“The Echoes of Fragmented Time”

“The Echoes of Fragmented Time” By Edward J McCoul

The air was cold, sharp with the tang of autumn leaves. Jonah stood on the edge of a dense forest, staring into the maze of trees, his breath visible in the pale morning light. He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up there. Somewhere between his car breaking down on an empty highway and following a gravel path into the woods, time had fragmented. His watch, a gift from his late mother, ticked faintly, but the hands refused to move. It was as though time itself had abandoned him.

Jonah was lost, not just in the forest but in something deeper—a liminal space that felt like the edge of existence.

Jonah had always been obsessed with time. He’d spent years measuring his life in meticulous increments: the ten-minute commute, the thirty-second coffee pour, the eighty-four hours a month he dedicated to his job as a data analyst. His routine was precise, his schedule ironclad. But then, the accident happened.

Six months ago, his younger sister Lily had been hit by a drunk driver. The call had come at 3:47 p.m. He remembered every detail: the sound of the phone vibrating on his desk, the smell of stale coffee in his office, the way his voice cracked as he asked the nurse on the line to repeat herself.

Lily hadn’t survived.

Since then, Jonah’s life had unraveled. Time, once his loyal companion, had become his enemy. The hours stretched painfully long in his grief, yet moments of clarity slipped through his fingers like sand. Memories of Lily came in jagged fragments—her laugh, the way she always hummed off-key, the sparkle in her eyes when she teased him about his obsession with schedules.

But these memories weren’t enough. Jonah wanted to rewind, to return to the days when she was still alive, still vibrant. And so, when he heard about the forest—whispered about in hushed tones at a grief support group—he’d driven out to find it.

They called it the Forest of Echoes, a place where time bent and memories lingered.

The forest was disorienting. Jonah walked in circles, following paths that seemed to double back on themselves. The sun barely shifted in the sky, its light muted as though filtered through an ancient lens. He checked his phone for the time, but the screen was frozen on 3:47 p.m.

Then he saw it.

A flicker of movement caught his eye—a figure in the distance, bathed in dappled light. It was Lily.

She stood by a gnarled tree, her back to him, her hair cascading over her shoulders. Jonah’s heart raced. He sprinted toward her, calling her name, but as he got closer, she disappeared. In her place was a wooden bench carved with intricate symbols.

Jonah sat, breathless, and ran his hands over the carvings. They looked like fragments of clock faces—numbers, hands, and gears scattered across the wood.

Suddenly, a voice broke the silence.

“Time doesn’t heal, you know.”

Jonah whipped around to see an old man leaning against a tree, a weathered pocket watch dangling from his hand.

“Who are you?” Jonah asked.

“Just a keeper of moments,” the man said. “And you? You’re chasing fragments.”

“What does that mean?” Jonah demanded.

The man chuckled softly. “Time is not linear, my boy. It’s a web, and you’re tangled in it. You’re holding on to pieces of the past, hoping they’ll fit together again. But time doesn’t work that way.”

Jonah’s chest tightened. “I just… I just want to see her again. To fix it.”

The man’s expression softened. He held out the pocket watch. “If you truly wish to understand time, take this. But be warned: time doesn’t give without taking.”

Jonah hesitated before taking the watch. The moment it touched his hand, the forest shifted around him. He was no longer sitting on the bench but standing in his childhood home. The air smelled of pancakes and syrup, and the sound of Lily’s laughter filled the room.

She was eight, and he was ten. They were playing hide-and-seek, her favorite game. Jonah felt a lump in his throat as he watched her dart behind the couch, giggling. He wanted to freeze this moment, to stay here forever.

But as quickly as it came, the scene dissolved.

Now he was in his college dorm, arguing with Lily over the phone. She wanted him to come home for Thanksgiving, but he’d been too busy with exams. Jonah winced at the memory of his sharp words, the way her voice had wavered before she hung up.

Time shifted again, faster now. He saw Lily’s graduation, the night she’d stayed up with him after his first breakup, her tear-streaked face as she begged him not to blame himself for their parents’ death in a car crash.

Each fragment hit him like a tidal wave, the moments piling on top of one another until he couldn’t breathe.

“Enough!” Jonah shouted.

He was back in the forest, the watch heavy in his hand. The old man was gone, but a voice echoed in the air.

“Time doesn’t heal, but it reveals. What you do with that truth is up to you.”

Jonah stared at the watch. He realized now that he’d been trying to manipulate time, to force it to give him what he wanted. But time was not a tool; it was a mirror. It reflected who he was, what he valued, and what he needed to let go of.

“I’m sorry, Lily,” he whispered. “I’ve been holding on to you so tightly that I forgot how to live.”

The watch began to glow, its hands spinning wildly. Jonah felt a surge of warmth, a sense of release.

When the light faded, he was standing by the side of the road where his car had broken down. The forest was gone, replaced by the hum of passing cars. His watch was ticking again, the hands moving steadily forward.

Jonah looked up at the sky, a soft smile on his face. He didn’t have to chase fragments of time anymore. Lily would always be with him—not in moments frozen in the past, but in the way she had shaped his heart.

Over the next few weeks, Jonah began to rebuild his life. He quit his job, started volunteering at a community center, and spent more time with the people he cared about. Time was no longer an enemy or a puzzle to solve; it was a gift.

One day, as he walked past a clock shop, he noticed an old pocket watch in the window. It was identical to the one the man in the forest had given him. Jonah stepped inside, his heart pounding.

The shopkeeper, an elderly woman with kind eyes, smiled. “Ah, you’ve seen the echoes, haven’t you?”

Jonah nodded, understanding for the first time that he was not alone in his journey.

“Time is a web,” she said. “And you, my dear, are a weaver.”

Jonah left the shop, the pocket watch in his hand and a newfound sense of purpose in his heart.