Doctor Ajax & The Watch
Old story, written in 2023
This story was written for a small writing contest I held with some friends. The premise was that every story had to include a cursed watch that could give you something immediately, costing you your time later.
Three days. Three days without water to die from dehydration. Three days until the dust storm would settle down. Three days until rescue. Three days until Doctor Adrian Ajax, or perhaps what was left of him, would be found by another living soul. Three horrid days until this Schroedinger’s Box would be opened. For three days Doctor Ajax would have to stay holed up in his tent, a tent that seemed to have only a few days left in it. A large gash in the tent’s side had been haphazardly patched up with several strips of duct tape and the adhesive was slowly giving out. His cell phone had just enough charge left in it for him to make an emergency call for rescue. The last of his water was stuck in his car, some unknowable distance from his tent. Venturing out into the dust storm would surely spell certain death. Trapped in a polyester prison, Doctor Adrian Ajax had no choice but to wait.
Doctor Ajax was a professor of anthropology at The University of Arizona. Several months prior he heard of an abandoned colonial settlement rumored to exist deep within the Sonoran Desert. Doctor Ajax had always longed for a discovery to claim for himself, something that would forever leave his mark on history. The man was no stranger to strange rabbit holes. He was known throughout the department to spend months on end holed up in his house looking into lost cities and undiscovered ruins spawned from even the most scant hearsay. It had become a sort of tradition for the freshmen to come up with a new rumor at the end of the year so he would grade their final assignments more leniently. For about a week after the end of the spring semester, Doctor Ajax was hard at work cross-referencing old regional maps and satellite photos. Finally, he pinpointed the town’s most likely location and began preparing for his voyage out into the sandy wastes.
Naturally, he was unable to secure funds for a proper investigation into the alleged ghost town so he had to make the trek on his own. The forecast had called for clear weather the whole week. He piled his things into his sedan, made sure to top off his tank, punched the abandoned settlement's coordinates into his phone, and ventured forth down a barren highway. Before he knew it, he was only a few miles away from the town. He made a sharp turn off the pavement and into the sand. He had gone driving off-road a couple times before, but never this far out. Fueled by curiosity and hubris, he kept going further and further into the dusty nothingness.
Just a hundred feet from the town's supposed location, his car got stuck in the sand. In a panic Doctor Ajax floored the accelerator, which only served to dig his tires deeper into the ground. As he got out of his car to try and dig his wheels out manually, he spotted something on the horizon. Something unmistakably man-made. He hurriedly grabbed some supplies from his car, accidentally tearing a hole in his tent as he gathered things together, and went the rest of the journey on foot.
At last he stumbled upon the sandblasted structure: A large archway meticulously carved from an exotic wood. Much of the detail and nearly all of the paint had been weathered away over the centuries. The ruins of a town lay before it. Every building was maybe a facade at best at this point, save a single two story house still standing along the outskirts. Old maps claimed there used to be a river that passed by the town, which had since dried up. The remains of a well sat in a crumpled pile of sandstone bricks in the center of town. Scrubs had taken up residence around it, garnishing the mostly beige structure with a little greenery. A lone scorpion stood as a stalwart sentinel, watching the strange man approach the well from a crevice in the ruin. Doctor Ajax looked around in awe, recording everything he could with his phone. He snapped out of his trance, realizing he was going to be there for a while, and started setting up camp.
It was then that he realized there was a hole cut into the tent. He hastily patched it up with some duct tape, made sure the tent was secure, and returned to investigating the until recently lost ghost town. Doctor Ajax made sure to capture everything he was seeing with his phone. He had had this phone for nearly half a decade at this point, so the battery wasn’t nearly what it used to be. In his excitement he completely forgot about this.
Doctor Ajax walked around the town surveying the remains of various buildings for nearly two hours, trying to piece together why this town was built here and who might have lived in it. Eventually he made his way to the only standing house. The windows had long since been destroyed and the door sat ajar on oxidized hinges. He carefully creaked the door open further, unveiling a distinct lack of life within. Doctor Ajax crept into the house, leaving footsteps in the sand that had poured into the house over the years. Sunlight beamed in through windowless frames which all seemed to converge on an ornate wooden box half-buried in a pile of sand in the middle of the room. The rest of the room was barren wood with similar mounds of sand and other debris scattered throughout. There used to be stairs to the second story; now they were but just a few planks precariously perched upon the wall.
As he scanned the room he couldn’t help but fixate his attention on the box in the center of the room. He approached it, making sure to capture its every angle as it sat submerged in the sand. Doctor Ajax gingerly removed the box from its place of rest. Grains of sand twinkled in the sunlight as they fell from its sides. He set the box down carefully on a clear patch of floor, unlatched a small metal hook, and flipped the lid open. Inside was a watch resting on a red velvet pillow. The opulent object sat there in stark contrast to its environment. The metal had a perfectly polished finish as if it had just been cleaned. The black obsidian watch face sat behind a round piece of sapphire glass, with its white ivory hands stuck at midnight. Several additional dials decorated it, each one a different timer. Out of its right side protruded a set of knobs and buttons. The band was made of a similarly shiny metal that ended with a clasp on the opposite side. Beyond these details, the watch was entirely devoid of any hints of its origin.
While ogling the curious chronograph, Doctor Ajax could hear the wind begin to howl outside. Not soon after he began to get pelted by grains of sand flying through the window frames of the house. If there were windows in this house he may have decided to stay in it. But then again, he didn’t have any water in there. Doctor Ajax put the watch back in its box and took it with him back to his tent, covering his nose and mouth with his shirt to avoid inhaling the airborne earth that whizzed by. Visibility was getting worse by the second as Doctor Ajax approached his tent. The forecast didn’t call for any major dust storms, so he figured it might just be a small one going by. It’d be a good thing if it were short too, as he was parched and had only brought a single bottle of water with him. The rest was in his car. It was at this moment Doctor Adrian Ajax realized he had no idea where his car was relative to his tent.
This wasn’t the first time Doctor Ajax had been stranded in the desert. He had a satellite plan on his phone and the local rescue team knew him from his previous offroading escapades. As he looked down at his phone, he realized he hadn’t stopped recording video on it and the battery was teetering on the brink of emptiness. He hastily dialed the rescue team and informed them of his situation. He figured the dust storm would settle down in a few minutes and he’d be out of there soon enough. Doctor Ajax arrogantly drank the last of his water while waiting for the operator’s response. He was told the sudden dust storm looked like it wouldn’t be calming down for at least three days. Doctor Ajax spat out the last of his water in shock.
Three days. That’s how long he would have to wait. The gusting sands perpetually pelted his shelter in rhythmic waves and showed no signs of ceasing. To pass the time Doctor Ajax was fiddling around with the strange watch he had found. It was an automatic watch. He twisted the main knob, winding it up. The hands immediately began ticking. Not soon after he figured out how to get the timer to work and set it to three days and put it on his wrist. At least now he could see how long it would take until he would be rescued. It was starting to get dark and Doctor Ajax was quickly growing tired. As he drifted off to sleep he almost thought he heard the sandstorm begin to subside.
When he woke up the next morning, Doctor Ajax was in the hospital. After a brief conversation with a doctor, he was let out. Apparently the dust storm had settled down for a few hours after nightfall, letting the rescue team pick him up via helicopter. Somehow he had slept through the entire ordeal. He looked down at his watch. A little under 60 hours remained on the watch timer. As he walked home and grabbed the spare key from under the welcome mat, he started to feel thirsty. It was a rather hot day out. Nothing abnormal about that. He went inside and had a nice glass of water.
Somehow he still felt dehydrated. Maybe it’d just take a bit for the water to get into his system. As he sat down and had another glass of water, he could feel a sinking feeling begin to form a pit in his stomach. As if by instinct, Doctor Ajax tried winding the timer of the watch up more. Maybe just a minute. The moment he stopped touching the dial he immediately felt better. Doctor Ajax took the watch off and set it down on the table.
Doctor Ajax was not a superstitious man, but something felt wrong with this watch. It was made a long time ago so perhaps it was just made of something we would know is dangerous now. If that was the case, he shouldn’t just have it sitting around in his house in the open. Besides, it was a historical artifact. It was a miracle that it was still in such good condition, let alone working. Maybe it’d be better if he sent it to the University’s archaeology department.
After a few phone calls someone came by to take the watch off Doctor Ajax’s hands. Out of sight, out of mind, right? He went back to checking his email for a few minutes until he started to get thirsty again. Dry day today, huh? Except this time the parched feeling never subsided. It grew stronger by the second. It felt like a tumor spreading through his body. Doctor Ajax figured it must be all in his head. He looked down at his hands and watched his skin slowly shriveling and flaking. Disregarding the obvious sign that things were not all in his head, Doctor Ajax decided to take a shower. A cold shower to hopefully snap him out of whatever desert madness he might’ve caught while stranded in his tent.
He could feel the cold for sure, but not the water. It felt like the moisture was actively being repelled from his skin. It was a strange feeling, like putting your hands in the water while wearing rubber gloves. Except this was over his entire body. Even his hair couldn’t hold water and stayed perfectly dry as he hopelessly scrubbed at it, only dislodging some sand from his scalp. Doctor Ajax got out of the shower, with no need to dry himself off, and decided he needed a drink. A strong drink.
Doctor Ajax rummaged through his fridge, the cold humid air feeling like a desert night against his cracking skin, and pulled a six pack of beers out from the back. He cracked one open. And then another. And another. Before he knew it he had downed the entire pack. Doctor Ajax didn’t feel thirsty anymore, but he also didn’t feel much of anything at this point. He fumbled his way over to the couch, aimlessly flicking through things on his cell phone. In a drunken stupor he felt his phone fly out of his hand and crash into the stone mantle of his fireplace. The screen shattered as it fell down onto more hard stone, causing the entire thing to break into pieces. The phone’s SD card, the only thing proving he had actually found a ghost town, was snapped clean in half and fell into a pile of old ashes within the fireplace. Doctor Ajax watched this happen in slow motion as he dropped out of consciousness and collapsed onto the couch.
Hours later in the middle of the night Doctor Ajax bolted awake with a searing headache. He couldn’t tell if it was from a hangover or from dehydration. Regardless, something had finally clicked in his head. It was the watch. The watch did this. He needed to wind the timer back up. It worked when he had that water earlier and then wound it. If it worked once it should surely work a second time. But how would he get it? He looked at the clock. It was just around 3 AM. Every building on campus would be closed by this point. Besides, he wouldn’t even know where to look for the thing. Even if he could find it, would he even be allowed to touch it again? Or try to wind it up again? Messing with historical artifacts is generally frowned upon in this line of work. To top it all off, who would even believe him? It was ridiculous. Impossible. Absolutely outrageous that a watch could inflict such a condition on a man firstly, and secondly that winding a single timer on it would restore him to normal. It didn’t help that his car was still stuck somewhere out in the desert.
Doctor Ajax’s head was spinning. His whole body was spinning. He twisted around like a maniac trying to figure out what to do. All the while his movements became more and more erratic as he could feel moisture vanishing from his musculature. In a last-ditch effort he grabbed his rarely-used landline and tried calling one of his colleagues in the archaeology department. It went straight to voicemail. After the tone Doctor Ajax could barely muster several raspy wheezes before collapsing onto the floor. The receiver dangled down from the table like a hangman in a windstorm. In his last moments of consciousness all Doctor Adrian Ajax could hear was the mild monotone buzz of an empty phone line.
The next day his colleague saw a rather lengthy voicemail left by Doctor Ajax’s landline of all things. A seemingly empty voicemail. It droned on for a moment before he could hear a loud thud followed by even more silence. He immediately called the police. Half an hour later the door to Doctor Adrian Ajax’s house was busted down by law enforcement. The desiccated remains of the late Doctor were discovered unceremoniously discarded on the floor. Coroners ruled it death by dehydration. This stumped the coroners who figured it should have taken three entire days without water to cause this kind of condition they clearly saw before them.
Doctor Ajax’s car was eventually returned, but nobody ever found the ghost town he had supposedly discovered the watch in. All the buildings had been destroyed in the dust storm that would have buried Doctor Ajax had he stayed there. The watch was eventually lost among all the other trinkets often brought into the archaeology department. Doctor Adrian Ajax himself would never be known for any kind of historical discovery, but he would be forever remembered as a strange medical case study. A morbid fun fact.