The Grandfather Clock (Short Story)
"When will they approve the contract?" Catherine stared out of the window, watching dead meat seed the fields with last year's nascent crop.
"The governor doesn't see the urgency. The longer we wait the more meat expires. All the while collateral decreases. We are all just pieces of the puzzle in this game of unending struggle."
She sighed, "it is a question of perspective I guess. The governor is wrong, these mutants are our property."
The sun beat beams of desiccated light on the material - puffs of plush cloud descended to earth. As specks of dirt drifted in the dying rays of the evening sun miniscule filaments of time shed minutes into hours, past into future, creation into destruction.
The material continued to grow.
Tick... tock, the clock spat moments into the universe.
"Will we ever get home my love?" Shelsen grimaced as he weeded roots from the ground.
His back creaked like a broken tree swaying in the breeze. Chitinous knees ground against hips, rolling painfully in the unnatural movement.
He raised his hoe and beat the ground in opposition to each grinding vertebrae of his spine.
Carley raised her hoe to shield her eyes. "Only our belief will get us through this husband. The great AllEverything guides our path! In death, in life and in servitude we are moments of imagination in the thoughts of the stars. Have faith!"
Steel blades beat the soil in unison, raking the garden of the damned. The material shimmied in a brief breeze funneled from the breast of dust hills.
"Faith is a desert wife, faith is barren."
Sinew strained and bones popped in unending rhythm.
The grandfather clock waited, time passed, life moved on.
People expired. Every moment ticked a tock in the spiral of infinite expectation. Science whirled a never ending repetition of theories proven, explained, examined, found to be only part of a whole... framed in each unending moment, an expression of finite understanding in an infinite dance.
A siren echoed through the stillness. Catherine darted across the room to pick up the communicator.
Demirek raised a hand "let me answer this one wife."
The sun smeared reticent light across his pallid face, eyes sunken in the reality of what might answer.
Demirek gasped the blade-like metallic communicator and raised it to eye level.
Dust whirled in a spiral of concentric seashells, each eating the other in a fractal arch of messy gore. The scene through the window merged with the holo-message, plucking limbs from flailing mutants in a maelstrom of sand, light and floating material.
Demirek's stomach lurched.
Contract approved an unearthly voice intoned as darkness descended.
Sweat cooled on his fevered forehead. Bedsheets clung to his body, helplessly swaddled in the time before names. Trapped in the place before language, before choice, in the helpless past of infancy.
Derek stared from his bed at the face of the grandfather clock.
The minute hand poised between now and then, between tick and tock.
His eyes widened and bile rose in his throat as the numbers on the clock face started to spin.
The minute hand teetered on the edge of tick...
TOCK
He screamed inside his paralyzed mind... "NOT AGAIN."
The end.
This story was inspired by two of the weekly prompts at The Ink Well creative writing community.
The prompt from last weeks post - A Matter of Time
and
A prompt from this week's post - Something sinister is passed down through the generations in a family, and everyone is powerless to stop it.
The title image used in this post was modified from creative commons license sources, 1 & 2. If you have enjoyed this sci-fi/horror surreal short story please do check out my homepage @raj808 for similar creative content. Thank you.
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Such a great story!!!! My favorite line:
Sure captures a foreboding that I feel now, as if at any moment time, and my existence, could just
... disintegrate 🤣
Hi @owasco
yeah, it is one of those stories that is pretty metaphysical... but I tried to weave some concreate characters in there and hopefully do justice to the 'horror' tag. As I was writing it, I felt like the core theme/tone (outside of the psychedelic imagery) was that of an unsettling feeling, like the dream that the clock had Derek trapped in was a reoccurring motif of suffering that humankind perpetuates. He was in a dream, but it was actually an alternative dimension in the future/past? Somewhere in the swirling whirlpool of time.
The curse of the grandfather clock.
I really hope this story doesn't bleed into my dreams tonight 🤣
Me too, or into mine! It's very dreamlike though. I don't think I could do that. Did it take long to write?
Truthy, no. I did spend about 30 mins editing it to remove repeated words and some clunky sentences, but the story took me about an hour and a half to write.
You're completely right about it being dreamlike, I hoped it might come across that it was all a dream, and then at the end it becomes apparent that it is Derek trapped by the clock in an unending horror of dreams that
... but it will happen again, forever.
Mwa ha ha ha ha 😂
Yes that's how it felt, trapped in a surreal and horrible moment in time.
I do enjoy horror where the gore is suggested and not exaggerated.
Well, yes, but you don't insist on drenching readers in pools of blood and unavoidable sticky splattering. We get it without having our own stomachs wrenched :)
A wonderful mythic quality, a blend of Mad Max and a 21st century scientific Armageddon.
The end is perfect:
The sense of
embodied in the relentless ticking of a clock.
A Promethean destiny, without the element of punishment. At least Zeus was angry. There was a rationale behind the suffering. In your universe, there is only indifference.
Great writing, of course. Words perfectly chosen to elicit the desired response. Congrats once again, @raj808.
I've been guilty of an onslaught of gore in my horror writing on hive in the past, and it is nice to hear your perspective on this tbh as I know some of my horror has been too gruesome for your taste in the past.
Although I do think that a truly gory horror story can be a good expression of the genre myself, I agree with what you're saying that it can be even more effective when suggested rather than described. On two levels; those who are horror aficionados can populate the story from their imagination, and those who are put off by graphic gory description can enjoy it with the suggestion rather than the graphic.
Mostly though, I'm happy that the core idea of this story came across... the inescapable futility of suffering expressed through the dream and the cursed clock. It is a hard universe for a reader to accept, but as long as the core ideal is clear, it works as a story.
It is horrific on that level, and my love of reading and writing horror completely comes from a story that puts people right on the edge of (or even beyond) their comfort zone.
Maybe an acquired taste though 😉
This can be true of gore, and of sentiment. Often a light touch (letting the imagination work) is more effective.
And, the core idea was inescapable for any careful reader :)
https://twitter.com/rowanj808/status/1371254478872150020
Nicely done, @raj808. You had me at...
I experienced an involuntary shiver right then, and it stayed with me throughout. I was glad to read your description in your comments, as I wasn't completely clear on all that was going on, but there's such delightful phrasing that it carried me along. I love the idea that Derek is trapped inside the clock.
I will never view a clock the same way again.
Ohhh the horror 😉
Glad the story sent a shiver up the spine. I think this story could benefit from a longer re-write in regards to fleshing out the plot. I was very pleased with how I built atmosphere and setting, but was certainly aware of ambiguity in the stories action.
Main thing for a horror flash fiction is to scare or unsettle, I feel like this story got the second one down pat.
😱 Mwa ha ha ha ha 😂
It must be thrilling to achieve that! I may have to try out the genre one of these days.
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STOPThe sense of implied, slow built gore really intrigued me all the way through. I love this, it seems so out of this world yet could be happening next door at the same time.
Nice writing, I really liked your pacing.
Cheers dude.
Trying to create unsettling atmosphere in horror is something that has always fascinated me. I'm a big fan of Clive Barker (who was a pupil at my high school), famous for the movie 'Hellraiser' who definetly goes the shock and gore route, but I think sometimes the slow build can be more creepy.
Glad you enjoyed the story Amir
Phew... This is scary. Hope it doesn't stay too long on my mind.
Derek being trapped in the clock is not a happy thought at all, I pity the poor guy.
A beautifully crafted story, I love how you can find the right words to give the right expression.
Very good job well done @raj808.
😱 Mwa ha ha ha ha.... my jon here is done 😂
In all seriousness tho, I'm made up that it creeped you out Bruno.