"For example, Aunt Crystal," I noted aloud. "She died young, had little ones--I'd call it an unfortunate demise, even... a surprise demise." I grinned at the unexpected poetry. "But never untimely. Do you," I said, "remember Aunt Crystal, or were you too young?"
The portly gray-suited man in my living room said nothing. He continued to stare around my house, squinting, pretending to listen.
"Everything has a place and a time," I prattled on, pretending his silence didn't hurt, pretending he wasn't being rude. "I'm sure you agree. Just the other day I told Advance, I said, wasn't Crystal's death timely?"
This time he nodded. He was frowning at my kitchen window, running a finger down the length of the sill, and now as I paused in my soliloquy, he tsked at it.
The gesture was too rude to ignore, but too disrespectful to acknowledge. "Ahh, like my new curtains, do you?" I simpered. "The purple velvet isn't too much, is it? And I rather love the gold flowers myself. Pull those beauties back on a summer midnight and look through that window, and you're sure to see our unicorn graze on the sagebrush."
To this proclamation the man deigned to answer out the side of his mouth with an insincere, uninterested, "Mmm, I see," and pulled a dull wood-framed pocket watch from his suit jacket."Tight schedule," I observed bitterly. "I see how it is. No one has got time for their elders anymore."
He peered into my face for a long, careful moment. "You're wrong," he said, looking away with some relief. He closed his pocketwatch with a punctual shnick. "I should jolly well think so, anyway. This didn't take long."
"Oh? Then you're staying?" A note of hope in my voice.
"Rightly so. This house could fall down any second now, any fool on the street could see that," he said.
I blinked.
"Look, I'm sorry about the unicorn comment," I told him. "She never meant to bite you. You're too old to ride on her back, now, but... They say, in the Dreaming, anything is possible. You could... you and I could... What are you doing?"
He drew out a clipboard, made a few marks, and stabbed a few disapproving glares at my fabulous, intricate decor.
"Yes," he continued, as though he hadn't heard me. "Condemned. The council won't argue. Neither, I think, will the neighbors." He put the clipboard away and dusted his suit jacket.
"You miss this place... Don't you? Even a little?" I begged. "I miss you, you know. You're the reason I stayed here."
He sighed. There wasn't even enough passion in his voice to mistake for anger, or for pain, or for any kind of imagination or hope. "I kind of wondered," he said vaguely. "I kind of thought... But whatever was here when I was a kid is gone."
"I'm not gone! I'm here!" I shouted, fearful he wouldn't listen, fearful he'd end it all.
He looked at me. "After all this time," he said. "You're just a timepiece."
My heart broke. My essence would soon follow.
"You can't even keep the right time," he reproached, and, dusting off his pressed pants, he left.
- A response to Prompt 2
7 comments:
Like with Promoa's blog, I love the use of pictures here. While the picture of watches doesn't illustrate anything really happening in the story, it does sort of help me get in the mood. The fact that it looks, well...old timey, definitely so.
It wasn't until the end that I realized the story that brought the characters to this scene, but I think you brought the piece around to it with excellent timing. I was intrigued and vaguely confused, then suddenly it clicked at the same time that Mr. Gray Suit made his sad pronouncement. I thought it came together well.
Thanks... I'm kind of nervous that I might have been too vague. I thought I was oh-so-clever putting two pocket watches in one story to be tricky, but I think that plan may have backfired...
The picture itself comes from MorgueFile.com, a free repository of photos. One of the copy-editing blogs I follow uses their pictures regularly; I was kind of amazed with the idea of not stealing art for my blog, but rather using something that's free and legal. Thank you to all the artists who have contributed to MorgueFile!
Lacey and I discussed this, but here's a summary of my thoughts:
It's a confusing piece in that I wasn't even sure that it was the man who was talking to the watch at the end.
The bulk of the story happens in the last couple of paragraphs; the purpose of the body is mainly to confuse the reader about who the narrator is. I'd rather see that space used to develop the relationship between the watch and the man (or what it was) from the watch's perspective.
It feels to me like this story received 100 CCs of Changeling, so much so that it was dripping with Changeling to the distraction of the story which thematically, was very Changeling. The suffusion of Changeling into the piece actually ended up removing from the feeling of Changeling-ness.
In a short story, I feel that story inclusions should be directly related to the story being told. The unicorn and the Dreaming only vestigially relate to this story, and their "story functions" (informing the reader of a fantastically non-pocket-watch/boy relationship) can be accomplished more elegantly without the use of the fantastic complications inherent in each.
I hate to say this, but I can't say I'm really fond of this one. I got so confused and lost... I thought it was the house talking to him, in truth. I only guessed it was the watch (and I never got that there were 2 of them :( ) because that was the prompt.
Okay...after talking to everyone else and hearing what was supposed to be happening, it appears that when it came together in my head, that I totally missed it.
After reading it again, I can see that a clock is talking to him, and it makes sense. I don't think that you needed to try to obfuscate who was talking. I would have jumped right in and let the reader know that it's a clock talking to him, the strangeness of that is plenty for a short story, and the details of their past together could have been the focus of the mystery.
I enjoyed this story, I didn't at first know who the man was talking to, but at the end it did click for me, that it was the watch he was talking to.
I am curious was it the essence of the house or of someone who lived at the house what was in the pocket watch, or was it just with him through his visits to the house.
Or am I off base, and missed what you were going for here?
Thank you so much for commenting/reading Bryan :) The watch is supposed to be a chimerical being of some sort; some sort of childhood companion to the man when he was a boy. The boy, as a changeling, probably contributed glamor to the house which was a freehold when he played in it years ago.
The man can't hear the "watch" talking because he's no longer a changeling. His mundanity breaks the chimerical watch and finally kills the spirit inside it.
Looking back on the story I realize it is pretty impossible to tell that the man can't hear the watch.... given that the man talks to it and seems to be responding to it several times. Whoops.
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