So here I was, standing alone, with a pocket-watch in my hand. The pocket-watch was old. but it seemed to be in working condition. It was open-faced with a broken chain. It showed 10 past 3. I looked around, hoping half-heartedly that she would show up again. After a few minutes, when nothing happened, I realized that I had started to feel a little stupid.

I walked back slowly to my lonely apartment. Ascended 4 stories of stairs. Tossed the pocket-watch on the couch and went back to the laundry room. Back to tasks of no cosmic importance. I wondered if I stopped what I was doing, would it affect the state of the universe? As I pondered over such questions and other existentialist problems, the universe had moved on. I remained behind, stuck in my laundry room cleaning soiled cotton.

Work done, I moved to the sitting room and picked up the pocket-watch. 20 past 3. The watch seemed to move really slow. I did a quick recap of what had just happened. A nude woman walking in circles had given me a pocket-watch, and then run away screaming. Prior to that, I was cleaning clothes which was result of me having no toilet paper.

I knew I would have never seen the woman if I hadn't been in the laundry room at that very moment. But I seemed to feel a closer connection with the pocket watch. It existed in my hand for a reason. I held it in my hand and strained my ears to hear the ticking. There was no sound. I turned the watch around, and I saw something scraped onto the back of the watch. It was the name of the manufacturer.

Now this might seem like a long shot. But as I read the back of the watch, I realized that somehow the toilet paper incident was responsible for me being stuck with the memory of a beautiful nude woman and a pocket watch that moved so slow that it gave the illusion that time had stopped.

No event is an island. Everything in this world is interconnected. And I knew that my life would never be the same ever again. Toilet paper be damned. I needed to find out the link between the two. It was my quest for this weekend.

I felt alive. It reminded me of the days when I read Enid Blyton, and peeped at dirty magazines in bookstalls. And my life seemed interesting again.

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Author guidance for This story

I'm hoping to keep the entire story between 4000-10000 words long. That way it actually has an end that isn't too far away to think about. If contributing, please try to keep it very strange while still rooted in reality (although, if you must bend reality a little bit, feel free to do so). I hope this works out, I'm looking forward to actually completing my first finite project on Protagonize. I think it'll be good practice. =]

updated Feb 26 '09 by Atropos