There is nothing more impossible to avoid than the passing of time.

For him, who was in the last years of his life, the constant tick-tock was a reminder of a sentence that drew near. Sitting in a corner of the room, age had left him unable to walk. It was impossible to brighten his mood, even though it was a beautiful day a through the window the sunrays came inside, with the singing of birds and the scent of the flowers in the garden.

He was at the end of his life, and what had he achieved? Nothing. There weren't trophies decorating the shelves, nor recognitions hanging from the wall. There weren't galleries showing his work, and reporters didn't come to interview him. Nobody would bother to write his biography. Nobody would cry his death, and there wouldn't be any monuments built in his honor after it. He just had the brushes and the canvas left, not wanted by anybody, that collected dust in the cellar of the house.

The sound of animated talks came along childish laughs. The children were visiting, and they brought with them the grandkids, but he didn't come out to see them. They were preparing the garden for a party, and he heard they'd bring him with them when everything was ready. He also heard the family talk about the latest news, in which stood out the story of a florist who had managed to cultivate luminescent flowers and was a total celebrity in the media.

Hearing about someone else's success only increased his headache. Who cared about some shiny flowers, when the work of his life was going to be lost in oblivion forever? If he'd known that his efforts would end up useless, he wouldn't have wasted so much time in them. Maybe then he'd have something more than a life of failures.

It was in an autumn day when he found a peculiar shadow. Right above his nightstand, he touched it thinking it was an insect, but realized it wasn't like that. When he took it in his hand, he felt a strange vigor running throughout his body. He didn't remember the last time he'd felt so energetic and noticed that the weight of age came back when he stopped being in contact with the little shadow.

So, he took it in a fist and put his hand in his pocket, position that he kept all day. The energy brought him joy, and he complained less than usual. The second day he felt way better than the first one. And so it continued during the third and fourth. By the fifth day, he found out in the mirror on the bathroom that some of his wrinkles had disappeared. By the tenth, he left behind his wheelchair and started to walk again. Everybody was surprised by his recovery, himself included. By the second week, he had half the wrinkles than before and the arthritis of his hands had disappeared almost entirely, so he took a brush and painted for the first time in years.

Nobody, except him, knew that the blessing was born from his good luck charm, his little shadow that he never separated from, which he put under his wristwatch so that it'd always be in contact with him. But on the third week he realized the true nature of his miracle. He knew when he looked himself in the mirror and found out that the face that looked at him was his, but with the looks he had years before. The shadow didn't just give him vitality: it was making him younger.

Once he knew, an idea took place on his head. He decided to lock himself in his home for entire days without letting anyone in, not even his family that was baffled by this decision. After a moth of the beginning of his change, he went outside to the world as a man thirty years younger, unrecognizable by then. He had a new chance at life, and he wasn't going to miss it.

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He was in his forties and traveled to present is pieces to a new generation of critics. He spent a whole week searching for someone who'd recognize their innate value, but just like on his first try, nobody wanted them. When he tried defending his pieces and they responded comparing him with other painters, he complained. He thought that was the problem with people that let themselves be contaminated by other artists by studying them, not like him, whose pieces were pure and untainted. He didn't have any other choice but to resign and cursed the snobs in art while leaving.

He was in his thirties when he decided he could enjoy his second chance some other way. Half for bohemia and half to vent, he spent his days using the money of his retirement going to luxury restaurants to eat the most exquisite dishes, drink the most luxurious wine and stay in the most renown hotels. He was in his twenties when he entered the night life of the city, unknown to him. He got drunk until he fainted, he slept with a different woman every night and tried by accident drugs he'd never tasted on his youth.

He was on the cusp of his second life and enjoyed every minute, every second of life without the weight of following a dream. He decided he wanted to stay like that forever, without worries or trouble, so he tried to take off his watch to stop his time in that state.

However, he couldn't do it. No matter how much he pulled the strap of the watch to move, it didn't concede even a centimeter. He tried using more strength until he started to feel pain, as if he were pulling of his own skin. He searched for some scissors, which he tried to put between his wrist and the strap to cut it, but in the moment, he tried the pain increased. He let the scissors fall to the ground and saw a blood drop running towards the palm of his hand. He spent the next three days trying to remove the damned watch, always with pain, never with success.

He got scared. Could it be that it was stuck to his skin and now was a part of his body? Now he was in his teens and had locked himself up in his house again. He couldn't go to bars or anywhere else to waste his money anymore. He spent the hours trying to find a way to tear off the watch from himself. His hair, abundant and shiny, was constantly disheveled by his desperate hands.

He was on his childhood when he decided to chop off his hand. He had to get a chair closer to the kitchen bar to take a knife, but his hands were tiny and clumsy, so he cut his finger with it. He saw with horror how the wound disappeared, and the blood came back inside his body in seconds. He ran to call the police, emergencies, anybody, but he tripped and fell. He'd become another year younger and his shoes were too big for him now.

He took them off and ran towards the table with the phone, but the height of the furniture increased before he reached it. He had become another year younger. He jumped to take it and throw it to the floor in his clumsiness. He bended and called the first number he found on the directory, one of his children, but they hanged up on him since they didn't recognize his voice. He tried to call again, but then became younger and the phone slipped through his hands, too small to hold it. In panic he pressed the buttons while he was on the floor, while he heard his heart on his ears and sweated.

Waiting for someone to pick up he bit the watch, that wouldn't separate from his skin even though his wrist wasn't big enough for it anymore. With all the strength his childish jaw allowed him, he bit the straps of the thing and the skin around it to tore it off, until, suddenly, he found himself on his back on the floor. He tried to talk, but it was useless. He tried to stand up, which was also useless. He was only able to wriggle and cry between his clothes, that were now big enough for him like sheets.

And suddenly, the crying stopped.

The watch fell to the ground, and from underneath it, the little shadow popped off. In the loneliness of the house, the silence swallowed the memory of a baby crying without anyone noticing.

Nobody was there to see the dark figure that appeared suddenly, that picked up the little shadow before disappearing, barely looking at the clothes on the floor. The watch beside them continued its tick-tock while its shadow became bigger as the house became darker, without anyone to alert of the passing of hours towards the night.