The Grey
Life, Chapter X
The
clocks are all around, ticking, marking off the seconds in twisted,
harmonic beats that land in crashing swaths of scorn. Everywhere
there are clocks, the definitions of time, objects crammed with gears
and cranks, bestowed with meaning by mere virtue of the rate at which
the hands move. And yet, these clocks are all tell me something
different. I, at least, cannot make out any sense in all this noise.
Even the seconds are not uniform; the various size and the spacing of
the ticks are so plentifold and so individual that the humming,
strumming, noisome cataclysm of time seems to be all of them at once,
or none at all.
I
can only sit in their midst and watch, with a honed, cracked wonder,
as the faces of the great clocks leer back at me.
I'm
even sitting on them. All over me they sneer, taunting, laughing.
Beside me they scream, screech, holler, and rave. Spitting out their
mechanical diatribe, guarding the hallowed cadence of the moments.
And yet the truth is lost among them. All I can perceive is lies in
their faces, horrendous, malicious lies. All for deceit, for evil,
for naught.
Tick,
tock, tick tock. Tick tock. Tick.
Tock.
Awkward it seems, lurid, deceptive, and yet concentration only yields
an individual truth, a fact that is known and believed. But in the
sum there is nothing. Just noise. Wholesome, impetuous noise.
Tick
tock.
I
find myself here often, and always I wish the awful, laughing faces
of the timepieces would just shut up, leave me alone, give me some
peace - but no! They doll on, forever onward, and I know that even
when my tired heart has ceased to beat and no longer can I perceive
them will they clock ever onward, throwing out the seconds upon my
still chest as if they were shovelfuls of dirt. Burying me.
Tock
tick. Tick.
Oh,
it's rather eerie. Sometimes it gets on my nerves, grates there. I
try and supress it, but sometimes the feeling is just too strong.
"What
time is it?"
The
voice is so harsh, so bitter, so filled with putrifaction, that I
hardly recognize it for my own. How it tore past my lips I do not
know, but they are the only words left in my brain. The only question
I can believe in, that I could ever know existed. But the clocks do
not answer.
Tick.
I
did not expect them to. Of course, they will continue to laugh, like
they've always done, like they'll always do, and condemn me to the
slow death of a statue.
Tock.
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contents are the result of the tumultuous workings of the mind of one
Adam Wasserman.
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