Chapter 1 - "The First Hour"

The clocks carved into skin tick backward, counting down to secrets buried in silence.

The clocks I carved only showed the time-a time, their time. Tick tock. The ticking never stopped, not in silence, not in screams. It haunted. It waited. It counted.

But clocks can do more than show the time. They can correct it. My clock, her clock, his clock, our clock-none of them ever showed the same hour, because time doesn't work the same for everyone. Tick. Tock.

The clocks carved on wrists only reveal how long you've been living past your end. The numbers count down, then loop, then shudder-until someone stops them.

Tick tock.

Patricia Allens was laid beneath a picnic table, like an offering. Pale as winter linen. Not a strand of hair out of place. She looked untouched until the body was lifted, and they saw the carving. On the inside of her right wrist, precise as anything a jeweler might cut, was a clock.

A wristwatch of flesh.

She wasn't the first.

Morgan Jennings and Joyce Van were found days earlier, side by side in Hayward Foothills. Twenty-one and twenty-three. A Romeo and Juliet copy, some said. Matching clocks on their arms. But those clocks didn't match either; different times, different cuts. And Joyce's carving had deeper lines, slower healing.

Erik Paulon was found slumped in his driveway, a gun dropped beside him. Thirty-two, on meds, long history of instability. His family assumed the worst. But the carving? The carving was practiced. Clean. 

Unlike anything someone trembling with fear or grief could've done.

Now there were four.

And still, the seconds ticked.

Tick tock.

They began to notice the patterns slowly, reluctantly. The clocks weren't just mere symbols - they were signatures. Timepieces so precise, so deliberate, that even the spacing of the carved ticks mimicked real watch gears. Each time carved into the wrist was different, down to the minute, even the second. No alignment, no correlation. Just lonely fragments of time etched into cooling flesh. Whoever was behind them wasn't just marking time.

They were keeping it.

But it was the detail that disturbed Detective Mason Cole the most.

Not just the numbers or the careful hands, but the impossibility of the craftsmanship. These weren't messy self-inflicted cuts. They were clean. Controlled. Almost surgical. Every marking is identical in depth, spacing, and even curvature. Like they'd been made with the steady hand of a master engraver, not a desperate soul.

No blood trails. No hesitation wounds. No struggle.

It didn't make sense.

Patricia Allens was the fourth. She'd been gone less than twelve hours when they found her under the picnic table-positioned, not tossed. Her fingers rested gently on her stomach, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly parted as if she was mid-whisper.

Mason crouched beside the body as the sun rose behind her, casting long shadows across the frost-glazed park grass. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. The others from the department gave her space-they knew her well enough to recognize the shift in her posture when she was trying to hold herself still.

It was the clock again. Same carving, different time.

The one read 03:41:09.

Mason jotted it down in her field notebook, though she didn't have to. The numbers were already burned into her mind.

There was no overlap in any of them-Patricia's was early morning, Erik's late afternoon. Joyce and Morgan were evening. Even if someone had tried to connect them through moon phases, birthdays, whatever, there was no thread.

But Mason could feel it: there was a pattern. She just didn't have the key yet.

The park was quiet. Birds hadn't even begun their morning chorus. A stillness hung in the air that Mason didn't trust. Too heavy. Like the World was holding its breath.

Then her phone buzzed.

Another body.

Reviews

[FlatDaddy]

I clicked on "Online Writers" to see who of us were awake and facing OUR world now, if no other. I don't know you, nor you me, but when I saw your picture, I thought, "That's Andy Warhol." I knew, of course, it wasn't, but I was intrigued enough to click again to see just who you were and what you write.
So I saw your book, and knowing nothing about you, I thought," What the hell, I'm here. I at least owe him a peek." So I read your first chapter, and being someone who loves a good mystery, and a good scare, I must admit that I am hooked at least enough to read more. Your villain will bring you challenges, great ones that I hope you are good enough to meet. You have a very good start now.

I am very busy at the moment, so I can't promise how often I will come here, but I didn't write all this just to disappear on you. I will return. You have me at least for the next chapter. Please, keep me with you!

FD

[emmajoygreen]

Intriguing. I need to read more and I will.

[HaleyB]

Thank you, have fun reading.