The Clock That Runs Fast
A free B2-level English story for language learners, readable online in 7 languages, with an option to listen via the free Storyteller app.
A newcomer to a small town learns why its courthouse clock has deliberately run four minutes fast for decades.
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Odalys had been living in the small town for exactly nine days when she first noticed the clock above the town hall was wrong. It read four minutes fast, consistently, every single time she checked it against her phone.
She mentioned it to a coworker, expecting a shrug or a quick joke about small-town maintenance budgets. Instead, the woman looked at her strangely, as if Odalys had asked something she wasn't supposed to ask.
"It's always been four minutes fast," the coworker said. "Nobody fixes that clock. Ask Emeric at the hardware store, if you're really curious."
Odalys, still new enough to feel awkward walking into unfamiliar shops, went anyway during her lunch break. Emeric turned out to be an elderly man who had been repairing the town's clocks, on and off, for nearly fifty years.
"That clock has run four minutes fast since 1974," Emeric told her, barely looking up from the drawer he was sorting. "It was set that way on purpose, and it's stayed that way ever since."
He explained that in 1974, a fire had broken out at the shoe factory that used to stand where the parking lot was now. The factory's warning siren had been slightly delayed that morning, and four minutes had made the difference between a frightening evacuation and a fatal one.
Afterward, the council had voted to set the courthouse clock four minutes fast, a permanent reminder never to assume there was time to spare. "If the clock ran on time," Emeric said, "it would just be a clock like any other one in any other town."
Whoever had set it that way, he added, must have wanted the whole town to remember, not just the people who had lived through it.
"Most people who ask about it have lived here for years," he said, finally looking up at her. "You've been here nine days."
Odalys hadn't expected an answer with this much weight behind it, and she said so. Emeric shrugged and handed her a spare part he had been meaning to drop off at the hall anyway.
"Come by Saturday," he said. "We wind the church clock together every week. Might as well learn how it's done."
