time standing still

Some say a broken clock is right twice a day. I say there is a certain comfort in time standing still.

A motionless clock is the great equalizer:

A banker's pristine gold watch, worn only for countdown to long lunches and impenetrable steel door closing times, is expensively silent, close to his ear. The phone rings: trouble at window #2 with a phony Ben Franklin. He curses quietly below the sound of his empty stomach.

The village idiot is enthralled by the broken clock hands shaped like a 'V' in the abandoned courthouse tower, his eyes profusely watering in the glare, the tower now a harbor for the newborn falcon; it is time for trash dumpster food out of the rucksack; the big clock says so he states proudly to a quick-walking passerby. The responsible parent of the newborn swoops down and claws the rucksack up and away from the bewildered crying man.

A bespectacled professor with ear hair long enough to snarl flies, most likely for severe microscopic study, sneaks a quick look at his over-wound scratched dangling silver pocket watch, droning on and on before hushed log lumps full of mush, thinking, it must be a broken spring; did I just read this page of lecture notes twice? Pushing his glasses up his nose, he notices the lecture hall is empty. Class ended 47 minutes ago. He drops the lifeless timepiece to the tile and stops time for good under his heel.