Work Text:
Tick tock
The hourglass clock was running out of time. Candlelight flickered, a ghostly wind stirred, and black branches whipped at the windows.
Tick tock
The missing child would come to take its due. Minute by minute, time slipped away until there was but one. Shadows roamed like monsters at the turning of the clock. Restlessly they moved, drawing steadily closer, closer.
Tick tock
A calling card; the Ace of Spades went fluttering through the window. In the mirror opposite, a figure began to emerge. Walking up behind the woman, it stopped and smiled; a sickly soft grin above a bloody smile that stretched from ear to ear.
The woman turned around to see what was standing there. And lo and behold, it was her child, missing since the clock had struck twelve and water turned to ice many moons ago. Blue lips moved, and a childish voice rang out, at odds with the movement delayed.
At the words of her missing child, the woman paled but held her ground. The child raised a hand; outstretched towards the other, and took an unseen object from within the air. A gasp, a sigh, and the woman was felled, struck down as if Death itself had claimed her for its own.
A life for a life, her debt had been paid. Now came revenge; a horrible vengeance that would be visited against those who had wronged it. With that thought in mind, the child turned around and melted back into the mirror. Long after the child left and the candles burnt down did the mirror remain in liquid form.
Tendrils of silver swept out, searching; seeking. A cursory brush against a circle - the symbol of protection - proved too much for it and the mirror froze, a multitude of cracks running over the once smooth surface. Only one thing was visible: an eye, green as fresh-cut grass.
The wind howled and buffeted against the window. The latch popped open, and a gust of wind barrelled inside, snuffing out the fireplace and plunging the cottage into darkness. The only light that could be seen was the reflection of the moon in the mirror, cracks fracturing it into mere slivers. A whispered sound into the dark and the mirror shattered, shards falling in an entrancing dance of razor edges and moonlight.
An old grandfather clock ticked away amongst the gloom, never losing its rhythm even as the lights were blown out and the mirror shattered. But now, as it slowly wound down, the ticks warped into something else; a grotesque parody of the normally steady sound.
The clock screeched and groaned, springs and cogs shooting out crazily, and yet still the clock did not stop, ticks growing louder and the hands spun round and round, faster...
faster.
The sound sped up, whining all the while and hands spinning desperately before slowing down suddenly, the shadows closest to it were pulled in together. Up, up, up the shadows crept, constricting together and smothering the clock. The clock tolled the hour, once, twice. As if this signalled the end, the shadows reverted to their natural state.
All was still.