The Soft Clock
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is The Soft Clock.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
A large clock melts on the wall above a woman seated at a table. She writes. The numerals are still trying to be numerals. Brass that should be a circle leans at the twelve and softens toward the three. Two hands, not hers, press at the clock's rim, trying to set it back into a circle. The fingers leave no print that stays. The circle will not hold. The brass softens under the fingers and leans. A drop of it gathers at the six and does not yet fall.
A pocket watch on the desk slumps into a pool of metal. The chain follows in a slow curve and stops half in the pool. Gears remain visible in the pool, still toothed, no longer working. One gear shows its teeth above the softened surface and does not turn. The hands at the wall clock give up. They rest on the leaning rim and slide a little with it. Numerals slide toward the baseboard and stop, half readable. A six becomes a curve. A three stays a three and then loses a corner.
The woman does not stop writing. Her pen keeps a line that has nothing to do with the hour. A small recorder beside the papers keeps its reels turning. The reels do not soften. Their motion is ordinary and dry. Above the pages, the wall clock finishes its collapse into a slow vortex of soft brass and glass, dripping without reaching the text. The drop that gathered at the six lengthens, thins, and stops short of the paper. The two hands leave the rim. They do not try the circle again.
A gear in the pool of the watch turns once, a small metallic click, and stops. That single turn follows the collapse and does not restore the works. The numeral that lost its corner reaches the baseboard and sticks there, softer than the wood, half readable, not returning to the wall. The woman turns a page. The new page is blank and then is not, because she writes. The vortex turns above the papers. Glass in it catches the day and lets the day go. Nothing from the vortex touches the line she is making.
The two hands that failed at the rim stay away from the vortex. They do not return to press the brass back into a circle. The chain of the pocket watch remains half in the pool. Teeth on the gear that turned once stay visible and do not turn a second time. The woman does not look up to time her sentence against any of it. The line she writes reaches the edge of the page and continues on the next line, ordinary ink, unsoftened. Daylight stays on the table. The drip above the papers lengthens again and stops again, still short of the text.
Her pen moves. The reels turn. Numerals rest in a soft pile at the baseboard. The pool of the watch holds its gears in plain sight. The vortex turns above the papers and does not fall the rest of the way, a clock that has lost its circle and kept its motion.