For Caroline, inspired by her photo prompt collection.

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September 1880

The horse and buggy bumped along pleasantly as the sun began to set after an equally pleasant day, whitewashing the gargantuan redwoods with pure gold. Shadows were thrown about all bold and black in contrast to the warm and mellow tones of the scenery. Twining between the great trunks of the trees was a woman wearing a large and rather outdated dress that was entirely unsuitable for walking in the forest, let alone for walking. The hefty layers of fabric and the crinoline beneath the skirt were much more suited for one who believed in standing still in an environment that did not consist of dirt or leaves. Nonetheless, the woman pressed on at a rather decent clip. Lace caught at the shrubbery but never did the woman slow. The fellow driving the horse and buggy saw her-the dress was not at all inconspicuous-and called out.

"Miss! Miss, do you need a ride?" He tugged gently on the reins and the chestnut mare slowed to a halt. He was a kindly soul with greying hair and a smart hat that he pushed back on his brow.

The woman whipped around in a swirl of petticoats that swooped around her legs. Her startled expression quickly melted into one of relief.

"Oh no, certainly not. But perhaps you could give me the time?"

An odd question, but the buggy driver reached into his pocket and pulled out his watch.

"Why, it's just past four, miss. Are you sure you don't need a ride?"

"There is no need at all," she answered with an easy smile. "Just one more thing before I go; would you happen to know the date?"

He wanted to ask her why she was asking him this but then again thought himself foolish and replied, "It's the eighteenth of September, miss."

The woman nodded. "And the year?"

"1880, of course." Was she playing with him?

The woman's eyes widened. She seemed to pale, and all she said before she turned heel and fled into the shaded maze of living skyscrapers, dress billowing out behind her, was, "I really must be going. I'm terribly late."

In his confusion, the driver took the driver the better of ten minutes before he realized that he probably should have insisted upon taking her to her destination. It was only then that he shook himself and looked back at his pocket watch to see how much time it had taken him to gather his wits; he did this frequently and his record reached somewhere close to an hour. It was only then that he realized that his watch was still at four in the afternoon, and it was only then that he realized that he was going to have some time counting his wits again as the second hand moved again-backwards.

March 1923

The conductor considered himself a relatively patient man, but he was becoming less and less patient by the second as he was trying and failing miserably to control a full-grown Indian elephant. Cirque de la Lune had just pulled into the station and the animal was in want of some quality leg stretching. However, it was against protocol to let a six-ton beast wander about the platform. Finding that his attempts at keeping the docile thing in one place were all in vain, the conductor's only thought now was how to maintain peace until he could break for lunch. Then the elephant would be someone else's problem. It had taken an unwanted liking to him and hung about like some great leathery cloud. The ringleader of the circus had promised that the elephant would be no trouble at all. His exact words.

"Seymour will be no trouble at all. He's the gentlest giant there ever was," the ringleader had said with a smile that was trustworthy enough. "Poor thing just needs to loosen those legs a bit before I put him back in his pen." He looked to Seymour, who was doing his best to appear a docile ten-foot-two. "Now you stay here with Mister...?"

"Figgins," finished Mister Figgins, scrutinizing the elephant. "Jonathan Figgins."

Seymour the elephant seemed to understand well enough and huffed again.

"That's a good boy then," the ringleader said, and had then walked away, leaving Figgins to deal with a pachyderm. Figgins dealt with humans, not animals that were built like army tanks and enjoyed a daily diet of bananas. At least he thought that was what they ate.

"You're good with kids, right?" the conductor inquired of the elephant. The elephant huffed. "That's excellent. Go entertain them so I can go grab a bite, eh? It seems they're crowding up already."

Indeed they were. Children always crowded the circus train, hoping for a glimpse at some rare wild creature. Seymour huffed. Figgins sighed.

"Excellent, excellent." He peeked at the old pocket watch his grandfather had given him and sighed again when he saw that it was time for his lunch break away from the elephant.

He was gone for thirty minutes and when he came back, Seymour was nowhere to be seen. Neither were the children.

"Dear God," the conductor muttered to himself in amazement. "I think I've lost an elephant."

Mister Figgins had not lost an elephant. He had merely misplaced one.

For the rest of the day, Seymour pushed around a baby carriage with his trunk up and down the platform two numbers down. Number four. Figgins finally found him by finding the crowd that had gathered around the elephant and his newfound companion. Apparently Seymour was not as patient as Figgins, the conductor with the pocket watch, who ought to be doing something else with his life if he couldn't do something as simple as monitor an elephant.

October 1946

Linda stood in the middle of the crowd as the mass of people parted just in front of her. She was a rock in the midst of a breaking wave. People parted around her, but she could move neither forwards nor backwards against the onslaught. She was looking for someone to show up and was standing rather foolishly in the middle of the pack. For some reason she had thought that this was a good idea. This was a stupid idea. Getting trampled was the likeliest scenario. Getting swept along with the rest was second.

She was clutching her giant textbook on world cultures by an old somebody Figgins to her chest like it was a lifeline. Linda surveyed the crowd again. Not one familiar face. She stayed grounded, though, amidst the jostling men and women who were marching by her college campus to protest a loss of jobs after the war. All she wanted was to go home and get started on that world cultures essay. She didn't want any of this. This marching. Parading. Whatever it was called, it was wasting her time. She never wanted to be connected to any of this war business. Linda tapped her fingers against the textbook's spine and refused to move an inch. She couldn't move. Not, at least, in the way she wanted to.

November 1969

The Russian soldier stood at the old, mahogany piano, gloved fingers gently gliding over the ivories. His American mother had taught him how to play when he was but a child and he had never forgotten. The family used to gather in the parlor to listen to him play. His only audience now was the oak grove surrounding the abandoned farmhouse that stood at a bit of a lean, the pregnant silence, the wind slow and soundless. Everything had stopped to listen to a shred of the past.

The soldier could remember his mother clearly. Linda Petrov, the woman who hated war, who hated that her son had to leave, who hated that her son had to wear a uniform and strap a rifle across his back, and who knew full well that her son wanted to. His father had taught him that there was no peace without war. His father was right as he usually was. His father gave him common sense and a good head on top of his strong shoulders. His mother had given him music.

Greys and browns and washed-out greens painted a cold backdrop for this unfamiliar stage as note after note was pounded off on the piano's hammers, loud like the soldier was trying to fill that silence that was always closing in. Music could do that. It could make you feel exposed and vulnerable and emotionally defenseless. When the piece was over though and the silence complete as the last chord faded away, the soldier felt a little more whole, a little less crushed by the silence. Crushed like that old, backwards-running pocket watch he had found among his mother's collectables when cleaning out the attic a few years back. She told him that it used to belong to a former researcher who had made somewhat of a name for himself back in the day. Well, now it was the battered old watch of a soldier who played the piano. What a big world. What a vast and mysterious place indeed.

August 1970

The lamppost at the edge of Bywater Road and 7th Street was the town's center of attention about two hours after the man in dark pumpkin orange backed away from his work with his coat pocket clanking full of tools and the old PRESS TO CROSS sign that used to be bolted into the metal post under his arm. Freshly screwed into the metal was a shiny steel plate emblazoned in large capital letters: PRESS TO RESET THE WORLD.

A portly fellow out trimming his lawn saw the man walking away-obviously no one in regulation hazard yellow-and started running across his prim work towards the man in dark pumpkin orange. That was the color of that odd coat of his that belonged somewhere back in the 1920s and not out in this heat. Altogether, the man was a suspicious sort.

"Mister!"

The man looked back, looked away, and promptly increased his pace.

"Mister, you can't do that!"

The man kept his head forward.

"Hey, Mister!"

The man did turn around then. His hazel eyes sparked. The tools in his copious pockets clanked some more.

The portly fellow glared. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

The man in dark pumpkin orange grinned a lopsided grin. "I don't think that I'm doing anything. I know what I'm doing."

"And just what might that be? Messing around with public property? Is that it?"

"My name is Ned and I just fixed your sign. You ought to be thanking me."

"Thanking you?" The portly fellow was aghast. "Why the devil would I be thanking you?"

Ned, fixer of signs, just smiled. "You should shake things up every now and then and get people thinking. Really, after one falls into a routine, it can be a good thing to jostle the old cogs around a bit. The mind's a funny sort of clock. Don't you think?"

"What did you do to the sign? Put a new shiny one on in the old one's place?"

Ned, irksome man of strange garments, actually laughed at this.

"Of course I did." Then his smile fell and his voice became more serious. "Just never, ever, under any circumstances, ever push that button."

Then he was off, walking a bit like an awkward crane, pockets clanking all the way.

Two hours later, the crowd arrived with the portly fellow at their head, and he told them what Ned told him. He said nothing about Ned, though.

And it never occurred to the portly fellow to call the cops. It never occurred to him that it might have been a good thing to stop the man from walking away. You can't stop time from running away from you. It will happen...more than once.

No one ever pushed the button.

No one wanted to lose what time they had.

What precious, little time,

Tick

Tick

Tick

Ticking

Away.