'Those of us who stood close by, who saw the watch’s finer details, reported: it had no hands. Just numbers in a circle, that’s all it was. And that’s what the harpist was checking, it seemed. He was confirming that there was no time, that the numbers arranged in a circle didn’t count for anything. Yes, he nodded, his lizard lips playing with the toothpick a little, yes, right on schedule. Nothing o’clock.

‘That’s what time it always is at the bend in the frozen river.’

— p. 14, “The Tormentors” by Nathan Grover, Thrice Fiction, No. 26