Marsha’s Watch



Marsha’s watch stopped ticking at precisely 2:03 AM, while she was sleeping. It was placed the night before on her bedside table, amongst the clutters of legal papers and cough drop wrappers she had been too lazy to make the trip to the bathroom to throw out.


The sudden abruptness of the silence that followed after the watch stopped its rhythmic null caused Marsha to snap awake. A serge of anxiety swam through her stomach, like a jeering snake in the water. Something, she could feel, was off.


That’s when she noticed the eerie silence of her egg-shell painted room, the eerie silence that only occurred when something awful happened—like her watch stopping.


Marsha threw open the covers and pulled the polished chain of her bed side table lamp to examine the broken watch. She shook it, held it close to her ear, un-popped the screw that changed the time, popped it back in again, but nothing. An ear-splitting silence flooded her room; the snake in her stomach began to swim faster.


It wasn’t that she loved this watch, and distraught by the fact it had suddenly stopped. It wasn’t that she depended on the watch to make her punctual to her client appointments. It was that whenever her watch stopped, something had gone wrong. And the silence in the room was like a screaming reminder.



The last time Marsha’s watch stopped was at work in the middle of a trial hearing. The defendant was just about to take his oath when Marsha could no longer hear the soft white noise of the ticking anymore wrapped around her right wrist. The soft white noise of the ticking that let her know life was moving forward, time was passing. The world was in orbit, the breeze was fresh, the birds were singing, someone was being born, someone was dying. But when Marsha’s watch stopped, so did she. The rest of the hearing felt to Marsha as though she was running under water. She felt helpless, small, shrinking into a piece of lint that was found in the pocket of a juror. Shrinking into the hard piece of circular wood pounded on day after day by the angry gavel. Shrinking into a piece of gum, stuck to the bottom of her chair, completely untouched, completely forgotten about, and completely present for years to come.


Marsha did not want to feel this way again, she did not want to feel present for years to come. Invincible. Immortal. So she stepped into her slippers perfectly placed next to her bed for the morning and threw the robe hanging on her love seat—watch in hand.


As she scurried down the stairs to her kitchen she tried to ignore the way the paintings watched her. The way that giggled to themselves about her silly broken watch.

She’ll live forever now, they would whisper.

She was nearly tripping over herself, swerving around corners turning on blinding lights around her house.

When she made it to the kitchen she pulled out a drawer full of tools. A screwdriver she named Brian was waiting. Waiting to repair her broken watch.

Please, please she whispered to herself, fidgeting to unscrew the back of the watch with shaking hands.

After chipping one perfectly manicured nail she popped it open to reveal a cluster of silver dials and short screws, reminding her of metal pasta.

What was she thinking? She couldn’t fix this watch. The last time this happened she had it repaired by a professional.

With a sudden surge of exasperation Marsha threw Brian on the marble floor of her kitchen, making a dent on her checkered floor.

She sunk down next to the lifeless screwdriver, resting her head on the pan cupboard.

Marsha rarely prayed, but when she did, it was for good reason.

Please God, she began, please let life go on. I don’t want to have an un-ticking clock, I don’t want silence, I don’t want to live forever. Please God, start timing me.