Flash Fiction

Time was their essence. They lived by time. It was their past that was their driving force. Particular moments from their past.

The house in which they had lived was filled with the past. Their present. The day that they met was marked by an empty wine bottle just inside the imposing front door. A dusty St Emillion, 1934. A sheet from their first night together covered the table in the entrance lobby. Newspapers of indeterminate age, yellowed and frayed, were stacked neatly against the ochre walls. Dust was everywhere. They often said, as one, "...after four years, the dust doesn't get any deeper, our dear boy".

Through the lobby, the house itself was filled with clocks of dark victorian grandeur. None of which, to my knowledge, had ever ticked, their silence only adding height to their stature. All the clocks, however grand, had been delicately carved with a date. The date and the time at which the hands had been set represented a specific point in the past. Their present.