Keep Her Believing

I turn the pocket-watch over in my hand. The engraving on the back more worn than ever, but if I run my finger along it, I can almost feel the lingering warmth of the hand that carved the message into the brass.

Keep her believing.

It was our way of finding relief. Each hour that ticks through these white walls drains the colour out of her face just a little more. So, we try to bring her back to life.

Or at least we used to. Then the Uniforms came with their supposedly miraculous cures and didn’t give us a choice whether or not we wanted them. And now his absence stands out almost as much as the shadows in her eyes.

She’s much too young to look so old. She’s had scarcely a few years with all of us, yet we became a part of her just as much she did us. But then they took him, and the shadows crept further into this place we’re forced to call a home. They forced her to grow up.

And I hate that. So much. I fiddle with the chain on the top of the watch and a bitter taste spreads through my mouth.

Even though the wounds from dragging blistering metal all day bled, even as she watched him grow frailer, she never stopped smiling. For him. For me.

These days, her smile is about as rare as glimpses of the moon through the smog.

But there was one thing I could do to stop the clock on her disappearing light. I literally stopped the clock, and everyone with it. At least for a while. Thirty minutes a day, everything freezes, and I’ll find the smallest things I can brighten up this prison with.

During the night, I’ll carve small doors out of scrap timber, find wiring from collapsed fences to create little ladders. Just before sun-rise, I place them anywhere she’ll see them. And when she emerges from her room, still half-asleep and sees them glinting, I’ll pull her onto my lap and whisper that the fairies have just left for work. They’re out trying to help everyone. That’s when one of her rare smiles lights up her face.

A flare bounces off my spectacles and with a start, I realise that the sun’s rising.

Quickly, I gather up the little trinkets in my fist and push away from the desk. Scurrying into the foyer, I stick them anywhere they’ll fit.

From the room across the hall, I can hear the shuffling of bedsheets. Without looking down at my hand, I pop open the watch face and tap the glass twice. Immediately, everything around me, from the clattering blinds to the swirling dust freezes.

Huffing a sigh of relief, I get back to work, albeit a bit more slowly, but I freeze when I hear the telltale groan of a door. And then a small voice. How…

“Daddy, what are you doing?”

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