Hearts Tell No Tales

There is nothing more maddening than the burden of the clock. It has given us order and stability, but where has our rights over our own time gone? 

We know where they went. To the same place everything we had went. To the same god.

Transcript

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I put my earbuds back in my ears and switched my phone to play something. Anything. I had forgotten what I was listening to the second I processed the sound in my brain. But it was something different. Something… something that…

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

Even beyond the cloud of sound that I was pressing into my brain I could hear the niggling prick of the clocks. They were always there. Always. Always.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I had nothing to do with them. They thought of themselves as my Telltale Heart. But had I murdered anyone? No. I would think I would know about that. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Hundreds. Thousands of them below the floorboards. But what was I to do about it? I’d gone in there, ripped out a few of the planks, taken out the clocks and smashed them one by one. Five dozen I’d destroyed in an effervescent frenzy. My hands were bruised, blistered, painted red in my own blood. It was good luck that I’d gotten my tetanus shot. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I’d gotten them all. Each and every single one of them. I’d made sure of that. I’d crawled underneath, flattened the bones in my body in a way that would make me sore for months to come. I’d smothered my face in dirt and grime, and maybe even asbestos. I prayed not. But I’d gotten all of them. Every single one. Smashed. Destroyed. Gone.

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

That had been a week ago. I’d had the precious luxury of silence for two days. No more. Then it was there, all again.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I’d pulled back the floorboards in terror to find the exact thing that I figured I’d see. All of them. Back there again. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

At least the clocks were different makes and models. At least there was that. The constant marching sound of the clocks’ hands was mildly different, a bit tinnier than it was before. That was some consolation.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Not enough consolation. I’d destroyed them all. All of them. It had been bad enough before. The very concept was strange, perverse, and evil. I’d thought it had been my uncle’s fault. It had been his house, after all. And yet…

Tick. Tick. Tick.

My uncle was dead. That was the only reason I was living here, the only reason why I didn’t just move out. This place was charity to me, an inheritance I hadn’t deserved for something my generation had eternally lost; a place of sanctum. I hadn’t the money for anywhere else. Anywhere else but the streets, at least.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And there it was. The devil himself. He’d chopped up his horned body to bits and transfigured them all into clocks. All to drive me batty. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

So many questions. I had so many questions, and I wanted none of them answered. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Was it a person? Surely, right? People were the only things that were real. Only a person would know how to break into a house, remove the floorboards, and stuff the foundation with a ridiculous number of loud clocks. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

But that was just ludicrous. I could not, no matter how I moved my mind, figure out a reason why anyone would do that. Clocks.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Clocks were expensive. Okay, not that expensive. I estimated that the ones I’d been smashing would’ve been about twenty dollars apiece, at least, that’s what they would’ve cost at a store. Decent make, good paint, firm glass. You know, all the things that make a working clock. I’d destroyed at least two hundred in my fit of rage. Two hundred.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

That’s two thousand bucks. Two thousands dollars, sent spiralling down the drain. And it looked like they’d done it again. So four thousand. Even someone as rich as a doctor would find that a sum they couldn’t just throw around. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

But that wasn’t it. I had no idea how they were getting the clocks down there in the first place. I’d checked around the entire house. Looked at the whole base. I couldn’t find any tampering that I hadn’t been party to. Ludicrous.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It was like they were there by magic. But I didn’t believe in magic. My entire life I’d never encountered anything of the such. No ghosts, no fairies. Just the world. That and nothing else. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And yet, there it was. Loudly smashing the conceptions I had of reality, even whilst I went around smashing its ticking minions in turn. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It would have been soothing, almost. I’d loved the sounds of a clock as a kid. Granted, the contexts in which I’d heard them had been a lot less perverse. To my old self, the sound of the clock meant that it was getting close to the time for school to let out. It meant a sense of regularity in the place where I laid my head for sleep. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Perhaps that was part of it. The clocks were there to destroy one of the few things I had in life that I’d felt good about. Before, the tick, tick, tick had meant oncoming periods of freedom. Here, it meant… 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I wasn’t safe. That much was clear. Granted, in life you were never safe. Not even vaguely. I knew that closely. Dearly. Gone.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I was going to be gone, too. That might have been what the clock was. A memento mori; a reminder that all would die, including the being I considered ‘myself.’

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I didn’t much see the purpose behind that, either. It’s not like I wasn’t aware of death. I mean, come on, I was already living in the husk of my uncle’s house. An uncle that I’d liked, who’d been one of my only real friends in the early days of school. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It didn’t matter. That was the thing. Whatever force had placed the clocks there had power over a million other things that I didn’t. There wasn’t any point trying to figure it out, or fighting it, or…

Tick. Tick. Tick.

But I wasn’t going to live in my car again. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I had so little, and…

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I had so little, and whatever this thing was, it meant to take that little away from me. That much was clear. Whether or not the hatred was personal and pointed, I suffered by it. It meant to drive me mad, to strip away the bits of sanity that still clung to my young mind. I was having none of that.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I could play the same game again. And I would, if I did nothing. No matter how much ear damage I gave myself playing my music on full blast, I was still going to hear that tick. Even if the clocks were gone. Even if I was deaf. The sound would carve itself a hole in my head, lingering at all times as a memory.

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

There had to be a solution. There had to be something I could do. I’d called the police, I’d talked to my friends. Nobody believed me. Well, Johnny believed me. He actually came into the house. But he now just thinks that both the building and myself are cursed, and he ignores me whenever I’ve tried to talk to him.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

People like to wash their hands of problems that aren’t immediately theirs. I can’t say I blame them. I mean, I’m still mad at everyone for it, but I understand. There is something unknowable, something sinister at work here. Just being near it could give you its attention.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I don’t like its attention. I don’t like the possibility that it might hurt, maim, or kill me. I don’t like being driven mad. I don’t like…

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And yet, my opinions don’t matter. Johnny won’t let me stay with him; he thinks I’ll spread whatever evil it is that has wrapped itself around me. I don’t have any other friends who I think would take me in, and finding a new apartment or even staying at a hotel is way outside my budget. I could do a night or two tops before my bank account crashes. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Who was I kidding? The answer was right in front of me. Well, not the answer, right, but, you know, an answer. I’d thought those clocks would cost twenty dollars, right? I earned just slightly over eight hundred every paycheck. That’s forty clocks, right there. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

There were hundreds of perfectly fine clocks just humming below my feet. Obviously. Duh. I could just sell them. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Yes, life and lemons, blessings and curses, I could wriggle myself into a life I neither deserved, nor really wanted. But still, it was a life that was better than my current one.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And even if whatever force it was that was putting the ticking monstrosities in my floorboards found out about my new endeavor, what was it going to do? Stop putting clocks there? 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Yeah, it could do that. Or it could get angry and kill me. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

There was so little time in a life. I didn’t, couldn’t want to cut that small amount short. It was short enough already.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

But still, even with shipping, processing, taxes, and all that jazz… I was staring two thousand dollars in the face. That was money I’d never seen, never earned… 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And what else was I going to do, eh? If I couldn’t understand what was going on, if the security camera I’d installed wasn’t catching anything, what was my plan going forward? To save up enough money in twenty years that eventually I could move out?

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

Twenty years. Too long. If the ticking was still there, I’d definitely do something drastic. Kill myself, probably. Maybe kill someone else. Something that bad. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Have you been hearing those clocks? Could you hear that for hours upon hours on end forever, and not want to punch the world straight in the face? 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Do you see what I mean? Hear what I mean, rather? I had no other plan of action. Of course, there were the obvious things. Go back to school. Take a loan. Get a better job. And I was going to do all of that while going mad, eh?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

No. The clocks had to be addressed directly, even if they were being conjured from thin air. I would sell them. That was my new job, that was my new life. For as long as they were, at least. As long as the situation didn’t progress.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

But what if Johnny was right? What if this was some curse, some real supernatural thing? What if the curse was carried in the clocks themselves?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

What if I spread the curse around the world in my scartching for salvation? What if…

Tick. Tick.

Tick.

I was an idiot. I could never imagine myself being smart. And, much further than that, I could never imagine there ever being anyone so smart that they could understand my situation and figure out a way to navigate through it without there being some sort of dire consequences. 

Tick.

Now I only needed to figure out how to open an online store. It couldn’t be that dificult. Millions of people even more stupid than me had done it and succeeded, and they didn’t have merchandise drop straight onto their head from their heavens. Or crawl up into their floorboards from hell.

Tick. 

Tick. 

Tick.

I heard them. I still heard them, forever. But my mind was now able to filter them out.

Tick.

Ti…