Madiso's Clock Doesn't Lie
Madiso lay cupped between two gentle hills like something the earth had intended to keep secret. Its single main road—Maple Street—ran a crooked mile from the train stop to the river, flanked by red‑brick shops whose attics had once stored grain and now stored gossip. At the center of town rose the clock‑tower: four stories of soot‑dusted limestone topped by an iron bell that sang the words everyone knew by heart—dilly ding dilly dong—even though no one could explain why they heard syllables instead of simple notes. The chime was Madiso's heartbeat, an irregular one; some days it rang every hour like any honest clock, and other days it chose its own rhythm—three minutes past midnight, quarter to two in the afternoon, or precisely when a secret was spoken aloud. People learned to shrug at the unpredictability the way one grows used to a limp, but travelers felt it in their bones: something here kept its own calendar.
Mido Karanja, newly twenty‑one and still lanky enough to seem unfinished, waited on the library steps across from the tower, sketchbook balanced on his knee. He wore jeans scrubbed pale around the pockets and a gray hoodie whose sleeves had stretched with worry. His pencil scratched out columns of numbers next to hurried diagrams of gears and pendulums. For as long as he could remember, the bell's pattern had felt like a code only he was meant to solve. He recorded every chime: date, time, lunar phase, barometer reading, the shape of sparrow flocks overhead—anything that might reveal a hidden rule.
A gust swept dried elm leaves across the plaza, rattling them like viewless dice. Mido lifted his eyes, half expecting the clock to refuse its usual noon announcement, but at exactly twelve it tolled twice, a polite stutter, then swallowed the rest of the hour. Dilly ding. A pause long enough for a single breath. Dilly dong. Silence.
Mido's wristwatch said 12:00:00 on the dot. "So you do know the rules," he murmured to the tower, pleased and annoyed at once. He jotted double strike, withheld remainder beside the timestamp, underlining it twice.
Across the street, Rosie's Diner exhaled the smell of frying onions and piney soap. Through the window a tall young woman laughed at something a customer said, her head tipping back so that strands of auburn hair fell free of their ribbon. Sia Morales could laugh with her whole body; people felt brighter in her orbit, as if someone had washed the dust from the sky. Madiso called her hot Sia—never unkindly, but with a mixture of admiration and ownership that made Mido wince. She was the town's treasure, and he its overlooked footnote, but that never stopped him from watching her when her reflection caught sunlight like a match struck against glass.
She spun from the counter and eased through the lunchtime crowd, balancing three plates and a carafe of coffee. Sia's smile traveled ahead of her like a herald. Mido closed his notebook, heart drumming. Every day he promised himself he'd speak to her, and every day he returned home with a throat full of unsentences. Ambition was easy on paper; in the world of breath and skin, it trembled.
Sia slid the last plate onto table six—fried bologna on rye for Mr. Henderson, who'd chewed the same breakfast since Sia was old enough to reach the counter—then refilled his mug. The bell across the square finished its stubborn two‑note greeting, and a hush drifted through the diner as regulars checked their phones. Two chimes at noon meant something was about to start, though no one could ever agree on what. Maybe rain. Maybe bad luck. Maybe the post office would close early again for reasons the clerk refused to explain. In Madiso, the unusual was only unusual for outsiders.
Sia wiped her palms on her apron. She had exactly ten minutes before the next rush. Mrs. Oduor, the owner, was kind about breaks so long as tables stayed cleared and coffee flowed. Sia grabbed a lemonade to go and stepped outside into a noon washed pale by thin clouds.
On the library steps Mido sat alone, head down, flipping pages. Sia had known him in passing since grade school—quiet, polite, the boy teachers praised for neat handwriting and forgot at recess. She'd once asked him to sign her yearbook; he'd written Never trust a clock that winks. She still had no idea what it meant, but it had made her smile then, and the memory tugged now like a sleeve.
She crossed Maple Street, traffic no more than a distant hum, and stopped three steps below him. "Is it a good day for secrets?" she asked.
Mido jumped, almost dropping his pencil. "Sia. Hey. Um—secrets?"
"You're always writing like the world whispered something nobody else heard." She sipped the lemonade. "If it did whisper, today seems the type of day it would choose."
He blinked. "Two strikes at noon," he said, as if that explained anything.
"What's that mean? I always figured the tower was drunk before lunch."
Mido's smile flickered. "I'm not sure yet. Maybe it's correcting itself. Or correcting us." He closed the notebook, suddenly self‑conscious. "Sorry. I sound crazy."
Sia sat on the step below him, arms folded on her knees. "Crazy is naming our town's only clock after a children's rhyme and pretending that's normal. Your notes? Those are scientific." She angled her head. "Show me?"
He hesitated. No one had ever asked to see the ledger of his obsession. But something in her gaze—steady, unmocking—felt safe. He opened to the latest page. A grid of dates and chime counts marched alongside rough sketches of the tower's face. Sia traced a finger over 12/08—13:15, three strikes and a cough—and laughed. "It coughed?"
"It makes this throat‑clearing clang, like a rusty hinge." Mido pointed. "Here's today. Noon, double strike, silence. It's never done that combination before."
"So it's special?"
"Maybe." He looked at her hands, small calluses on the pads from carrying too many plates. "Maybe it means something is starting."
Sia leaned back, studying the tower. "I'd like something to start. Anything."
Mido's throat tightened. "Like what?"
She shrugged. "Farther than Madiso. Modeling scout said I had a 'vivid presence.'" She made air quotes. "Only place I've been vivid so far is table twelve."
"You will," he said, sharper than intended. "You'll go." The thought both thrilled and stung—Madiso without her laughter would echo differently.
Sia glanced at him, surprised by the certainty. "What about you?"
Mido opened his mouth, closed it. His dreams felt fragile spoken aloud—building an algorithm that unraveled the tower's logic, selling it, leaving this town not out of restlessness but victory. "I'm—working on something," he said.
"A secret," she teased.
He flushed. "A project."
A rumble of thunder stitched the far horizon though the sky remained silver‑blue. Sia squeezed the lemonade lid tight. "That sounds like my cue. Rain crowds love grilled cheese." She stood. "Thanks for sharing your secret, Mido."
He watched her hurry back to the diner, apron fluttering, and felt the day divide along a fine seam: before she noticed him, after. He pocketed the notebook, heart jittering with a mixture of fear and anticipation. Two strikes at noon. Let the ledger record it.
The storm arrived like a guest who'd promised only to drop by and instead unpacked luggage. Rain drummed the diner roof, ricocheted off the bell tower in glissandos. Inside, the line of soaked patrons snaked to the door. Sia moved table to table, ponytail damp, cheeks bright. Normally the chatter energized her, but something new pressed at the back of her skull—an ache, subtle, as though she were squinting at too fine print. She dismissed it: heat, noise, caffeine deficiency.
At three‑thirty, the bell rang three times in rapid succession—dilly ding dilly ding dilly dong—then a fourth half‑strike that ended in a warped clang. The diner fell silent. Rain paused as if holding its breath.
Peter Mweu, a high‑school junior, looked up from his phone. "Tower's coughing again."
Sia's temples throbbed. The bell's pitch felt different, not only heard but felt, a vibration through her molars. Cups rattled. An older woman at the counter muttered a prayer. Sia steadied a water jug with both hands, knuckles whitening. Heat flashed behind her eyes, and for a second the room tilted. Plates slid. Someone shouted. The jug slipped from Sia's grasp, shattering on the tile in a burst of glass and water.
She stared at the mess, pulse hammering. The silence that followed was thicker than shock—more like recognition. The bell had declared something irrevocable, and her body had understood first.
Mrs. Oduor hurried over. "Go sit, Sia. You're pale."
"I'm fine," Sia lied, voice trembling. Knees wobbled. She sidestepped the shards and hurried to the staff bathroom. In the mirror, beads of sweat dotted her forehead though the diner's AC was on high. She splashed water on her face and dabbed with a paper towel. When she looked again, she swore the circles beneath her eyes had darkened, faint but unmistakable. She leaned closer. The faintest line had appeared at the corner of her mouth, as if drawn with an invisible quill and inked only in certain light.
Thunder growled. The line vanished. She inhaled twice, willing steadiness. It was nothing. Stress. But the moment she stepped back onto the diner floor she felt older by a measure impossible to name—like an instrument whose pitch had slipped imperceptibly flat.
Evening settled with a hush after the storm. Maple Street glistened, neon reflections skating across puddles. The bell tower kept silent, as though exhausted by its own performance. Mido locked the library door—he volunteered evenings for the extra Wi‑Fi access—and slung his backpack over one shoulder. Clouds shredded to reveal a sliver of moon.
He considered stopping at Rosie's for pie, hoping to speak to Sia again, but lights were out; the Closed sign swung gently in the after‑rain breeze. He pictured her home safe, maybe reading by lamplight. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he'd ask if she wanted to see his algorithm in progress. He'd show her the beauty in patterns, prove he wasn't just the quiet boy collecting eccentricities.
The streetlamp closest to the tower flickered twice, then burst with a pop of glass. Darkness swallowed the plaza. Mido startled. In the sudden quiet he heard it—a low hum, almost beneath hearing, emanating from the tower like a throat clearing before speech. He took two steps toward it.
Dilly ding. Soft, as if from a great distance.A pause.Dilly dong.
Mido checked his watch: 9:47 p.m. He recorded the time silently in his head, then noticed something new on the tower's face. Around the edge, just inside the carved hour marks, a thin ring of light pulsed—faint, blue‑white, following the circumference clockwise, then anticlockwise, like a heartbeat that couldn't decide direction. It had never done that, not in all his years observing.
A chill clasped his spine. He backed away. Rain ticked off gutters. The pulse faded. The tower resumed its usual blankness. But something had changed; he felt it in the echo of the chime still vibrating in his sternum.
Across town, Sia lay awake in her small rented room, staring at the ceiling. Her headache had faded, but a weight lingered—a sense of being observed from within. She lifted her hand, turning it in the lamplight. Nothing seemed different, and yet everything did. She pressed her palm to her cheek, half expecting to feel new hollows. Her fingertips tingled where they met skin. She swallowed hard.
From her window she could just see the tower's spire. Lightning flickered at the horizon, illuminating the silhouette. For an instant she thought she saw the ring of light Mido had witnessed, but when she blinked it was gone.
She whispered to no one, "What did you do?"
Whether she meant the tower, the storm, or herself, she could not say.
Morning would come, and with it the humdrum rituals of coffee and small‑town politics, yet something had begun—something counted out in hesitant chimes and ledger entries, in hairline cracks beneath perfect skin, in code stitched into spiral‑bound notebooks. Madiso's clock did not lie; it merely waited for someone to understand the truth it told: time here was negotiable, and every bargain carried a price.
The plaza slept under low clouds, but in his attic bedroom Mido plotted data points until dawn silvered the rooftops. On her narrow mattress, Sia dreamed of walking backward through a crowd that aged in reverse as she passed, their faces smoothing into blankness. Above them all the tower loomed, the bell's lips parting for words she could almost grasp: dilly ding dilly dong.
And somewhere in the quiet algebra between two lonely hearts, a ledger turned its first page.