Gilda always believed time was more of a friendly suggestion at best. On one peculiar Tuesday, when clocks began to tick backwards in their sleepy town, she donned her finest pajamas—complete with a matching eye mask.

Ted, her neighbor and avid collector of antiquities, stumbled upon the first mystery. In reverse, his grandfather’s clock whispered secrets long forgotten, or perhaps, never learned. "You’re not listening properly," he grumbled, adjusting the pendulum like it was a fussy toddler.

Meanwhile, Gilda attempted to reverse a pancake recipe, but her culinary meddling led to a fluffy disaster resembling a fluffy cat masquerade. "Pancakes should not have whiskers," she declared, triumphantly tossing the failed breakfast.

A shadow cast itself against the kitchen light, morphing into an unexpected visitor. Past Gilda, sporting a floppy sun hat typical of 1978, nudged her sideways amidst pancake rain.

"Martha Stewart had it wrong, dear," Past Gilda chuckled, "The secret is not in the timing but in the thyme!"

As the clock ticked its way towards chaos, the line between past and future distorted. Gilda exchanged culinary advice with her former self while Ted negotiated with a spectral version of his great-great-grandfather over the true meanings of tea and time.

"To reverse or not to reverse, that is the question," Gilda mused, glancing at her pancake masterpiece hanging precariously from the ceiling. Above the kitchen table, time indeed ticked backwards—but only in the most spectacularly wrong way.