By Peter B. and Art Intelli
The Watch That Ticks Backwards
Antonio Romano had been an unremarkable man. He had lived in Rome his entire life, but certainly never in any of the glamorous or exotic areas. He was a simple porter; never married as he preferred men, but could never admit this even to himself at that time. Now, eighty-eight by the calendar, his back hurt, his knees cracked, and his eyes — clouded with that milky fatigue of living too long — no longer recognized his own reflection.
He found himself usually bored and sometimes confused, which startled him. He had taken to long walks, which often cleared his head and forced him to focus on sights he knew he should remember from his many years in the same city.
He had been walking aimlessly down a narrow street in a part of the city he didn’t recall entering, where the buildings seemed pressed together like secrets, and the sky overhead had dimmed to an eerie tarnish, as though dusk had arrived before its time. Rain drizzled like oil from a rusted pipe above the eaves, as he felt himself drawn down a narrow alleyway.
That’s when suddenly he saw it.
