Hickory Dickory Dock

[9:33 PM — Wednesday, December 23rd]

Hickory dickory dock. The mouse ran up the clock.

The morgue’s sterile silence trembled with an impossible rhythm.

Three hours. Three minutes. Three seconds.

Not that long ago, they pronounced Lilith Romana Grimes dead.

Cause of death. Chest cavity hemorrhage. This was what was in the doctors’ reports. But many eyes that witnessed the body argued otherwise.

Cracked ribcage, bones piercing several vital organs. The internal damage was in terrible shape, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer and had at it. It was an inexplicable phenomenon that had come out of nowhere without answers.

Yet, lying upon the sliding table, her body, a vessel waiting to be reclaimed, sat. The thin white sheet that cloaked her body fell just before the stitches unraveled like a nursery rhyme’s last desperate verse. Skin unfolded, and a hand emerged—elegant, coated in the memory of death.

Caked in red, she climbed, contorting upward to stand upright before a mirror to run her fingers through their long hair. Blackness saturated the color, a potent scarlet hue shimmering beneath. Amber-hazel eyes studied the reflection that looked back. Supple, firm skin, caked in a thick layer of blood that moved around, shifted, and thickened to folds. It hardened not as a shell but into silk that dried into a black dress with many folds.

Lilith could taste the cold remnant of death—sharp, bitter, temporary.

The fluorescent light flickered, its electricity feeling almost like pins dancing across her resurrected form.

With a deep sigh, Lilith poked and prodded at her supple, firm skin. It felt like new clothes, washed and out of the dryer.

“My thirties, huh? Oh, Diora, you’ve been a naughty girl to bring me back to such a state.”

Her tone was sharp, and her gaze shifted to a more familiar, harsh scowl. Her reflection in the mirror observed her, autonomously, from another realm.

The clock struck one. The mouse ran down.

“Hmm, they should have left me be, yes?” The reflection smiled as Lilith continued to talk to herself. “And here I was content with dying of old age…”

A rat in the corner—witness and unwitting participant—scurried, not knowing that someone had already written its fate.

The independent reflection walked out of view from its mirrored world, disappearing entirely. Seconds, if so long, did the squeaking from the tiny creature bellow out in pain last.

A cut emerged along its back as if being dissected.

“Don’t be that way,” Lilith hushed. “Fighting back always hurts. Just let it be.”

Hair-curling sounds simmered as the skin of the rat folded back into place. Its body twitching despite not having a pulse.

“There, not so bad now, is it? Go find her. She couldn’t have gotten too far. And while you’re at it, find that foul stench I smell as well.”

At the word of a command, it scurried out of sight.

Alone, Lilith stared back at the vacant mirror to adore herself. Though unreflective, she stared at it intently. Stretching, touching her toes without bending her knees, rolling her shoulders, and tilting her head.

“Goodness… It’s been so long since I could move like this…”

Not a moment later, the single fluorescent light above flickered.

As it steadied, the woman it had cast over was gone.

Hickory dickory dock.

[1:07 AM — Thursday, December 24th]

The mouse ran up the clock.

The rats began their dance. One bite. Then another. A mathematical progression of infection, of control. Lilith’s unspoken command transformed them from individual creatures to a single, pulsing organism.

By 3:15 AM, two million rats moved as one—a living clock ticking to a rhythm only she could hear.

The mouse ran down the clock.

[11:13 PM — Thursday, December 24th]

Lilith watched, her gaze falling upon the intricate network of the sprawling streets and the city lights. She stood with no ground, floating in the air high above for none to see as it provided the most beautiful sight to behold—the symphony that was about to be had.

“Every command,” she murmured, “must come with a sacrifice.”

Raising her hands as if to conduct a silent orchestra, she tapped her fingers in the air. A vast, shadowy hand enveloped the city. Most people thought nothing of it, a simple gust of wind. Chilling, dry, cold air, a by-product of winter days at night in the heart of a city.

But for Lilith, it was as if she held the entire city in her grip.

The city streets pulsed like veins, one with her own heartbeat. Clapping her hands together, the rats in the city, no matter how far and wide, were both her eyes and ears. The whispers of everyone — man, woman, and child — tickled her eardrum until one voice reached her with a name.

“Alicent…”

To speak a witch’s full name was a curse. Yet, for Lilith, it brought with it a declaration of war.

By midnight, Lilith had taken to finishing one witch only for another’s name to grace her ears.

But as she moved, she found her path crossing another’s. A woman stepped out of the building engulfed in flames. Her body healed almost instantly, leaving not even a scratch as fingers ran through her long, ashen-white hair. It was not a witch but an old “friend” — one who stood with a dazzling hypnotic grin.

“Eve…”

“Lilith…”

The two stared at each other, their hands filled with still air and death within their grips.

“Is that a witch in your hands?”

“Yeah. Long night. Going to burn her over in that nice big fancy candle you got going on. You? Want help with that?”

“No. No need. You aren’t the type for revenge anyway. Don’t worry. He doesn’t have much longer.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

Time is a rat, while death is a whisper. The clock never stops as the two carry on with their businesses.

Hickory dickory dock.