Speaker 1: The clock by Arthur Styron. All my life I have
Speaker 1: had a deep and abiding dread of monotony. The invarying
Speaker 1: and wearisome sameness of life irks me and fills me
Speaker 1: with depression. I fear and hate all men because I
Speaker 1: am compelled to shun them in order to avoid that
Speaker 1: hideous mother of monotony, habit which tears my nerves to
Speaker 1: shreds and flings them mockingly in my twitching face. Regularity
Speaker 1: of any sort fills me with resentment and impotent rage
Speaker 1: against the scheme of things. The steady patter of rain
Speaker 1: drops drives me hysterical and gibbering to bury my face
Speaker 1: among the pillows under a mattress any place where the
Speaker 1: steady drip drop, drip drop is not audible. The sound
Speaker 1: of drum beats fills me with such uncontrolled rage and
Speaker 1: fury that I shriek aloud in my distress and hurl
Speaker 1: stones or any missile available at the miscreant who dared
Speaker 1: to provoke me. I cannot, I dare not. I will
Speaker 1: not endure a drab uniformity. My imaginative and excitable temperament
Speaker 1: demands variety. Since I am thus constituted. Is it any
Speaker 1: wonder that clocks fill me with hatred and terror? Those
Speaker 1: prosaic engineers of space, with their dreadful, unfailing cadence, their
Speaker 1: ceaseless vigil over man's allotted time, their steady and untiring
Speaker 1: tic tac toward eternity. They terrify me, poison me, madden me,
Speaker 1: those hideous reminders of inexorable time, time, the faithful ally
Speaker 1: of unrelenting and unyielding death. I lived alone with an
Speaker 1: old woman who had taken me when I was a
Speaker 1: child from a foundling's home. Her I loved in a way,
Speaker 1: for she was kind and very old and feeble. Yet
Speaker 1: she always insisted upon regularity, eating, sleeping, and working at
Speaker 1: set times. And when I undertook to vary my life
Speaker 1: from day to day, such as retiring at noon and
Speaker 1: rising for breakfast at midnight, in order that I might
Speaker 1: thus break the monotony of my existence, I met with
Speaker 1: such determined opposition from the old woman that her, too,
Speaker 1: I began to fear and hate. The house in which
Speaker 1: we lived was an old, rambling country place of splendid
Speaker 1: and pretentious proportions, though with an air of pervading gloom
Speaker 1: and loneliness. The furnishings were mostly heirlooms and antiques of
Speaker 1: great beauty and value, of which the old woman was
Speaker 1: very proud. Among the chattels were two ancient and costly
Speaker 1: clocks of rare and unusual design and workmanship. They stood
Speaker 1: side by side in the great Hall, tall grim and spectral,
Speaker 1: regulating the household by their minute divisions of space. At
Speaker 1: least one of them did so. The other had not
Speaker 1: run for many, many years. The old woman had frequently
Speaker 1: related to me how that one had stopped at a
Speaker 1: quarter past midnight, the very minute I the very second
Speaker 1: her husband had died, stopped of its own accord, so
Speaker 1: she said, or by the hand of some unseen guest.
Speaker 1: With her own hands, she cared for, and cleaned and
Speaker 1: polished the two clocks every night with unvarying regularity. She
Speaker 1: wound the living, which she told me with the utmost confidence,
Speaker 1: would stop at the moment of her death, just as
Speaker 1: the other one had stopped when her husband died. Is
Speaker 1: it any wonder, then, that I feared these damnable machines
Speaker 1: almost as much as I hated them. I might have
Speaker 1: borne the awe and dread with which I regarded them.
Speaker 1: But the continual ticking of a living clock, the old
Speaker 1: woman's life piece, as I called it, lashed my nerves
Speaker 1: to such a state of frenzy that goaded beyond endurance.
Speaker 1: I would rush, trembling and screaming from the house into
Speaker 1: the night, the cold, the storm, anywhere, anywhere away from
Speaker 1: that gruesome monotony, that eternal cadence. There was a chime too,
Speaker 1: a chime that gave out a thick, gloomy, resonant sound,
Speaker 1: filling me with foreboding and terror, a sound that brought
Speaker 1: to mind grim death, and a grimmer reckoning that told
Speaker 1: of unsubdued passions and stern retribution. Each quarter the time increased,
Speaker 1: until upon the hour it became a complete stanza. So
Speaker 1: gruesome was the effect of this music upon my imagination
Speaker 1: that I could not rid my thoughts of it. I
Speaker 1: could not sleep, I could not rest. Always I was anticipating,
Speaker 1: waiting for the next installment. Sometimes in the small of
Speaker 1: the night, I would creep from my sleepless bed and
Speaker 1: crouch in the dark, chilly hall in order that I
Speaker 1: might hear the ticking and chiming more plainly, waiting for
Speaker 1: the dreadful music to start again, and then for the
Speaker 1: next sound, and the next, and so on until morning.
Speaker 1: At times I would make a determined effort to throw
Speaker 1: off the spell. I would say to myself, after the
Speaker 1: next quarter chimes, I shall hurry to bed and fall
Speaker 1: asleep before it sounds again. Then, as soon as the
Speaker 1: quarter's direful melody had ceased, I would hasten to my room,
Speaker 1: shivering with cold and nervousness, and lie with tightly closed
Speaker 1: eyes courting sleep. But big pointed hands would clutch at
Speaker 1: my heart, brassy voices would laugh musically and mockingly in
Speaker 1: my ears, Until unable to endure it longer, I would
Speaker 1: rush back to the dark, cold hall, where I would
Speaker 1: count the steady tik toks and listen for the unvarying
Speaker 1: chime the rest of the night. Long as time wore on,
Speaker 1: I realized that my condition was becoming grave. Thoughts of
Speaker 1: destroying the clock occupied me constantly, but I could not
Speaker 1: do it because I feared the frightful thing with all
Speaker 1: my soul. On one occasion, I did approach the old
Speaker 1: woman with cunningly and clever argument as to why she
Speaker 1: herself should stop the clock, But she indignantly refused after that,
Speaker 1: so it seemed to me I began to detect her,
Speaker 1: stealing furtive and suspicious glances at me. She suspected my trouble.
Speaker 1: She knew, Dear God, I verily believed she knew my
Speaker 1: suffering and agony, and yet she would not stop that
Speaker 1: fiendish clock. So I began to burn with remorseless hatred
Speaker 1: for the old woman, a desire for revenge. Then it
Speaker 1: was that I cunningly devised a scheme to appease my
Speaker 1: hatred of the old woman and rid myself of the monster.
Speaker 1: At the same time. The old woman had said that
Speaker 1: the clock would stop of its own accord when she died.
Speaker 1: Very well, in this way she should accomplish what she
Speaker 1: had refused to do, and what I myself feared to do. Yes,
Speaker 1: I resolved to kill the old woman. I felt sorry
Speaker 1: for her, because she had been kind to me, and
Speaker 1: she was very old and feeble. But she stood between
Speaker 1: me and my happiness, and she must die that very night.
Speaker 1: I would perpetrate the deed and rid myself forever of
Speaker 1: this lesion upon my soul. After dark, I began to
Speaker 1: make my arrangements. They were very simple. The house stood
Speaker 1: in a lonely neighborhood, no one would hear. The old
Speaker 1: woman was very aged and infirmed, and could make no resistance.
Speaker 1: She retired early, as was her wont and I went
Speaker 1: to my room to listen and wait. I planned to
Speaker 1: wait until the midnight hour had struck, and then accomplished
Speaker 1: the deed before the clock should begin another day with
Speaker 1: its quarter's melody, hardly breathing. Touched in my room until
Speaker 1: the midnight hour had struck. Waited until the last note
Speaker 1: of the awful dirge had faded into the dreadful stillness
Speaker 1: of night. Then, carrying in my hands a small hatchet,
Speaker 1: I made my way stealthily toward the old woman's room.
Speaker 1: I moved very slowly and cautiously, inch by inch, creeping
Speaker 1: on my hands and knees so as to make no sound.
Speaker 1: On my way. I paused before the tall, grim clock
Speaker 1: to gloat. Monster. I gibbered in a high, thin voice,
Speaker 1: for I did not wish the old woman to hear
Speaker 1: and become alarmed. Fiend, damned soul, Never again will you
Speaker 1: raise your hellish voice. Never again shall I tremble and
Speaker 1: shake with terror at your taunting melody. Never again, for
Speaker 1: soon you will be forever stilled in my excite, I
Speaker 1: had unconsciously allowed my voice to rise to a shrill,
Speaker 1: piercing treble. Rage possessed me. I rose to my feet
Speaker 1: and shook my fist at its evil shape. I screamed
Speaker 1: maledictions and curses at it, and laughed with fiendish joy
Speaker 1: and triumph. Agent of hell, I shrieked, brandishing my hatchet
Speaker 1: and dancing in a frenzy of hate. You have spoken
Speaker 1: your last. You shall never never use your brassy lungs again.
Speaker 1: The words were scarcely out of my mouth, when on
Speaker 1: the clear, dreadful stillness of the night, there broke a sound, hoarse,
Speaker 1: bold mocking, a sound that froze my blood, that made
Speaker 1: my hair rise with terror, that filled me with surging fury.
Speaker 1: I had miscalculated my time, because I had not gone
Speaker 1: by the clock. The demon was beginning to strike the
Speaker 1: quarter to mock me beginning. But no more, For with
Speaker 1: the first note, such a wave of rage and loathing
Speaker 1: swept over me. Hatred of the monster, and the fury
Speaker 1: at having been thwarted in my plans that I forgot,
Speaker 1: my fear, forgot everything save that I was mad. I
Speaker 1: uttered an awful cry, and leaped upon it. With superhuman strength.
Speaker 1: I dashed it to the floor, where it fell with
Speaker 1: a terrific crash. Shrieking invectives, I tore into its vitals
Speaker 1: with my bare hands, destroying mangling devil. I raved, you
Speaker 1: shall not speak, you shall not, you shall not. In
Speaker 1: a few minutes, it was a complete wreck. It lay
Speaker 1: on the floor, bruised, broken, seeming in my excited imagination
Speaker 1: like a murdered thing, laughing loudly and shrilly, and clutching
Speaker 1: in my wounded, blood stained hands the remnants of the
Speaker 1: mutilated machine. I rushed to the old woman's room. She
Speaker 1: lay quietly on the bed, gazing at me with horror
Speaker 1: dilated eyes. See, I screamed, throwing the bloody remnants upon
Speaker 1: the floor. See, old woman, there is your clock. Now
Speaker 1: it will hardly stop when you die. Ha ha. Then
Speaker 1: a strange feeling of awe crept over me. I ceased
Speaker 1: raving and looked intently at the old woman. In the
Speaker 1: pale light of a flickering candle, I could see that
Speaker 1: she still gazed at me with horror dilated eyes. But
Speaker 1: now I saw that they were sightless. The old woman
Speaker 1: was dead. She had died when the clock stopped. The
Speaker 1: End of the Clock by Arthur Styron