacing it with an air of distain on the table.

Outside the twigs of the branches of the twisted bushes driven to impetuosity by the wind claw upon the surface of the windows. Drawn by their scratching he stands and stares up at the night sky and the stars. 'Did you know that by looking at the light of the stars you are looking back in time. Up there far away is the Andromeda galaxy. We see it as it was two million years ago not as it is now.'

'When humans first walked on the Earth.'

'Exactly,' he swings around. 'Can you imagine what it would take to travel such an infinite distance. Nothing could survive it.'

'Nothing.' I agree.

'Unless of course you had the mastery of time itself. Then such a thing would be possible.'

'Is such a thing possible?'

He ignores my question. 'You have travelled you say? I have travelled too. We were cast like seeds into the solar wind to drift across the vast unknown realms of space, a journey that should last an eternity, gone in an instant. Such are the vagaries of physics.' As if to emphasise his point he quickly strikes his match, the flare lighting up his pockmarked face, 'We arrived as the masters of time on a planet where all things would be beholden to us.'

He blows out his match. His tongue is long and redder than ochre.

'To land at the bottom of the trench is something you cannot have foreseen.' I offer.

'Down in the fathomless depths where the strange things lurk and whirl through the primordial soup their great jaws snapping at the darkness. I have seen perplexing things during my solace down there while I waited. But it was only time,' his voice elevates. 'I have waited a long time or is it no time at all? A conundrum. My friends are waiting for me to get them.'

'It will not be easy, others have tried.'

'Others?' he tilts his head and reflects. 'I'll manage. Your world rests in a timeless sleep. No rush.'

'Is that the time?' I look at the clock, the hands have not moved.

'How it's flown.' Mr Tick smiles and steps toward me his hand outstretched. 'I think your moment has come, hasn't it? I have work to do and your home will suit me while I undertake my labours. I yearn to be with my friends again. You understand.'

'Before you do have you seen this?' I show him the two halves I hold in my palms. They are smooth, lustrous like green jade. Two sides of a stone shell.

He steps back and raises his hand, his face twisting in confusion.

I clap them together in the air. No flashes, no bangs. It's as simple as that.

Mr Tick has gone.

'You can call me Mr Tock', I say to myself. 'I was once Mr Dulgot. And before that something else, I forget now. I open the drawer on my bureau and drop the shell in amongst the others.

I check my fob watch, the one I keep close to my chest. It always runs true, guided by my heart it never misses a beat. I then adjust my clocks and add back the lost five minutes. It always takes five minutes. They like to talk and I don't like to rush them, I don't get much company. My fob watch runs twelve hours, ten minutes ahead of every one else's. It serves as a reminder to me of the number of jade stones I have in my collection.

I sense there's another storm brewing. I should go down to the beach.

After all I am a collector. Of unusual things.