The clock by Arthur Styron. All my life I have had a deep and
abiding dread of monotony. The invarying and wearisome sameness of life irks me and
fills me with depression. I fear and hate all men because I am compelled
to shun them in order to avoid that hideous mother of monotony, habit which
tears my nerves to shreds and flings them mockingly in my twitching face. Regularity
of any sort fills me with resentment and impotent rage against the scheme of things.
The steady patter of rain drops drives me hysterical and gibbering to bury my
face among the pillows under a mattress any place where the steady drip drop,
drip drop is not audible. The sound of drum beats fills me with such
uncontrolled rage and fury that I shriek aloud in my distress and hurl stones or
any missile available at the miscreant who dared to provoke me. I cannot,
I dare not. I will not endure a drab uniformity. My imaginative and
excitable temperament demands variety. Since I am thus constituted. Is it any wonder
that clocks fill me with hatred and terror? Those prosaic engineers of space,
with their dreadful, unfailing cadence, their ceaseless vigil over man's allotted time,
their steady and untiring tic tac toward eternity. They terrify me, poison me,
madden me, those hideous reminders of inexorable time, time, the faithful
ally of unrelenting and unyielding death. I lived alone with an old woman who
had taken me when I was a child from a foundling's home. Her I
loved in a way, for she was kind and very old and feeble.
Yet she always insisted upon regularity, eating, sleeping, and working at set
times. And when I undertook to vary my life from day to day,
such as retiring at noon and rising for breakfast at midnight, in order that
I might thus break the monotony of my existence, I met with such determined
opposition from the old woman that her, too, I began to fear and
hate. The house in which we lived was an old, rambling country place
of splendid and pretentious proportions, though with an air of pervading gloom and loneliness.
The furnishings were mostly heirlooms and antiques of great beauty and value, of
which the old woman was very proud. Among the chattels were two ancient and
costly clocks of rare and unusual design and workmanship. They stood side by side
in the great Hall, tall grim and spectral, regulating the household by their
minute divisions of space. At least one of them did so. The other
had not run for many, many years. The old woman had frequently related
to me how that one had stopped at a quarter past midnight, the very
minute I the very second her husband had died, stopped of its own accord,
so she said, or by the hand of some unseen guest. With
her own hands, she cared for, and cleaned and polished the two clocks
every night with unvarying regularity. She wound the living, which she told me
with the utmost confidence, would stop at the moment of her death, just
as the other one had stopped when her husband died. Is it any wonder,
then, that I feared these damnable machines almost as much as I hated
them. I might have borne the awe and dread with which I regarded them.
But the continual ticking of a living clock, the old woman's life piece,
as I called it, lashed my nerves to such a state of frenzy
that goaded beyond endurance. I would rush, trembling and screaming from the house
into the night, the cold, the storm, anywhere, anywhere away from
that gruesome monotony, that eternal cadence. There was a chime too, a
chime that gave out a thick, gloomy, resonant sound, filling me with
foreboding and terror, a sound that brought to mind grim death, and a
grimmer reckoning that told of unsubdued passions and stern retribution. Each quarter the time
increased, until upon the hour it became a complete stanza. So gruesome was
the effect of this music upon my imagination that I could not rid my thoughts
of it. I could not sleep, I could not rest. Always I
was anticipating, waiting for the next installment. Sometimes in the small of the
night, I would creep from my sleepless bed and crouch in the dark,
chilly hall in order that I might hear the ticking and chiming more plainly,
waiting for the dreadful music to start again, and then for the next sound,
and the next, and so on until morning. At times I would
make a determined effort to throw off the spell. I would say to myself,
after the next quarter chimes, I shall hurry to bed and fall asleep
before it sounds again. Then, as soon as the quarter's direful melody had
ceased, I would hasten to my room, shivering with cold and nervousness,
and lie with tightly closed eyes courting sleep. But big pointed hands would clutch
at my heart, brassy voices would laugh musically and mockingly in my ears,
Until unable to endure it longer, I would rush back to the dark,
cold hall, where I would count the steady tik toks and listen for the
unvarying chime the rest of the night. Long as time wore on, I
realized that my condition was becoming grave. Thoughts of destroying the clock occupied me
constantly, but I could not do it because I feared the frightful thing with
all my soul. On one occasion, I did approach the old woman with
cunningly and clever argument as to why she herself should stop the clock, But
she indignantly refused after that, so it seemed to me I began to detect
her, stealing furtive and suspicious glances at me. She suspected my trouble.
She knew, Dear God, I verily believed she knew my suffering and agony,
and yet she would not stop that fiendish clock. So I began to
burn with remorseless hatred for the old woman, a desire for revenge. Then
it was that I cunningly devised a scheme to appease my hatred of the old
woman and rid myself of the monster. At the same time. The old
woman had said that the clock would stop of its own accord when she died.
Very well, in this way she should accomplish what she had refused to
do, and what I myself feared to do. Yes, I resolved to
kill the old woman. I felt sorry for her, because she had been
kind to me, and she was very old and feeble. But she stood
between me and my happiness, and she must die that very night. I
would perpetrate the deed and rid myself forever of this lesion upon my soul.
After dark, I began to make my arrangements. They were very simple.
The house stood in a lonely neighborhood, no one would hear. The old
woman was very aged and infirmed, and could make no resistance. She retired
early, as was her wont and I went to my room to listen and
wait. I planned to wait until the midnight hour had struck, and then
accomplished the deed before the clock should begin another day with its quarter's melody,
hardly breathing. Touched in my room until the midnight hour had struck. Waited
until the last note of the awful dirge had faded into the dreadful stillness of
night. Then, carrying in my hands a small hatchet, I made my
way stealthily toward the old woman's room. I moved very slowly and cautiously,
inch by inch, creeping on my hands and knees so as to make no
sound. On my way. I paused before the tall, grim clock to
gloat. Monster. I gibbered in a high, thin voice, for I
did not wish the old woman to hear and become alarmed. Fiend, damned
soul, Never again will you raise your hellish voice. Never again shall I
tremble and shake with terror at your taunting melody. Never again, for soon
you will be forever stilled in my excite, I had unconsciously allowed my voice
to rise to a shrill, piercing treble. Rage possessed me. I rose
to my feet and shook my fist at its evil shape. I screamed maledictions
and curses at it, and laughed with fiendish joy and triumph. Agent of
hell, I shrieked, brandishing my hatchet and dancing in a frenzy of hate.
You have spoken your last. You shall never never use your brassy lungs
again. The words were scarcely out of my mouth, when on the clear,
dreadful stillness of the night, there broke a sound, hoarse, bold
mocking, a sound that froze my blood, that made my hair rise with
terror, that filled me with surging fury. I had miscalculated my time,
because I had not gone by the clock. The demon was beginning to strike
the quarter to mock me beginning. But no more, For with the first
note, such a wave of rage and loathing swept over me. Hatred of
the monster, and the fury at having been thwarted in my plans that I
forgot, my fear, forgot everything save that I was mad. I uttered
an awful cry, and leaped upon it. With superhuman strength. I dashed
it to the floor, where it fell with a terrific crash. Shrieking invectives,
I tore into its vitals with my bare hands, destroying mangling devil.
I raved, you shall not speak, you shall not, you shall not.
In a few minutes, it was a complete wreck. It lay on
the floor, bruised, broken, seeming in my excited imagination like a murdered
thing, laughing loudly and shrilly, and clutching in my wounded, blood stained
hands the remnants of the mutilated machine. I rushed to the old woman's room.
She lay quietly on the bed, gazing at me with horror dilated eyes.
See, I screamed, throwing the bloody remnants upon the floor. See,
old woman, there is your clock. Now it will hardly stop when
you die. Ha ha. Then a strange feeling of awe crept over me.
I ceased raving and looked intently at the old woman. In the pale
light of a flickering candle, I could see that she still gazed at me
with horror dilated eyes. But now I saw that they were sightless. The
old woman was dead. She had died when the clock stopped. The End
of the Clock by Arthur Styron