Dr. Stuart Knott is a PhD graduate and writer of horror fiction. A lifelong fan of video games, comic books, and horror, action, and science-fiction films, his writing aims to infuse the mundane nature of everyday life with dark comedy and macabre events.
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FATHER’S CLOCK
by
Dr. Stuart Knott
All day long, every day, for thirty-five years the large, looming grandfather clock had insisted on ticked away.
“’tis all I gots left,” Mother had said as Shaun had muscled the heavy, cumbersome clock into the corner of Nancy’s study. “All I gots left t’remember him.”
Nancy had rolled her eyes and thrown her hands up in despair. There was no use arguing with Mother, not when she had her mind – her heart – set on something. She cared little that it had more than fifteen years since Father died, or for invading their privacy by moving in with them, or that Nancy had insisted that the study be her one sanctuary in the whole house.
Nancy scowled at the clock and chugged back the last of her red; her head was fuzzy and her vision a little blurry, but she was determined to get this story finished, even if it took her all night and another glass of that sweet nectar. She was on a roll; after eight weeks of writer’s block, suffering from imposter syndrome so strong that she had become sullen and withdrawn, she had finally captured that fire inside of her imagination and was prepared to keep at it until the sun rose over the horizon, if necessary.
“He did so love this piece,” Mother had cooed, gently stroking the red oak of the clock as if it contained Father’s ashes, or essence. “Mayhap it will help you, Girl.”
“How d’you figger?” Nancy had pouted; the damn thing gave her the creeps with its grinning cherubs etched into the wood.
“Come now, Child,” Mother admonished. “He loved t’see you write. He always knew you’d make it, sumday.”
Someday, the word whirled around Nancy’s head. Someday was fast escaping her, it seemed, the more the days and years passed her by. Minute after minute, hour after hour, the clock ticked away the time. Constantly ticking. Incessantly, chipping away at every moment, like a piece of apple caught between her teeth, driving her mad, but could she get rid of it? Of course not! What would Mother say, after all?
Nancy’s fingers clacked at the keys; it helped to drown out the relentless ticking of the clock. She was determined to force the story out of her very pores, to get that last twist on the screen so she could finally put it – and herself – to bed. Her deadline was tomorrow, at midnight, and she cursed herself for having fallen behind in her writing. It seemed every day, every thing, was a distraction these days: if it wasn’t Mother, it was Shaun; if it wasn’t him, it was the kids, screaming and hollering and begging for attention; if it wasn’t them, it was the damn e-mails from work, the constant meetings; or the shopping, the bills, the goddamn postman! Some days, Nancy just wanted to scream at them all to go away, to leave her with her thoughts and her words, and to give her some peace and quiet!
And, to make matters worse, beneath it all was always that constant ticking. It didn’t matter of they were watching television, if she were making love to Shaun with a half-hearted enthusiasm, and it didn’t matter how much she typed, that clock was always looming, tick-tocking away. Muted, but ever present, shattering her concentration. She had tried everything to stop it, save getting rid of the damn thing and upsetting Mother; she’d even tried sabotaging the gears, only for Shaun to fix it up to Mother’s delight and Nancy’s burning anger,
Nothing could stop it, not booze, not sex, not the kids. She had even started hearing it ticking away when she was out of the house; it was the first thing she saw when she walked in and the last thing she thought of before she went to bed, forever present at the back of her mind, as if her father were judging her for not achieving her lifelong aspirations of writing the perfect story.
Jenny felt his presence and looked up from her laptop, past the bodies littering her bloodstained rug, and glared at the towering grandfather clock. In the reflection of the glass, she saw Father’s face, twisted into a grimace that was both a wail and a look of abject displeasure that she had stopped writing. In the relentless ticking she heard his voice; in the shadow it cast, she felt Father’s cold, dark embrace, as though his liver-spotted hands were resting on her shoulders.
Even when she had given in to his urgings and taken the knife to Mother, to Shaun and the kids, splitting them open, spilling their blood across the room and into her glass in a frenzied rage and revelling in their agonised screams, the ticking of the clock – Father’s disappointed murmuring – would not stop.
How easy it had been, so simple and inelegant. The looks on their faces – equal parts horror and shock – had brought a catharsis Nancy had strived her whole life for. It had been a palpable feeling, powerful enough for her to set her blood-drenched hands to work at the keys, the story just begging to be released.
Nancy had taken the knife to her family at exactly midnight; the clock tolled the hour with that same low, rumbling gong, a sound so impactful it had drowned out her own manic cackling, Mother’s death rattle, and briefly silenced Father’s admonishments.
Now, it tolled again, as it had at one and two, and Nancy’s hands hovered over the keys, shaking and struggling to find their flow. She flinched with a small yelp, these macabre memories derailed, as her printer suddenly whirred to life. Confused, exhausted, she checked her screen to see if she’d accidentally hit ‘Print’ but there was nothing in the queue…
Curious, Nancy watched as two sheets of paper fed through the machine. The first was blank, if a little smudged; the second bore only two words typed haphazardly in the middle of the sheet:
keep writing