The clock tower bell strikes nine o’clock on a Saturday night, the air in the surrounding streets and lanes suffocating in a chilling mist. My hands are clinging on to a can of Coca-Cola, still sealed and untouched. My eyes, though frozen by winter, stare deeply into the hands of the clock tower. The streets are desolate, with parents and children bundling up in blankets by their campfires sipping on delicious tea blends. I, however, am not one to be so fortunate to share such sweet and savory luxuries. Instead I’m forced to indulge in the sour, rotten realities of hardships. 

I often like to take long walks by the clock tower at night, it often gives me an immense sense of faith and determination. Simply just watching time tick by gives me a sort of adrenaline rush to keep pushing on and grasp what excitement may be like. The mystical tune of the bell is quite extraordinary too, as though it calls for the waves of time to flow and shift into the future. Yet nobody finds this miracle of mechanical work enticing, it’s just another monument taken for granted. 

The clock tower now reads half past nine, my eyes grow weary and watery as I unenthusiastically turn towards the street of my home. After a few short paces, resemblance of life is present in a few clubs playing roaring jazz music of the twenties. Quite the retro enjoyment considering the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. Peering through the windows, numerous young and attractive women dance in arms with their lovers, their hands connecting with one another as the whaling trumpets slow down and smoothen out. The simple warmth of the grasp of hands has always enticed me as something so minimalistic, yet brimming with sentimentality and loving characteristics. Thinking on it, my face begins to crumple up into a lame and miserable frown, my hands hooking on to the pockets of my cotton jacket tighter than ever

For a moment in time I imagine the sheer bliss of wrapping the body of a lover beside me, as though a beautiful phantom lady were beside me on the street. I wanted it to be real so badly, and for a single moment I believed it was, and it was beautiful. The rotten neighbours in the streets would disagree with such a statement however, with a man a few storeys high pointing at me and laughing maliciously as he calls out “You lonely spastic.” I stare at him for a few seconds, my eyes gazing at his baldness, before shouting in return “Go take your meds gramps.” 

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Continuing down the road, my hands now wrapped around my own body, I eventually find myself at the front door of my crummy apartment block. The windows outside the entrance are still shattered from a drunken brawl outside the building six months ago. Entering my apartment room of 101, my mother at the entrance awaits for my return with the same stern disapproval as always. She walks up to me and gives me a devastating smack across the face with enough force to knock me to the ground, my mouth now bleeding from the pain.

“You were at that damn clock tower again, weren’t you? Go upstairs and do something useful for once in your miserable life”

I get up and try to hit her back, I’ve had enough of her, I’ve had enough of trying to be anything anymore. I stretch out my arm, but I fall once more, I’m too weak

“You’re a wimp. Get to your room you woman” my father calls from the kitchen

I make it to my bedroom after rinsing out the blood from my mouth in the bathroom, my body completely exhausted. Sitting down and thinking on everything, both today and in the past, I weep in fear? In pain? In confusion? I weep because there’s nothing else I can do. From my window, I can see the clock tower in the city park. It brings a smile to my face once more, its limestone walls being a change of pace from the dirty brick buildings. I stare deeply at its hands once more from my bed, pondering on existence until at once I say to myself

“One day...freedom can be mine”