Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick tick… He rubbed his temples. They ached. Something wasn't right.
The ticking continued in a slightly askew tempo.
He loosed a groan from his lips. No wonder the damned rabbit in the Wonderland story was so pissed. His fingers tapped on the wood of his desk as he envisioned the plump, white rabbit - always frantic about being late, always worried that something indeed was very wrong. Yes, he could empathize completely. The irregular beating was going to drive him insane sooner or later, though, he wondered as an afterthought, probably sooner.
As to reaffirm his last conjecture, a knocking was heard on his door, though it seemed to be more of a faux act of formality than a real gesture- for it was opened without waiting for his consent.
He gazed up, index fingers pressed together at the slip of his mouth while the rest of his fingers were intertwined with one another. It took him a moment to realize who his visitor was.
Mother… She was his mother, he remembered, loosening what seemed to be a cottony feeling in his mind. My mother, he thought indignantly, almost as if he was scorning himself for forgetting, though his countenance did not betray his train of thought.
"I haven't heard from you in weeks," she smiled slightly, thinly, an expression formed through the years of falling in and out of sincerity, the need for it to have been so. He wondered at her sincerity. No, he brushed it off, this is your Ma here.
"I was beginning to worry," she said in the same light expression, gliding toward him and his desk in graceful, lithe steps. Her red coat, incidentally the same shade as her lips, barely moved as she did so. Strangely he barely noticed that she truly did seem worried, a little on edge.
She seemed to have grown more weary; his eyes searched for the telltale signs of weakness. Dark circles accented Angela's cheekbones, her shoulders seemed strained into an awkward position, as if she were forcing her limbs to satiate her desire to appear intimidating.
Nathan should have been worried.
Yet, all he could here is the subtle tick-tock tick-tock in the background. He focused his gaze past his mother wondering how to fix the nuisance at hand. Was it merely thirty seconds off, gaining more time as the mechanism went on through the hour? Perhaps more, even a minute, a minute and a half.
He listened intently, concentrating earnestly on the tempo, not directly looking at it, but trying to see the metronome in his mind, trying to picture the steady rhythm of how it , and how everything was supposed to sound.
"Nathan?" Angela asked in a slightly less light tone than before. He lifted his gaze to meet her eyes, which flickered momentarily from his gaze, a series of hues – gray, blue, brown, sometimes even green. Ever shifting, depending on the amount of light present to reflect that particular shade.
"Sorry Mom," Nathan strode over to her, lifting himself straightly from his chair to meet her. His eyes still flitted around him.
"I just haven't felt like myself lately," he replied, the tips of his mouth turned upwards at that, at the idea that she has no clue how little he has felt like himself.
He remembers feeling disoriented just this morning, right when he had awoken.
As the monotonous beeping of his classic alarm clock, the one piece of machinery that perhaps he needed most, but also most wanted to destroy for disturbing him, chimed slightly, he groaned ever so slightly. Maybe he could get that one kid, that…Rebel, he reminds himself, that
Rebel, to turn off all of his alarm clocks for good.
A small grin escapes him, but his eyes remain closed, still weary with the lack of sleep.
Then, as he thinks of rebel, he starts grasping for a name…Mike? Michael? It must have been Michael…with the curly hair.
No, that's impossible, he shakes his head, I don't remember…
It was a few minutes before he felt strange ache in his mouth. He sat up slightly from his bed, at a one hundred fifty degree angle, the sheets crawling down his torso. With an expression of discomfort, he reached into his mouth- the top left corner.
His eyes widened suddenly. Was that…an extra tooth?
He grimaced as he realized that the ache showed no signs of slowing, relenting its pace.
Immediately, he paged his secretary, Paige Moore, a small, stout, and obedient woman, to set up an appointment with his orthodontist, Dr. Waite, who of course, was at loss for words at how a wisdom tooth could regrow itself, but nevertheless saw to it that it was removed.
He shook his head, clearing it of the recollection, reaching in to embrace his mother, who said, "Don't be ridiculous Nathan this is a great time for you."
Her perfume was elegant, barely there, unlike the rich smell of Claire's shampoo. His stomach leapt at that. Claire. He did not feel himself around her lately either.
"The world's your oyster," Angela continued, patting him reassuringly on the back before releasing him from her embrace. "We've put all that nonsense behind us, the family's back together," she continued, her eyes never quite staying on his, "Come on, we're gonna be late for lunch." She concluded.
She observed his face, amusement coloring her own. "Nathan, have you heard a word I've said?" she smiled at him, reaching her arm out to straighten his shirt.
Instead of answering him as she had expected, he declined to meet her gaze. The tick-tock-tick-tock was still in his mind, now at an increasing volume until it occupied the whole of his hearing.
In that moment, there was quiet, not one sound could be heard; it was as if for that one instant he was deaf. The lack of noise actually disturbed him, the silence seeming to stretch and wrap around him painfully, expanding like an elastic band, creating false creaks and echoes in his imagination. Why is my silence noisy?
It was a compulsion, an obligation, his responsibility to fix that noise. That cacophony. Nathan paced determinedly to his glass cabinet, to the right of his desk. Filled with little knick knacks and trinkets he had managed to collect, hadn't he?
In a careful, yet swift manner, he opened the glass cabinet. An internal sigh coursed through him.
The strange thing was… that clock…it looked like – he hesitated, reaching out to grab it, curiosity evident in his eyes, - a snow globe.