The House that Eats Time

Anne remembered when she first heard the rumors: an old house on the corner of 7th and Pine where time seemed to warp and twist like bubblegum on a hot sidewalk. Whispers floated through the faculty room, mixing with stories of disoriented teenagers and late-night dares. But Anne Langford, she kept to herself, focused on teaching biology to high school students who snapped away at their phones more than their assignments. The note slipped under her door one breezy autumn evening came as a surprise. "The house that eats time." No address, just those words snagging her mind like a loose thread in a favorite sweater. At first, she tucked it under a stack of overdue papers, but by morning it had wormed its way into her thoughts good and proper. Over lunch in the park, Anne mentioned it to her friend, Thomas. He was always game for an adventure that didn't involve lesson plans or grading rubrics — irresistible nuisances for two educators. His eyes twinkled mischievously as he said, "Why not see it for yourself? If it’s not the truth, it’ll at least be a good story." And so, Saturday found Anne standing at the weathered iron gates, Thomas alongside her, that note twitching nervously in her pocket. The house loomed like a bad dream, paint stripped down to leaden whispers, windows opaque with dust. They strode up the creaky steps, the air carrying that odd sense you get when you're in a place without history, or maybe one with too much of it. Inside, the corridor stretched endlessly, doors on either side framing stories untold. Anne couldn't shake the feeling of a forgotten Polaroid, half-developed, haunting the walls. When Thomas joked about how cool the place would be with some LED strip lighting, his voice echoed unnervingly in sync. But it was the clock they found in the parlor that truly unnerved them — its face twisting, numbers flowing in an uneasy rhythm, clockwise one moment and backward the next. Minutes slipped by, yet hours seemed to collapse into themselves. It wasn't long before they realized their ritual. As night fell, shadows took the form of paper-thin memories, Anna's first puppet show, Thomas's father's old fishing cap. "It's feeding," Thomas whispered, a shiver in the dark, "feeding on us." Anne's pulse quickened. How does one fight a house, and time, and the loss of what makes them human? She grasped Thomas's wrist, holding onto anchors in the past — yet they were fading. Memories scattered like leaves in memoryplace. In desperation, Anne offered a solution. "Let’s leave it behind, leave it all. Give the house what it wants." Thomas hesitated, but the grin he offered seemed more encouragement than trepidation. They sat together by the clock, breathing like the slow tick in their ears. A silent pact, they murmured their most vulnerable secrets, rubble of forgotten childhoods and the mountains they climbed together and alone. Fear curled around but was held at bay as they trickled their stories into the wanting abyss, the house listening, almost purring with satisfaction. Toward dawn, an impossible dawn inside their twilit prison, the clock shuddered, fraying time's unraveling loop. The kind of feeling one gets when releasing the string on a tightly wound kite. As they stepped back into the morning light, the air shimmered with leftover dreams. They found each other on the curb, echoes still whispering, but the burden had lifted, leaving the lustre of sunlit memories well gone to flicker in old hearts.