Jeff Noon: Pixel Juice

So, he went into the shop.

It was filled with all the things he had ever bought, and all the things he had once dreamed of buying. The penny ghosts and the bird shoes, the word egg and song biscuit, the smoke-maps and dogseeds, and all the shadows in the world were on display like pieces of the night's calming sky. Reaching into a sudden pocket in his gown, Thomas found there a single penny of the old money. With it, he bought a lonely, whispering ghost.

Upon leaving the shop, he saw, or thought he saw, a group of people sitting beneath the tree on the patch of lawn. One of them, a woman, called to him by name. The children around her begged him to hurry.

And his suit changed to ashes.

I believed in the invisible watch so much that I went straight back to the classroom and hid it behind some books in my desk. I didn't want anybody else to see it; the watch was mine alone.

Every so often, during a boring lesson, I would open the desk, just to have a look at it. Never, not for one second, did it puzzle me that you couldn't tell the time by an invisible watch. The time wasn't important; it was the invisibility that got to me.

The magic of it.

I took it home with me that night, actually strapped it to my wrist. I slept with it under my pillow. And wore it to school the next day, but then, nervous that somebody would steal it off me, I hid it safely in the desk.

Just thinking about the watch was enough, but then at playtime I saw Colin Bradshaw with his mates. He asked me how the invisible watch was doing. They were all laughing at me. 'What time is it, Noony?' they shouted. 'What time is it?' I went back to the classroom, lifted up the desk lid, slowly, moved the books aside.

The invisible watch had gone.