For a full explanation, head to NightmareFuelProject.
tl;dr is using pictures for writing prompts all October.
[image source: René Lalique (1860-1945), Pocket watch, c. 1900.]
by James Hatton – 10/03/20
Thanatos sits on a park bench, a cool wind ruffling the bottoms of his robe. He crosses his legs and flips the page of his book. He had only recently discovered that he enjoyed science fiction. He had rebuked it as a passing fad somewhere in the early 1900’s thinking Jules Verne a bit of a hack, but now that the derivations of his work were fashionable, there really was some fantastic ideas he was enjoying.
He glanced at the sky, realizing the sun felt a little higher than he expected it to be and pulled his pocketwatch from a secret pocket. The weight of Death’s pocketwatch was heavy in his hand. No matter how many times he looked at it, he recognized the weight and heft of ages that lay within it. Every soul had been timed by this small clock and it’s tiny gears and cogs. Every laugh and cry ended with the tick of its hands.
Looking at the watchface, he sighed, “What a dullard I can be… daylight savings time..” and pulled the knob at the top to readjust. “…fall … forward.. spring back?”
He twisted the knob forwards. When he looked up the world was a desolate husk. Where children were playing a few short seconds ago, now black skeletons were melting away on the nuclear wind that chilled the warm horizon. The ground was a blackened mass of dead folliage and the sky was pungent with sulfur.
Thanatos sighed, slapping his forehead, “Fall back…” he rewound the knob and the world sprouted lush and alive again.
He put his pocketwatch back and his shoulders slumped, “It’s going to be a busy afternoon… I hope I can finish this chapter.”
