Chapter 1

Tick, tock they never stop that sound keeps on coming there's only one way to stop the ticking. I've tried every other way it didn't stop till now, but I have to keep going back

The clocks I craved only showed the time, a time, their time. Tick tock, the clocks just never seemed to stop, that infernal tick tick ticking, oh how I despised it. Tick tock. My clock, her clock, his clock, our clock can do so much more, show so much more; they'll see we'll show them.

The clocks carved on wrists only show how much longer there is until your past finds you. Tick tock. The numbers increase, tick, then decrease once more, tock. The clock counts down slowly, much too slowly. It took much too long for them to find her. She was pale as fresh fallen snow, clothing pristine, not a hair or button out of place. Yet she was laid out on the ground like a piece of well-made art.

The body was found under a seemingly random picnic table. Due to the lack of evidence on the body, it was first believed to be some type of internal trauma that occurred. That was until the medical examiner went to remove the body from the scene that the carving was found. On the inside of the wrist was a clock, like a wristwatch, carved into the skin just below the right hand. Morbid and grotesque yet carefully carved to show each of the numbers and hands.

Patrica Allens wasn't the first found in what was at first thought as a mass suicide. Three other victims were found, Morgan Jennings and Joice Van found side by side in Hayward Foothills, twenty-one and twenty-three were thought to have performed a Romeo/Juliet suicide by carving the time of their deaths on each other. It was later proved false when reports were reviewed. Erik Paulon was found by a neighbor in the driveway with a gun lying next to the victim. The victims family and friends at first said they were not surprised, they'd been expecting it for some time. The man, thirty-two, was documented to be on a cocktail of medication and that carving was a cry for attention. It is now confirmed that all four were connected.