Tick tock

 

Tick...tick…tick…will you sort it out, your doing that weird clicking thing again.  I spoke harshly as I grabbed her behind and shook it.  I heard a sleepy reply that made no sense, but then in the same second tick…tick…tick.

 

For the love of god, I’ve been with her for ten years and in the last three, every night the same story, this annoying clicking.  Why she can’t just snore like normal people.  I could handle that, but this clicking is so rhythmic and constant its doing me in.

 

 I laid there, eyes burning with tiredness.  The burning matched my growing anger.  I willed sleep to come.  I tried everything from telling my self stories to counting sheep, anything to get to the land of nod.  It took a while but in the end sleep came and with it a dream…

 

I entered a door that belonged to an old antique shop.  To my horror it was covered wall to wall with hundreds of different clocks, all ticking in perfect rhythm.  The noise was loud to my sensitive ears.  I could feel a headache coming on instantly. Every tick the clocks made my head vibrated.

 

I turned to leave but the door had vanished.  Worry filled me.  I can’t stand the noise for it has a way of getting right inside and then it hums, making my head ache more.  It started to throb in time with the ticks.  I called out thinking there must be a shop assistant, but after shouting a while I came to the conclusion I was on my own.  This left me feeling scared and very anxious.  ‘I just want out’ I screamed! I walked a round trying to find another exit.  All the while the clocks ticked in harmony.

 

They were getting louder now and with the loudness came a sense of urgency.  I started to run in mindless abandon, just trying to escape.  I wept uncontrollably, emotions new to my body with their intensity boiled inside.  In my haste and with blurry vision I knocked a clock off the wall.  The sound it made as the glass broke and the wood snapped filled me with a feeling of joy, a sense of power.  It felt as if I was taking control again.

 

 

I looked at the walls and saw in the far corner a fire hydrant.  Above it was one of those hammers you see on buses.  It had ‘break glass in case of emergency’ stamped on the housing.  Without a moment hesitation I broke the glass and snatched the hammer.  The weight of it felt glorious in my hand.  The feel of its grip settled me somewhat.

 

I turned to the first clock on the wall.  With a mission on my mind, I hit it hard.  It fell to the floor, but I didn’t stop there.  I stamped on it until the sole of my feet ached. Some of the glass sprayed up and cut my face, but in my frenzy I didn’t care.  I turned to the wall with a new energy, as I smashed my way thought the clocks I noticed the time said two minutes to twelve on all of them.

 

Feelings of fear and helplessness engulfed me, as I saw those stupid little windows that allow that annoying bird to poke out and scream abuse at me on the clocks.  I felt a new determination to have the entire collection of clocks destroyed before that could happen.  I set to it with a youthful enthusiasm.  I was enjoying myself, and shouting obscenities at the top of my voice.  I have never in my life loved every passing minute.  Until I knew it was hopeless.  A sinking feeling washed over me.  That bird was coming, it was going to mock and taunt me.

 

I stood rooted to the spot as I saw the second hand sit on the twelve.  It was then the walls came to life with that mocking call.  The noise made me cover my ears.  I fell to my knees as the room shook with the power of the noise.  The room shook… my intestines felt as if the were knotted and spilling to the floor in one big bloody mess…The room shook… my nose started bleeding I felt dizziness so strong I felt sick…the room shook…

 

Hands roughly shook me as I heard I voice shout ‘Stay where you are’.  I opened my eyes in alarm as I felt my hands being pulled behind my back, and something cold clamped on them.  I was hoisted up to my feet, not to carefully either.  A pain erupted between my shoulders.  This pain brought all my senses to life as I took in the blood. It was every where, all up the walls I could make out thick lumps of flesh, splattered

 

 

as if modern art.  I was covered in the blood and gore.  I could smell the metallic odour of the blood mixed with my sweat.

 

I turned to look to my wife to check if she was safe, and instantly started to retch. Where her head had laid in peaceful sleep, it was gone.  The only part that remained attached to her body was the back of her skull, where a mashed up part of her brain resided with the bloody hammer laying next to it.

 

 I looked down at my naked body I was covered in scratches that bled, but these were hard to divine underneath all her blood and those sickly lumps of flesh, which I now took for her brains.  The lumps of brain or flesh had her hair matted to them.

I killed her I mumbled…I killed her… it all became too much for me as I fainted.  The darkness embraced me.

 

 

Reviews

[S.A Beach]

I would fix this up a bit, there are a lot of little errors, missing words, grammar, etc., that became distracting every now and then. The intro was confusing, since it wasn't entirely clear it was a piece of dialogue from the main character until the next sentence. One of the tiny errors that was there was, " I grabbed her behind and shook it." Either it's from behind or he has an interesting way of waking his wife up by shaking her a*s, if this was a comedy, that would work because I found it rather humorous.

I had a problem with some of the logic with the first part of the story, mainly that this has been going on for three years and there's no mention of him trying to get over it. You would figure that at some point he would have tried different techniques, ear plugs, headphones, sleeping in another room, getting help for his wife at a sleep clinic to see what's up, but none of that is mentioned. I find it hard to believe someone would put up with that for three years. If it's off and on, that's one thing, but it wouldn't have driven him as mad, unless he has other pressures building on him from work and such.

I hope I'm not giving off the impression that I didn't like this story, the overall concept I'm in love with. It's very unique and clever with the dream branching into reality. I really felt an American Psycho vibe after he started smashing the clocks, which I thought was great, both the movie and the smashy smashy. I wanted more from the story, more description of him going into madness, it can be prolonged a bit more and explored so we really see it start to unhinge him forcing him to snap. This is a real character story, during the dream, granted the dream takes place in his head, but we need to be in his head more and get a real character breakdown, this guy is a blank slate, which a reader can put themselves into that position, but in the end I wanted more from him.

Some of the sentences either need work or need to be gotten rid of because it's just fluff that can be condensed into one well written sentence. His reaction to just murdering his wife is really anti climatic. A nice twist would be that she's dead, but the ticking remains, it was him all along and not her. I guess that can also be a bit cliche, but it's more of an exciting ending that can continue with him balling up in a corner and rocking back and forth mumbling to himself.

The story can use some work, but it has potential to be something a lot better once it's tightened up and re-worked a bit. Nice work.