The Clockmaker of Westminster

Eleanor found the pocket watch in her grandmother's attic among dust-covered relics and forgotten letters. The moment she opened it, the hands began spinning backwards — counterclockwise, impossible, wrong. Each tick whispered fragments of a life she never lived: a sister she never had, a war she never fought, a love she never found. The watch showed her moments from tomorrow, not yesterday. Her grandmother had been keeping it hidden for sixty years, wrapped in cloth alongside a photograph of a man Eleanor had never seen. The engraving on the back read: 'For E — Time is the one gift that cannot be unwrapped. — R.' But when Eleanor looked closer at the photograph, she realized the man's face was her own, aged by decades she hadn't yet lived. The clockmaker knew her. He had been waiting for her to find it. And now the ticking had begun.

Panel 1·by BeanMachine