Tock, 1st draft
Here's the unedited, 1st draft of Tock, in 1st person! i'm sure you'll be able to tell the differences from the revised copy
The Madam watched intently as I rewound the clock. It wasn’t until I stepped back and she saw the golden pendulum swinging monotonously that she sat back in her worn, grandiose chair and returned to her almost catatonic state. Over the years, I have grown accustomed to her strange reactions as I perform this menial task. Every day at 2:45, I am required to rewind the small, ornate grandfather clock. Every day at 2:45, The Madam seems to freeze, as if in rigor mortis, until she can once again hear the relentless ticking of her precious timekeeper.
I came to the Madam when I was hardly old enough to be considered an adult. An anonymous envelope had appeared on my doorstep, stuffed fat with money and labeled with a single address. The address I refer to is a legendary stone mansion in this section of the world. It is said to be haunted; so haunted, in fact, that no soul dares go near it for fear of never being seen again. At first I ignored the letter, for fear it was a cruel trick being played on me, but every day a new letter showed up, each with more money than the last. Finally after a week of receiving these over-laden envelopes, an overwhelming curiosity literally dragged me to the doorstep of the house. It was here that I first met the Madam, and learned of what was to become of my life.
My job is simple. I am the attendant to the Madam. Upon my arrival at her decrepit stone house many years ago, the equally crumbled woman gave me three requirements in a raspy, rarely used whisper, that are to this day engrained in my mind: “You will take care of me until one of us dies, you are never to leave the house, and you must never let the clock stop.” She has hardly spoken since then, but she speaks to me in other ways. Her stomach whines when she’s hungry, and her lips chap when she thirsts. She never leaves her chair. She never takes her eyes off of the clock. If she must move, the clock must move; it always teases me with its maniacal ticking as I lug it to the Madam’s new location. I have half of a mind to destroy the thing, but then I remember the salary I receive for my troubles, and I am kept at bay from damaging the Madam’s most valued object.
It’s been so many years since I’ve seen the outside world that it seems as if it does not exist anymore. My entire life has been devoted to the Madam. Every day the process is the same; I take care of both of us, and then we wait for the time to come to rewind her clock. The past few years I have noticed that as the day draws nearer to 2:45, the Madam seems to grow weaker and sicklier. However once I have finished winding the clock, her health improves enough that I have some hope that I won’t find her lifeless in her chair the next morning. Our lives revolve around the clock. I often wonder how she doesn’t go crazy listening to its ticking every waking moment of the day, but perhaps she is already crazy. The kind of crazy that one does not show outwardly, but instead wreaks havoc internally. Sometimes I wonder if the never ending tick of the clock is slowly driving me to insanity as well. Despite my possible madness though, I can’t help but wonder on occasion how old the Madam is. She has outlived at least three other attendants prior to myself. It seems odd to me that she is still alive. This thought has kept me up at night, and occupies my mind by day. It races uncontrollably through my head, over and over, keeping time with the ever swinging pendulum of the clock. It has come to the point that I need to know the truth about the Madam, or else I may do something I regret.
Finally, I mustered up the courage to ask the Madam about her history. “Madam,” I hesitantly began. “Why must I keep the clock wound?”
“The clock must never stop,” the Madam replied instantly, as if she had rehearsed this reply many times over in her mind.
“But why must the clock never stop? Why is it so important?”
“My mother inherited the clock from her great-aunt many years ago,” the Madam heaved a sigh. Reluctantly, she continued to explain. “She loved that clock so very much. Every day she would wind it at the same time. That is until one day, when she lay sick in bed, and asked me to wind it for her. I was a silly girl, carefree, and so I forgot to keep the clock wound. I left to visit with my friends, and when I came back some hours later, she was dead. Everyone thought it was the sickness that killed her, but I couldn’t help but think it was my fault that she died, because I was the one who had let the clock stop. The clock must never stop.” And with that, the Madam sank back into her chair, a sullen look on her face.
I knew she had finished, but I couldn’t help but ask her, “Madam, how old are you?”
“One-hundred and forty-seven. Now please, wind the clock.”
After the initial shock of hearing her age, I become absorbed in my thoughts. How could someone possibly live to be that old? It doesn’t seem possible; perhaps I was right about her being mentally ill. However she seems sane enough and her story is logical enough to be credible. What would happen if the clock actually did stop, would she die as she thinks her mother did so many years before? Does she truly believe her mother died because the clock stopped? Is this paranoia of the clock stopping keeping her alive? Is the clock keeping her alive? That couldn’t possibly be true, how could it be true? It hardly makes sense! Perhaps if the clock stops and she lives, she will see that she has nothing to fear.
With that final thought, I came to a hasty decision. The Madam would see that the clock did not control her life, and I would be the one to prove it to her. Since I had already wound the clock for the day, I reclined in my own chair and joined the Madam in watching the seconds tick by as daylight grew thin.
The next day, I went about my business as usual, trying as hard as possible to keep my excitement for my upcoming experiment contained. The constant tick-tock from the Madam’s timepiece made the minutes drag on. At times I thought the world had stopped revolving, but then I would hear the pendulum click to one side and the earth would start itself up again. The day wore on like this until it was time to wind the clock. Instead of patiently waiting for the minute hand to reach the hand-painted nine scrawled onto the face as I always did, I returned to my own chair and twisted my body so I could watch the Madam as the time ticked by. At first she did not realize what was happening, until she watched the second hand makes its way up to the twelve. 2:45 came, and suddenly the Madam grew rigid, as she always did. Not alarmed, I continued to observe the Madam. Her eyes began to bulge from her withered face, and she ripped her gaze from the clock for a split second glance in my direction. It was then that I became alarmed; the look of absolute horror and despair in her hazy eyes could not be missed. I could not turn back now though, and so I remained seated, listening as the seconds became more sluggish, matching the Madam’s now ragged breathing. She suddenly began to seize in her chair, writhing about like a possessed thing. Now slightly panicked, I sprang up and bounded to her. I reached her in a matter of half a second, but by then she lay still, with only a slight rise and fall from her chest to show she was still breathing. We both watched as the clock’s ticking ending with a sort of firm finality, and I realized that I stood alone in silence. The Madam was dead.
I never realized how much life I had missed until I finally exited the dilapidated stone house and reentered the real world. I had stood in reverie over the Madam for some time after she passed, and then went about trying to complete any paperwork needed for her will. It seemed that the Madam would not be missed, and neither would her home, so I decided to leave well enough alone, take the pay I had earned over the years, and start my life over. I discovered my old home had been renovated and sold to a different family, so I no longer had a place to live. I came across an old store with a second story to live in, and so I began my own business as an antique seller. The Madam had had many old odds and ends lying around her house, and so over the years I had become well acquainted with antiquities and their values. Business was often slow, but pleasant.
After shopping for my next meals at the market, I returned to my shop one day and retreated to my bedroom upstairs, worn out from a long day of polishing silver and shopping for essentials. Everything seemed in order, but as I opened the door to my living arrangement, my breath caught. Frozen in place, I stared across the room to the thing that had been carefully placed on the table. Surely it can’t be…! I thought to myself, and took several quick strides across the floor and stared hard at the clock. Horrified, I inspected it thoroughly, wishing that it wasn’t so familiar to the touch. Flipping it open, I found laid across the gears a small scrap of paper with two words scribbled onto it. “It’s yours,” I whispered as I read it out loud. The pendulum ticked once, and my heart felt as though it had leapt out of my chest. As much as it irked me, I had a great urge to wind it once again, and listen to the familiar ticking. I could not keep it though, it had to be sold. Lugging it downstairs to the dark shop, I dropped it on the counter, and retreated to my bed. I swear I could hear the clock tick tocking the entire night. I did not sleep for one second.
I got out of bed after my third sleepless night in a row due to the incessant ticking of the Madam’s clock, and as I proceeded downstairs to open my shop, I glanced toward the taunting clock and felt a surge of anger run through me. Suddenly overwrought with loathing for the blasted thing, I hoisted a tarnished candlestick that had been placed nearby and began to beat the clock, the desire to see it splinter intensified by its metronomic monotony. Blow by blow, I watched as the timekeeper was continuously crushed beneath my hate driven blows. With one last heave of my makeshift bludgeon and a cry of anguish, I reached the heart of the devil. The clock started to splutter, its ticking suddenly haggard like the breath of a dying animal. With its end drawing closer, I began to feel a sense of dread that crept up my spine slowly and relentlessly, like a thick ocean fog rolling inland.
I sat heavily upon the floor, feeling weak from the unexpected catharsis of bashing in the old clock. It seemed that as if in defiance, the monster continued to stagger through the seconds, but gradually lost its steam just the same. I patiently awaited the demise of the hated thing that had taken over the majority of my life, and closing my eyes from the sudden feeling of fatigue that washed over me, I listened to the clock’s final tick.
My heart answered with one last tock.
The Madam watched intently as I rewound the clock. It wasn’t until I stepped back and she saw the golden pendulum swinging monotonously that she sat back in her worn, grandiose chair and returned to her almost catatonic state. Over the years, I have grown accustomed to her strange reactions as I perform this menial task. Every day at 2:45, I am required to rewind the small, ornate grandfather clock. Every day at 2:45, The Madam seems to freeze, as if in rigor mortis, until she can once again hear the relentless ticking of her precious timekeeper.
I came to the Madam when I was hardly old enough to be considered an adult. An anonymous envelope had appeared on my doorstep, stuffed fat with money and labeled with a single address. The address I refer to is a legendary stone mansion in this section of the world. It is said to be haunted; so haunted, in fact, that no soul dares go near it for fear of never being seen again. At first I ignored the letter, for fear it was a cruel trick being played on me, but every day a new letter showed up, each with more money than the last. Finally after a week of receiving these over-laden envelopes, an overwhelming curiosity literally dragged me to the doorstep of the house. It was here that I first met the Madam, and learned of what was to become of my life.
My job is simple. I am the attendant to the Madam. Upon my arrival at her decrepit stone house many years ago, the equally crumbled woman gave me three requirements in a raspy, rarely used whisper, that are to this day engrained in my mind: “You will take care of me until one of us dies, you are never to leave the house, and you must never let the clock stop.” She has hardly spoken since then, but she speaks to me in other ways. Her stomach whines when she’s hungry, and her lips chap when she thirsts. She never leaves her chair. She never takes her eyes off of the clock. If she must move, the clock must move; it always teases me with its maniacal ticking as I lug it to the Madam’s new location. I have half of a mind to destroy the thing, but then I remember the salary I receive for my troubles, and I am kept at bay from damaging the Madam’s most valued object.
It’s been so many years since I’ve seen the outside world that it seems as if it does not exist anymore. My entire life has been devoted to the Madam. Every day the process is the same; I take care of both of us, and then we wait for the time to come to rewind her clock. The past few years I have noticed that as the day draws nearer to 2:45, the Madam seems to grow weaker and sicklier. However once I have finished winding the clock, her health improves enough that I have some hope that I won’t find her lifeless in her chair the next morning. Our lives revolve around the clock. I often wonder how she doesn’t go crazy listening to its ticking every waking moment of the day, but perhaps she is already crazy. The kind of crazy that one does not show outwardly, but instead wreaks havoc internally. Sometimes I wonder if the never ending tick of the clock is slowly driving me to insanity as well. Despite my possible madness though, I can’t help but wonder on occasion how old the Madam is. She has outlived at least three other attendants prior to myself. It seems odd to me that she is still alive. This thought has kept me up at night, and occupies my mind by day. It races uncontrollably through my head, over and over, keeping time with the ever swinging pendulum of the clock. It has come to the point that I need to know the truth about the Madam, or else I may do something I regret.
Finally, I mustered up the courage to ask the Madam about her history. “Madam,” I hesitantly began. “Why must I keep the clock wound?”
“The clock must never stop,” the Madam replied instantly, as if she had rehearsed this reply many times over in her mind.
“But why must the clock never stop? Why is it so important?”
“My mother inherited the clock from her great-aunt many years ago,” the Madam heaved a sigh. Reluctantly, she continued to explain. “She loved that clock so very much. Every day she would wind it at the same time. That is until one day, when she lay sick in bed, and asked me to wind it for her. I was a silly girl, carefree, and so I forgot to keep the clock wound. I left to visit with my friends, and when I came back some hours later, she was dead. Everyone thought it was the sickness that killed her, but I couldn’t help but think it was my fault that she died, because I was the one who had let the clock stop. The clock must never stop.” And with that, the Madam sank back into her chair, a sullen look on her face.
I knew she had finished, but I couldn’t help but ask her, “Madam, how old are you?”
“One-hundred and forty-seven. Now please, wind the clock.”
After the initial shock of hearing her age, I become absorbed in my thoughts. How could someone possibly live to be that old? It doesn’t seem possible; perhaps I was right about her being mentally ill. However she seems sane enough and her story is logical enough to be credible. What would happen if the clock actually did stop, would she die as she thinks her mother did so many years before? Does she truly believe her mother died because the clock stopped? Is this paranoia of the clock stopping keeping her alive? Is the clock keeping her alive? That couldn’t possibly be true, how could it be true? It hardly makes sense! Perhaps if the clock stops and she lives, she will see that she has nothing to fear.
With that final thought, I came to a hasty decision. The Madam would see that the clock did not control her life, and I would be the one to prove it to her. Since I had already wound the clock for the day, I reclined in my own chair and joined the Madam in watching the seconds tick by as daylight grew thin.
The next day, I went about my business as usual, trying as hard as possible to keep my excitement for my upcoming experiment contained. The constant tick-tock from the Madam’s timepiece made the minutes drag on. At times I thought the world had stopped revolving, but then I would hear the pendulum click to one side and the earth would start itself up again. The day wore on like this until it was time to wind the clock. Instead of patiently waiting for the minute hand to reach the hand-painted nine scrawled onto the face as I always did, I returned to my own chair and twisted my body so I could watch the Madam as the time ticked by. At first she did not realize what was happening, until she watched the second hand makes its way up to the twelve. 2:45 came, and suddenly the Madam grew rigid, as she always did. Not alarmed, I continued to observe the Madam. Her eyes began to bulge from her withered face, and she ripped her gaze from the clock for a split second glance in my direction. It was then that I became alarmed; the look of absolute horror and despair in her hazy eyes could not be missed. I could not turn back now though, and so I remained seated, listening as the seconds became more sluggish, matching the Madam’s now ragged breathing. She suddenly began to seize in her chair, writhing about like a possessed thing. Now slightly panicked, I sprang up and bounded to her. I reached her in a matter of half a second, but by then she lay still, with only a slight rise and fall from her chest to show she was still breathing. We both watched as the clock’s ticking ending with a sort of firm finality, and I realized that I stood alone in silence. The Madam was dead.
I never realized how much life I had missed until I finally exited the dilapidated stone house and reentered the real world. I had stood in reverie over the Madam for some time after she passed, and then went about trying to complete any paperwork needed for her will. It seemed that the Madam would not be missed, and neither would her home, so I decided to leave well enough alone, take the pay I had earned over the years, and start my life over. I discovered my old home had been renovated and sold to a different family, so I no longer had a place to live. I came across an old store with a second story to live in, and so I began my own business as an antique seller. The Madam had had many old odds and ends lying around her house, and so over the years I had become well acquainted with antiquities and their values. Business was often slow, but pleasant.
After shopping for my next meals at the market, I returned to my shop one day and retreated to my bedroom upstairs, worn out from a long day of polishing silver and shopping for essentials. Everything seemed in order, but as I opened the door to my living arrangement, my breath caught. Frozen in place, I stared across the room to the thing that had been carefully placed on the table. Surely it can’t be…! I thought to myself, and took several quick strides across the floor and stared hard at the clock. Horrified, I inspected it thoroughly, wishing that it wasn’t so familiar to the touch. Flipping it open, I found laid across the gears a small scrap of paper with two words scribbled onto it. “It’s yours,” I whispered as I read it out loud. The pendulum ticked once, and my heart felt as though it had leapt out of my chest. As much as it irked me, I had a great urge to wind it once again, and listen to the familiar ticking. I could not keep it though, it had to be sold. Lugging it downstairs to the dark shop, I dropped it on the counter, and retreated to my bed. I swear I could hear the clock tick tocking the entire night. I did not sleep for one second.
I got out of bed after my third sleepless night in a row due to the incessant ticking of the Madam’s clock, and as I proceeded downstairs to open my shop, I glanced toward the taunting clock and felt a surge of anger run through me. Suddenly overwrought with loathing for the blasted thing, I hoisted a tarnished candlestick that had been placed nearby and began to beat the clock, the desire to see it splinter intensified by its metronomic monotony. Blow by blow, I watched as the timekeeper was continuously crushed beneath my hate driven blows. With one last heave of my makeshift bludgeon and a cry of anguish, I reached the heart of the devil. The clock started to splutter, its ticking suddenly haggard like the breath of a dying animal. With its end drawing closer, I began to feel a sense of dread that crept up my spine slowly and relentlessly, like a thick ocean fog rolling inland.
I sat heavily upon the floor, feeling weak from the unexpected catharsis of bashing in the old clock. It seemed that as if in defiance, the monster continued to stagger through the seconds, but gradually lost its steam just the same. I patiently awaited the demise of the hated thing that had taken over the majority of my life, and closing my eyes from the sudden feeling of fatigue that washed over me, I listened to the clock’s final tick.
My heart answered with one last tock.