Excellent | AI Visuals
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@AIByExcellent
🚀 Creating scroll-stopping AI visuals 🎨 AI Art • Graphic Design • Creative Concepts ✨ Turning imagination into reality 📩 DM for commissions & collaborations
THE HOUSE WITH BROKEN CLOCKS ⌚ Everyone in Benin City knew not to go past the mango tree on Akpakpava Road after dusk. That was where the house stood. Paint peeling, shutters crooked, and every single clock inside frozen at a different time. I was twelve when I dared my friends I’d spend one night there. They left me at the gate with a torch and a laugh. “Don’t get stuck,” Tunde said. The door wasn’t locked. It sighed open. Inside, time felt thick. A grandfather clock in the hallway read 3 :17. The kitchen wall clock: 11 :04. A tiny watch on a dusty table: 6 :52. None of them ticked. None of them were right. But the air smelled like fresh bread, like someone had just been there. I found photos everywhere. A woman laughing in the garden, a man fixing a bicycle, kids with missing teeth. All the clocks in the photos showed the same time: 4 :30. The exact moment, I’d learn later, when the house had caught fire thirty years ago. The family didn’t make it out. But the clocks did. They stopped the second the fire started, as if trying to hold that moment forever. At midnight my torch died. In the dark, the clocks started whispering. Not ticking. Whispering. Each one repeating the last thing someone said in that room. “Dinner’s ready.” “Tie your shoes.” “I love you.” 4 :30, over and over. I understood then. The house wasn’t haunted. It was just refusing to forget. Broken clocks, but a memory that still worked perfectly. I ran out before dawn. Never told anyone what I heard. But sometimes, when I pass that gate now, I swear I hear my name whispered from the kitchen clock. 11 :04. Right on time. What do you think the house would whisper if you stepped inside at 4 :30? TO BE CONTINUED •••
