The Hourglass

Jacob sat behind his desk in his dusty old house, tracing his fingers along the delicate features of the silver hourglass. Much like himself, the black sand inside shifted restlessly. How long had it been since he first acquired this cursed object? Decades? Centuries? Jacob had long since forgotten. It didn’t matter anymore. Time for Jacob was now just an endless stream of stolen moments and of unfulfilled dreams. 

Today would be the day it finally ends. Jacob closed his old eyes, remembering the day it all began. He had been young once, a writer with an ambition which burned inside him. Days were never long enough, there was always too much to do, too much of life taken up by the mundane. When that desperate old man offered him the hourglass, promising him the gift of time, Jacob thought he’d found all the answers to his problems. 

 

“Turn the hourglass,” he’d said, “and you’ll have all the time you want!”

 

At first it was exhilarating. Choosing first to take the remaining time of an elderly man he’d known was already sick. What harm did it do? He’d lived his life already. He turned the hourglass, feeling the rush of stolen time flooding his veins. He wrote feverishly, his masterpiece was just within reach. But it was never enough. Always he needed more. 

So, he’d turn the hourglass again, and again, and again. The size of his dream and his ambition growing each time he did. Days bled into weeks, weeks into years. Jacob watched the world change around him, watched loved ones wither and die while he remained. And still, his masterpiece eluded him.

The addiction grew. He needed more time, more life to pour into his work. He rationalized it – what were a few years taken from strangers compared to the gift his art would give the world?

But with each turn, the weight of stolen dreams pressed down on him, as if Death itself was fighting back. He began to see them – flashes of lives unlived, aspirations snuffed out. The guilt began to press.

And Jacob’s own dreams? They grew monstrous, swelling beyond any hope of achievement. The world's expectations magnified in his mind until every word he wrote felt pathetically inadequate.

He tried to stop but the hunger always returned. The need to turn the hourglass one more time. Always that one more stolen lifetime and he’d stop.

Decades passed. Civilizations rose and fell. And still, Jacob turned the hourglass.

 

Until today.

 

All those years, those centuries of striving, and what did he have to show for it? A dusty house filled with relics of a world long past, and a manuscript that would never be finished. He'd sacrificed everything—his loved ones, his morality, his very soul—for a dream that now meant nothing to him. 

 

Whenever he gazed at his reflection in the tarnished mirror across the room, the face that stared back was a stranger's: wrinkled, hollow-eyed, devoid of the passion that had once driven him. This wasn't living; it was existing in a state of dissatisfaction, always reaching for a perfection that remained tantalizingly out of reach.
The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd stolen time to create something timeless, only to find himself trapped in an endless loop of frustration and regret. The masterpiece he'd envisioned had become a millstone, dragging him down by the neck into the depths of despair.

 

The idea had seeped up through his consciousness gradually, although he realised now that it had probably been with him for many years. What if he turned the hourglass on himself? The guilt of countless lives cut short, the burden of unfulfilled potential – all of it could be laid to rest.

 

His eyes fell on the hourglass again, its black sand shifting restlessly. With trembling hands, he lifted it. For a moment, he hesitated. What would happen to all the stolen time when he was gone? Would it return to those he'd taken it from, or dissipate into the ether? He realized it didn't matter. Whatever happened, it would no longer be his burden to bear.

 

Jacob's gaze swept across the room, taking in what little he had to show for his impossibly long life. Shelves upon shelves of books he'd collected over the centuries. Each item held a memory, a fragment of the life he'd stretched beyond recognition. There were no photographs, no friends or family, or children.

 

His eyes finally settled on the manuscript, the supposed masterpiece that had driven him to this point. Yellowed pages filled with words that no longer held meaning, dreams that had twisted into nightmares. He realized now that his true story wasn't in those pages, but in the lives he'd touched – and destroyed – along the way.

 

This ending, he thought, was perhaps the only fitting conclusion to his tale. He would return to the cycle of life and death he'd so long evaded. In his final act, he would embrace the very mortality he'd spent lifetimes running from.

 

Jacob closed his eyes and turned the hourglass. He felt the familiar rush, but this time, instead of invigorating him, he felt his life force ebbing away. As consciousness began to fade, he felt his body begin to crumble. Ash and dust swirling in that dead room with the hourglass at its centre.

 

Then it was over. The hourglass landing softly on the carpet. It’s time was replenished once more. The black sand continuing to shift, undisturbed, waiting for the next hand to grasp it, the next dream to devour.