Clock and Dog; A Short Story

I've been passed down from generation to generation; slowly I've been efficiently eating away at the segments of time for the past eighty years.

I've seen wars blossom and whither; I've seen flies fight furiously with their transparent nemeses – and fail spectacularly; and I've seen so many people come and go, it feels like a carousel of humans.

Whether they grew up in front of me and decided to spread their wings, or they settled down, got themselves some wrinkles and began their rotting process until they just stopped one day (and end up in that big brown box that they always seem fit to put in front of me!)...I always watch it happen.

There's something quite sad about seeing them in a coffin. Everyone mourns them, everyone brings them flowers and cards, but no one will ever spend any time with them. Their body was simply a vehicle for their personality, but when they're in that box it's just an empty unwanted shell. So unwanted that it's taboo to spend long periods of time with it.

Live together, die alone. That's what they say, right?

  I remember when I got dropped. It was my first and only time I've ever been dropped. The lady of the house was dusting me, it was eleven years ago. She always held me delicately - fearing that seventy years had taken it's toll on an old clock like me - when the rampant little bastard jumped up at her in its clumsy attempt at getting her to play ball.

Yes, the rampant little bastard was their new puppy. He had effectively startled her so dramatically that she dropped me. It was on a carpeted floor, but the landing was still rough nevertheless and the dog received a good smack on his snout for his actions. I remember lying on my side with a smirk on my face as the mutt walked away with his head hung low and tail between his legs.

I remain scarred from that day. There's a chip on my upper right side and I was lucky that the glass plate covering my face didn't break upon impact. The lady of the house harrumphed and cursed the dog upon seeing the scar that now defines my features.

  It took a few hours but soon enough the house realised that it had been eerily quite in the room for quite some time. It was six-oh-one in the evening and the man of the house tiptoed over to me. With his deep frown lines, etched on his face like an homage to his life he's already lived, he curiously but gently tapped my face plate with his index finger and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

We stared into each others' souls. I could see his childhood – difficult and certainly unforgettable – blend into a wonderful adulthood with a family that long since moved on and left him and his wife to live out the rest of their lives in relative peace.

He took in a deep breath and asked me, 'Are you OK?'

I wanted to thump the cabinet and have my cries rally out as I make sure the dog gets his punishment. I wanted to kick and scream and tantrum like a spoilt child who doesn't get what he wants. Instead, all I could hear was the concern in his voice; all I could see was the love in his eyes, and I simply thought, 'I'm fine.'

'What's wrong?' Inquired the lady of house as she looked over the top of her glasses.

'He didn't chime.' The man answered queerly.

'Oh.'

The lady's “Oh.” sounded awful. Sounded so definite, as if I'd been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Some malignant force at work on my insides. Stopping me from chiming. I never chimed again.

From that day on, I disliked the dog.

  I always felt like the dog was constantly trying to sabotage my well-being.

Time and time again he would clumsily stumble or bump into the cabinet that I sit on. Whether it was whilst chasing a ball or not paying attention to his whereabouts as he so intently watched someone enter the room with food in their hands, he'd find a way to knock into the cabinet. Not only does such an action threaten my stability up there, but it also threatens the accuracy of my time keeping.

  Other days would go by where we would be simply basking in the warmth of the room, lying drenched in the rays of the morning sunlight before – seemingly out of nowhere – the urge overcame him to scramble himself into an awkward position so he could lick his private parts. The ghastly sound resonated throughout the room, drowning out my poetic ticks and accurate tocks.

  While I was speaking works of art, he was lapping at his orifices.

  To say his incessant tail wagging, which always seemed to be within range of my cabinet and capable of sending deep guttural thuds to my core, was annoying would be an understatement and a complete injustice as to how infuriating this little bastard could be.

Further adding to his repertoire of ways which he could skilfully irritate the sanity out of a dishcloth, he would always lie with his back firmly pressed against my cabinet. Never was this an issue until his peaceful dreams turned into some fitful race where he would animatedly chase some fatuous, subconscious irritant; growling and snarling, barking and yelping, huffing and puffing. His eyes would open, he'd bare his teeth and his paws would be “going like the clappers” as the man of the house would say while commenting on the mutt in it's dreamlike state.

  The black bastard always knew how to ruin a peaceful moment.

  However, as the years went by, he became much more lethargic. He'd sleep so much more; he'd limp because of his stiff hips, always splaying his back left leg to make walking that bit easier; his glossy black coat became spattered with bits of grey: around his snout, on his eyebrows, on his chest, underneath his paws...He got old fast.

But that never stopped the the fact that he was always around. Always there. He seemed to enjoy staring at me, always with a curious look to his face, a tilt to the head and ears pricked up to suggest something was running through his mind. He'd ache if he sat there and stared for too long, so reluctantly, he'd slink away back to the base of the cabinet – almost out of my sight – to retire for the day and prepare himself to enter a brand new dream world.

  Then it happened. His clumsy stumbles, his noisy dreams, his incessant tail wagging, his constant stares...They ended.

  It didn't take as long for them to notice something was wrong with the dog as it did to notice something was wrong after I'd been dropped. It took but a few minutes in fact.

It was a silence that ached our ears; as if a presence slinked away with such stealth and hushed quiet that something just felt wrong in the room.

The man of the house once again tiptoed over to the dog in the same way he tiptoed over to me when I was lying on my side, exactly where the dog was then.

He placed his hand on the dog.

His eyes scanned the handsome black dog from head to tail.

Even from my place up high on the cabinet I could feel the man's heart race fast and his breathing become more shallow.

This time, the man of the house didn't ask, “Are you OK?”

This time, the lady of the house didn't ask, “What's wrong?”

This time, I knew: I wouldn't be fine.

  He, who had left us, was faithful to us all.

Clumsy, playful, irritating? True, he was all those, but he was always there. He was always a companion to us. Never pretended to be something he wasn't; never held grudges when we cursed his name for doing something he couldn't help; and he always stood by your side and kept an eye out on you. Never could you have asked for a better friend.

  He turned out to be the reason I enjoyed this place, this family, this room. He was the reason I kept putting ticks after tocks after ticks after tocks – and now that he's gone he is the reason that if the man of the house asks me one more time, “Are you OK?”...I won't be around to hear it.

  At least if I stop ticking, maybe I'll get to see my friend again one day.

Writing Brave

  They say writing can be therapeutic. It can be and i found i often used to indulge in my creative writing. I sacrificed i don't know how many hundreds of hours where i could have been out socialising, but instead i felt compelled to sit behind a computer screen and conjure up a world - or at least a variant of what we know and claim to understand right now - and try and turn it on it's head. My stories would never be as simple as 'A guy meets a girl.' They never have been about that, and i'm sure it'll be quite a few years before i ever consider doing anything like that; but i would transcribe all my thoughts all my feelings and i would put them on virtual paper.

  However, there's more to the therapy than just putting down your ideas, unleashing your fantasies, or simply trying to conceive a place that doesn't currently exist. There's the bravery that's attached to writing.
Anyone who had anything better than a godawful education can write, and anyone who doesn't really care about their writing can put it out for the public to see without a care in the world. But it's only the people who care about their writing that are the truly brave ones.
These writers are the soldiers on the battlefield of fiction who have a wife and children to worry about at home: in other words they feel they have something to lose when people read their writing.

  To be like Stephen King, to have that unique prose and wonderful writing style where he can dip his pen into the ink of almost any genre and still come out with an amazing book is something i always dream about being able to achieve. But when you do this, when you put these notions, concepts, thoughts - whatever they are - onto paper you're also putting yourself onto paper.
When you care about your writing you begin to bare yourself in your writing. Whether you care to admit it, whether you even realise it, there's a little part of you, a sliver of your personality - that doesn't come out in public - all of a sudden rears its questionable head. When you're on your own you're happy putting these things on paper but then you've got to come to terms with the knowledge that you are making this so other people can read it.
I think about this whenever i create a character that I think a reader would instantly dislike because he's socially shunned for example. Say i wanted to write about a rapist; i then have to get inside the head of a rapist, i have to think like one, i have to enjoy what he enjoys, describe what he feels, speak of all the senses that light up when he performs this horrific act. I have to put my own slant on it...i have to put ME in that part and then i have to put THAT on paper for everyone to read and for everyone to judge.

  I don't want people to know that i have thought this indepth about a rapist or a terrorist or how a girl dying from the blackness inside her is feeling, but if i think it would make a compelling read then i brave it and bare my soul. And that's what I do - as do hundreds of thousands of others - when they open up and write. I put everything i have into my writing because if i'm going to let people know that i've thought about these details that some people wouldn't even like to think about let along talk about, then i want them to be compelled by the read. I want them to feel that engrossed by it all that they think they are reading from the perspective of the aforementioned despicable person FIRSTHAND.
There's that little voyeur in all of us, that little someone who wants to read some of these things, get inside the mind of the people that do some of these awful things that go on in the world.
I have written short stories about a terrorist failed suicide bombing attempt that left him alive and hundreds around him wounded or dead and having to deal with those consequences.
I have written a short story about a rapist and i have watched my fingers transcribe the voice of my mind as it details some astonishing thoughts that this rapist has...that i have.
I've written an entire novel about the end of the world, where the entire human race crumbles and everyone dies slowly from inside to out. I initially thought this was going to be published this year, but alas, life never goes as you planned.

  All of this i will gladly let anyone read if they wish to and their reactions are the things i am most prepared for. Simply because I am the person that creates this monster. Maybe in the story i glorify the act, but never in real life would i condone such actions.

  And it's not just the nasty stuff you write about, it's the glorious stuff you write about. It's the characters you create that you want everyone to take a liking to so that the story works. In every character and in every plot line there's a piece of the writer. Regardless of whether that character is inspired or heavily based on someone the author knows in real life, the author can't NOT apply a little part of himself to it. To create a character you have to know it inside and out. There is no one in this world that you know inside and out other than yourself. And the only reason i write these stories is because i haven't heard a good enough version or i haven't read a version that caters to what i wanted. So i put the Matt Weir into a zombie story, or an end of the world story, or a psychopathic plastic surgeon story and Matt Weir goes right into these characters as well. You spend so long with these characters and plot lines that you grow really fond of them, and when people don't like them: it hurts.

  There's a handful of people that i care very much about and care what they think of me, and when they read my work they see a new side to me all the time, which is difficult for me. But it's a choice I make because I want to be a writer and I know i'm good enough. If only i didn't care what others thought of me...then again, at the end of the day, who in this world honestly doesn't care what other people think about them.

Simply put, this is why, to truly put writing that you care about into the public eye, you need to be very brave: because everyone you know and everyone who doesn't know you but still reads your stuff will judge you. They will judge YOU.