“The Hourglass Man”
They called him many names — the Time Whisperer, the Watchman, or the Hourglass Man — but he always insisted his name was simply John Smith. Ordinary. Unremarkable. The kind of name that vanished into crowds.
But John Smith was anything but ordinary.
He never flew through the skies. He didn’t punch through walls or shoot lasers from his eyes. His power was quiet. Subtle. Beautiful, in a way most would never understand.
John could stretch time.
Not freeze it, no. Time kept ticking, and the world kept turning. But with a thought, he could draw out a second like warm toffee, stretching it into minutes. An hour could become a day for someone, even if, to everyone else, it passed like smoke.
But John only used it for one thing: to help the dying.
He walked the halls of hospices and nursing homes, his presence as gentle as a late autumn breeze. No fanfare. No cape. Just an aging man in a worn coat with a face that looked like it had forgotten how to be young.
Tonight, he sat beside a woman named Clara in Room 207. Ninety-six years old. A former piano teacher with a love for Chopin and lemon cake. Her breath was thin. Her family had said their goodbyes and gone home, whispering apologies they thought she couldn’t hear.
But John was there.
Clara blinked, and John touched her wrist gently, as if asking permission. She looked at him, really looked at him, and smiled like she remembered.
He stretched the moment.
Outside the window, a leaf paused mid-fall. Not frozen, just slowing, drifting like it had all the time in the world.
In her mind, Clara sat at a grand piano again, her fingers dancing across ivory keys. The music returned to her, not as memory, but as reality. She played for hours, days in the span of a few heartbeats, as John sat nearby, listening with closed eyes and a stillness so complete it was sacred.
He gave her one last concert.
When the music stopped, she looked at him and said, “Thank you.”
“You played beautifully,” he said.
Her final breath was quiet, and the world resumed its rhythm. Nurses rushed in, noting the time as 2:37 a.m. Another passing. Another statistic.
But for Clara, her final two minutes had been a symphony.
John left without a sound.
He didn’t expect gratitude. No headlines. No statues. He wasn’t saving the world, just giving it back, a little, to those who were about to leave it.
And somewhere down a quiet street, as the stars blinked overhead and time marched forward for everyone else, John Smith disappeared into the dark, already searching for the next soul who needed just a little more time.
By Tom Broadhurst
The Mountaineer
The man was tall, his face weathered like stone carved by wind. His name was Gabriel Knox, known to the world as the greatest living mountaineer. He had stood atop every major summit: Everest, K2, Annapurna, Denali. His photos adorned magazines and documentaries. People called him the Peak Seeker, the Storm Walker, the man who could not be stopped by gravity or god.
But now he sat quietly on a bench outside a modest cottage hospice in the Scottish Highlands. The mountains were far away. His breathing was labored, his legs thin beneath woolen blankets. Inside, machines monitored a heart that had once been fearless. He had minutes left. Maybe an hour if he was lucky.
John Smith stood nearby, unnoticed by the nurses. He never announced himself. He never needed to. He simply listened for the moments when time itself cried out — those aching, sacred instants where someone was close to the edge and still holding on to something unseen.
Gabriel stared out the window toward the hills that rolled like softened shadows against the horizon. One in particular caught his gaze — a small, unimposing rise covered in gorse and heather.
“That’s the one,” he whispered.
John turned. “The one what?”
Gabriel’s eyes glistened. “The first summit. I must’ve been three. Maybe four. My dad lifted me up when I couldn’t make it the last ten feet. Called it ‘Knox Peak,’ just for that day.”
He chuckled, a soft wheeze. “Every mountain since then… I think I was just chasing that moment. Not the views. Not the records. Just the feeling of being lifted by someone who loved me. He died the following year. Never saw me climb another inch.”
The room fell quiet, except for the ticking of a clock that John was already beginning to slow.
“Would you like to climb it again?” John asked gently.
Gabriel turned, brow creased. “I can barely stand.”
John smiled. “You won’t need to.”
He reached out, brushing the edge of time like a violinist drawing bow to string. The second began to stretch, pulling wide like a horizon at dawn.
To the world, Gabriel Knox sat unmoving. A man nearing his final breath. But inside the bubble of stretched time, he stood.
He stood tall.
The years rolled off him. The pain receded. His back straightened, and strength filled his legs. He looked down and saw his old boots — scarred, reliable, familiar. The air grew crisp and sharp with the scent of earth and pine.
He was at the base of the hill.
And beside him stood a man he hadn’t seen in nearly seventy years. Broad-shouldered, gentle-eyed. His father.
“Ready?” the old man asked.
Gabriel couldn’t speak. He only nodded.
They climbed together.
Not Everest. Not K2. Just a hill. A small Scottish hill overlooking fields of sheep and rows of stone fences. But to Gabriel, it was the summit of all summits.
The grass brushed his hands. The wind carried memories like falling snow. Every footstep was slow and deliberate, but not strained. Not painful. Just present. Real.
At the top, they sat. Nothing grand. No crowds. Just sky and silence and the steady pulse of a shared heartbeat.
His father looked at him and said, “You carried me just as far, son. You just didn’t know it.”
Gabriel let the tears come. Not from regret. But from release.
They stayed there for what felt like hours. Maybe days. They watched the clouds pass. Watched birds glide on thermals. Shared memories, laughter, silence.
And then, as gently as a page being turned, the hill began to fade. The sky dimmed to hospice room lighting. The breeze became a whisper of oxygen from a bedside machine.
Gabriel took one last breath.
Not rushed.
Not afraid.
Just enough.
John sat nearby, still and reverent.
Gabriel’s eyes opened briefly, catching John’s.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
John stood, brushing imaginary dust from his coat.
“Take all the time you need,” he said.
And then, without a sound, Gabriel Knox — the Mountaineer who had scaled the world’s greatest peaks — closed his eyes at the summit that had always mattered most.
Some mountains are climbed only once. But they are remembered forever.
by Tom Broadhurst
The Last Ride
The bell above the door gave a half-hearted jingle as John Smith stepped into the dim, oil-scented shop. The place was more museum than storefront — rows of hanging wheels, cracked leather saddles, frames lined up like bones of forgotten racers. Sunlight slanted through a dusty skylight, catching flecks in the air like glitter held in amber.
Behind the counter, hunched over a battered red Raleigh from the ’70s, was Arthur Bell.
He was in his late eighties, a wiry man with arms still corded from decades of turning wrenches. His hands, though shaky, moved with the instinctive rhythm of someone who’d built and rebuilt thousands of lives on two wheels.
He didn’t look up as John entered.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” Arthur said, tightening a bolt without turning his head. “The man who stretches seconds. Makes time kinder.”
John smiled. “You always this direct?”
Arthur shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of time to think. And not a lot of time left to waste.”
He stood slowly, rubbing his knuckles. His left leg dragged slightly — an old crash, John guessed. Maybe a hundred old crashes.
“I had a dream last night,” Arthur said. “Riding the old country road out of my village. The one with the gravel edges and the big pine tree at the crest. My dad gave me my first bike there. A blue one. Rusted even then, but it flew.”
He looked at the red Raleigh with a fondness usually reserved for memories of first loves.
“I haven’t ridden in fifteen years. Haven’t felt like riding in even longer. But if I could ride once more, on that road, the way it used to be…”
John stepped closer, already loosening the threads of time. He didn’t need an invitation. The ache in Arthur’s voice was permission enough.
“Then let’s go,” John said simply.
Arthur blinked — and the shop fell away.
Time thinned like mist in the morning sun.
The walls melted into golden fields. The scent of oil became wildflowers and warm dirt. The floor dipped, curved, became gravel and gentle hills. Birds chirped overhead. The sky was impossibly blue.
And under Arthur’s hands was a bike — not the red Raleigh, but the blue one. His first. Whole again. Shining like a boy’s dream.
His hands didn’t tremble now. His knees didn’t ache. He climbed onto the seat like it was a throne.
And he rode.
He flew.
The wheels spun, cutting smooth over remembered gravel. The wind whipped through hair that had long since thinned. His breath came easy, deep, filled with laughter and echoes of freedom. He knew the bends before they came. Knew every dip, every patch of stubborn grass in the road.
At the top of the final hill, he stopped.
There, just as he remembered, stood the pine tree. Beneath it: his father, leaning on a fence post, arms crossed, smiling that proud smile only sons remember clearly.
Arthur looked down at his hands — young again, strong. Then back at his father.
“You waited,” he said.
“I never left,” the man replied.
They stood together as the wind moved gently through the fields. No one hurried them. No one needed to. Time itself had been slowed to the perfect pace of memory.
And when the moment began to fade — when the shop walls returned and the scent of grease drifted back in — Arthur Bell stood beside the red Raleigh, tears on his cheeks, hands resting lightly on the handlebars.
John placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“You rode well.”
Arthur smiled, wiped his face with an old shop rag. “Yeah. I did.”
Time resumed.
But something in the shop stayed a little softer. A little lighter.
And as John stepped outside into the cooling afternoon, he heard the faintest echo of a bell.
A boy’s laugh.
And a bicycle speeding down an endless road.
By Tom Broadhurst
The Hourglass Man — Chapter: The Child
Children’s wards are never truly quiet.
Even at night, they hum with life — the soft beep of monitors, the distant rattle of trolleys, the occasional laugh from a nurse trying too hard to sound cheerful. The walls are painted with colour: rainbows, forests, smiling animals with eyes too wide to be believed. As if paint could bargain with fate.
Jon Smith paused in the doorway of Room 14.
The nurses had told him not to go in — visiting hours were over — but he had never been bound by such things. Rules belonged to clocks and calendars, and Jon walked outside their ticking.
A nightlight shaped like a moon cast a soft blue halo over the room.
A small girl lay in the bed, her frame almost lost beneath the blankets. Tubes traced thin lines across her skin; a drip clicked rhythmically at her side. Beside her on the pillow sat a worn teddy bear with one ear missing and a crooked smile. Its fur was matted from years of being loved too hard.
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Her name, printed neatly on the chart, was Emily Reeves.
Seven years old.
Leukaemia.
Palliative only.
Jon stood still, watching her chest rise and fall.
She was whispering — not to herself, but to the bear.
The words were too soft to make out, a secret language shared between queen and confidant.
He knocked once on the open door, the sound gentle but enough to make her look up.
“Hello, Emily,” he said.
She blinked at him with clear grey eyes, not frightened, just curious.
“Are you the night doctor?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what are you?”
He stepped closer. “Someone who helps when time feels a bit too short.”
She frowned in thought. “Can you make it longer?”
“A little,” Jon said. “If you’d like.”
Her mouth curved into a small smile. “Then I want to play.”
Jon smiled back. “All right. Let’s play.”
He sat beside her bed and, with a movement barely noticeable, brushed his fingers against the rail.
The sound of the drip slowed.
The hum of the machines deepened into something softer.
The fluorescent light overhead turned warm, golden, like sunlight through leaves.
And time, obedient as breath, began to stretch.
In the world Jon wove for her, the hospital walls softened and faded.
The bed melted into a meadow of tall grass.
The machines became distant bells in the wind.
Emily sat up — strong, bright, the colour back in her cheeks.
Her pyjamas had become a little blue dress.
Her feet were bare against the cool earth.
Jon stood beside her, no longer the tired man in the grey coat but something gentler, indefinable — the sort of grown-up who never forgets what it’s like to be small.
“Where are we?” she asked, turning in a slow circle. The meadow spread to a horizon painted with soft hills and drifting clouds.
“Wherever you like,” Jon said.
She considered this gravely, then declared, “It’s my kingdom.”
“So it is.”
“And you’re my assistant.”
Jon bowed. “Your royal assistant, at your service.”
That made her laugh, a sound as light as windchimes. She picked a daisy and tucked it behind her ear. “Then we have lots to do. The teddy needs a crown.”
The bear appeared beside her, whole again, his missing ear restored.
Jon tore a strip from the edge of his coat and folded it carefully into a tiny crown. She placed it on the bear’s head with solemn ceremony.
“There,” she said. “He’s King Ted. You can be Sir Jon.”
“And you, Your Majesty?” Jon asked.
“Queen Emily of the Meadow,” she said proudly.
They built towers from flowers, castles from clouds, armies of dandelion soldiers. They told stories of dragons who were only lost puppies and giants who wept because no one ever gave them a hug. Every tale ended kindly; every danger melted before laughter.
Jon found himself laughing too, something he hadn’t done in years that he could count.
Emily’s imagination poured from her like sunlight, transforming everything it touched.
At one point she stopped and looked up at him, serious.
“You don’t like it here, do you?”
Jon hesitated. “Here?”
“In hospitals. You look sad.”
He smiled faintly. “I come here often. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel what people feel.”
“You help them die, don’t you?”
The question was so plain, so innocent, that Jon almost forgot to breathe.
“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes.”
“Does it hurt?”
He thought about that. “No. Not when it’s done right.”
She nodded, satisfied with the answer. “You must be very good at it then.”
Jon laughed softly. “I hope so.”
They played until the sky turned from gold to the soft purple of dusk.
Emily built a tower from blocks of light, each glowing softly as she stacked them. When she placed the final one, she sighed and sat back.
“I’m tired,” she said. “Can we stop for a bit?”
“Of course.” Jon sat beside her on the grass. The meadow smelled faintly of apple blossom.
“Will it be long?” she asked after a while.
“Until what?”
“Until I have to sleep forever.”
Jon looked at her, the smallness of her face, the courage in it.
“Not long at all,” he said gently.
She nodded. “That’s all right, then. I just didn’t want to miss anything.”
“You haven’t,” Jon said. “You’ve seen more than most people ever will.”
Emily smiled, eyes growing heavy. “Do you think Mummy and Daddy will be okay?”
“They will,” Jon said. “You’ll help them, in dreams. You’ll remind them how to laugh.”
“Like this?” she whispered, and giggled softly.
“Exactly like that.”
She leaned her head against the bear. “Sir Jon?”
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“Thank you for playing.”
He bowed his head. “It was an honour.”
Her eyelids fluttered. “Goodnight.”
The meadow faded.
The hum of machines returned, slow and steady.
Jon sat by the bedside again, the nightlight painting a halo across the sheets. Emily’s hand rested lightly on the bear’s paw, her paper crown — a real one now, crafted from a folded page of a colouring book — crooked upon her head.
Her chest rose once more, then fell, and did not rise again.
Moments later, her parents came in carrying two cups of coffee, their faces pale with fatigue. They froze when they saw her. The nurse was there almost instantly, murmuring the familiar words, pressing buttons, checking vitals that no longer mattered.
But even through the tears, her mother smiled faintly.
“She’s smiling,” she whispered. “She’s happy.”
Jon stood at the far corner of the room, unseen. The father brushed a lock of hair from his daughter’s face, whispering words that trembled and broke. The mother pressed the bear to her chest and wept.
Jon stayed until the first light of dawn touched the window.
Then he turned to leave.
At the nurses’ station he placed something on the counter — a paper crown, slightly crumpled, small enough to fit a child’s head.
A young nurse found it later and smiled without knowing why. She placed it on top of the ward’s stuffed mascot, a faded elephant, and left it there.
Jon walked out into the pale morning.
The hospital car park was slick with rain; the sky held that grey stillness that comes before the day begins in earnest. He paused by a puddle and watched the reflected clouds drift across its surface.
He thought of Emily — her laughter, her courage, her kingdom of light. For a moment he envied her. Children crossed the line between life and whatever waited beyond it with a grace adults could never manage. They didn’t cling; they simply trusted the next step.
Jon sighed, pulling his coat tighter against the chill.
Somewhere in the distance, a church bell tolled the hour.
Another patient would be waiting.
Another final story to witness.
He walked on, his boots whispering against the wet pavement, the echo of a child’s laughter following him for a long, long time.
By Tom Broadhurst
