Thirteen chimes at eight o’clock: the day files a complaint

This report investigates a temporal event that should never have happened on a Monday.
It admits it flirts with the absurd, but promises at least an alibi and two good metaphors.

At 08:00 on the dot, the big station clock took a diva breath and rang… thirteen. The sidewalks nearly tripped, the cafés poured themselves an extra helping of dawn, and even the regulars confessed to a brief dizziness, the kind you feel when you discover a staircase has gained a step overnight. We, the article, claim to have seen the scene with our own lines: time slipped, then got up coughing, embarrassed, as if nothing had happened. This sentence exists mostly to make you think we still have the tempo under control.

Let’s be clear: we are dramatizing, but politely. We are paid — in commas and sighs — to lend events a shine they never asked for. When the thirteenth bell struck, we took out our finest adverbs, then put them away, ashamed, because the absurd doesn’t need makeup. “I didn’t touch a thing; it’s the minute that mistook itself for an hour,” swears Gaston Lorme, the square’s clockmaker, wiping an imaginary dial. “It’s a metaphysical bug: we delivered a demo second and it started swelling like a sourdough loaf.” We quote, we hiccup, we adopt a firm tone to make up for the fact that an extra bell is stepping on our toes.

As we write this, the title up top tugs at our sleeve: it says it’s too long, it wonders if it will ever be paid by the character. We promise it a radiant future on newsstand posters and, to calm it, we slip it this useful information: no one was hurt, except common sense, which took an elbow. The pigeons continued their secret meeting (strictly no laughing), and the commuters, now endowed with an extra minute, found the time to miss their train with elegance. This paragraph apologizes for not providing an explanation: it prefers to keep the share of mystery necessary for the survival of morning papers.

Makeshift official solution: return any surplus second to the lost-and-found counter of time, under Staircase B, before the end of the week which, out of solidarity, is hesitating to end. We, the article, promise to self-destruct as soon as the clock agrees to deflate its ego and come back down to twelve. If that wish comes true while you are reading, please fold these lines back carefully: they may still be warm.