Speaker 1: 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