Sunday

*The Day the Market Clock Broke*

In Ajaokuta, the market clock hadn’t worked since 1998. Everyone still set their day by it anyway. “Meet me at the clock at 4,” people would say, even though the hands had been stuck at 11:47 for twenty-seven years. It was tradition. It was also easier than arguing about whose phone had the right time.

On a Thursday morning, the clock started moving again.

No one noticed at first. Baba Sule, who sold roasted plantain under it, was arguing with a customer about pepper prices. The clock’s minute hand twitched, then crept to 11:48. He didn’t see it. But the children did.

“Uncle! The clock is alive!” shouted Kemi, 9 years old and fearless.

Within ten minutes, the whole market had stopped. Traders left their tomatoes, tailors dropped their needles, okada riders killed their engines. Two hundred people stood in a circle, staring up at that rusted face as the hand moved, slow and stubborn, toward 11:49.

Old Mama Jumoke began to cry. “My husband died at 11:50,” she whispered. “He said he’d be back before the clock hit twelve. He never came.”

The hand kept moving. 11:50. A murmur went through the crowd. Some stepped back, as if time itself might spill out and drown them.

At 11:51, the power transformer on the next street blew with a sound like thunder. Lights died. Generators coughed to life. And the clock stopped again.

Silence.

Then Baba Sule laughed, loud and sudden. “See? Even time is tired of us,” he said. He picked up his tray of plantain. “It stopped at 11:51. That’s my lunch time. Market is open.”

People looked at each other, then laughed too. The tension broke like a rope cut clean. Within minutes, bargaining started again, louder than before.

But for the rest of the day, no one said “meet me at the clock.” They said “meet me at 11:51.”

And for the first time in years, the clock had a meaning again.

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That’s 312 words. Want another one tomorrow, maybe something funny or a bit spooky?