200-Word Drabble | Fiction | Short Story

The Smile Between Seconds

RWDrabble 2.0.238 — Friction

Image generated by the author using Google Gemini

Snow creaked under my boots as I crossed the frozen yard of my grandmother’s farmhouse in Rovaniemi. Inside, air hummed with unsettling warmth, not from the fireplace, but from something stranger.

A faint melody of “Bloody Mary” leaked from the old radio, warped and slow, as though Arctic wind had bent the record itself.

The shadows in corners seemed to twitch in time with the music, watching.

“Grandma, did you leave this on?” I asked, brushing frost from my sleeves.

She didn’t answer.

Instead, her gaze flicked nervously to where the hulking grandfather clock stood. Its pendulum swung too fast, as if impatient with time itself. The tick-tock wasn’t rhythm—it was friction, grinding against silence, scraping sanity away in steady strokes.

Then it happened. I swore I saw my grandfather clock smile.

“Did you see that?” I whispered, my voice fractured, brittle as ice. Grandma’s lips curled, not unlike the clock’s. “You always were slow to notice family secrets.”

The radio pivoted into a haunting tune, Sibelius’ Valse Triste, trembling like glass about to shatter. It was as if the shadows leaned in to listen.

The smile widened. The pendulum lunged forward.

In Finland, even time wears teeth.

But everybody’s afraid of time, and Grandfather’s Clock has all the time there is. — The Cat in Grandfather’s House by Carl Henry Grabo

Thank you, Karen Schwartz, for this fun prompt.

[embed]RWDrabble 2.0.238 For Monday, September 15, 2025medium.com