Clock Work (short story)

Cory had lived with her family for many years. Everything had always been the same as the day before. Mrs. Burns woke at 6:30am every morning to make breakfast for her husband. This breakfast consisted of eggs, bacon and toast with coffee on the side. Mr. Burns woke at 7am and was at the breakfast table at 7:05. He ate plainly no salt or pepper for his eggs. Toast burnt no butter and coffee black. It was his routine to read the paper while Mrs. Burns rambled about nothing. Cory often slinked out of the room when she began to talk to much. Mr. Burns would leave at 8 and Mrs. Burns at 9, leaving the house all to Cory until 1pm. This was their schedule and had been for as long as Cory could remember.

So when a big delivery truck arrived at the Burn’s home around 12:30 Cory was shocked. Even, more shocking was Mrs. Burns was home early to receive what ever the delivery truck carried for her. She paced back in forth wringing her hands together and saying something about it being broken. When the delivery men brought a very long and very heavy looking package in she began to complain of their carelessness and they argued for a while on how it wasn’t their fault they received it like that. Not caring about this pointless argument Cory turned to the box feeling uneasy, there was something stirring in  the air, something that didn’t feel right, she scrambled up the stairs fleeing from the room and the presence that almost seemed to chase her. Cory hid in a closet feeling safest there and slowly fell asleep missing Mrs. Burns calls for dinner.

She awoke with hunger pains in confusion, when she realized where she was and why she tried to go back to sleep. But when she couldn’t take it for another moment she was forced to brave the stairs as she ventured through the dark house. Reaching the bottom she looked over to the kitchen and saw her dinner still sitting out, cold. Stomach crying to be fed she walked forward but stop suddenly to look for the missing box. The box was no where to be seen and she realized thr thing that had scared her was just an old grandfather clock and it was safely sitting in the hall leading to the living room. The clock was silent obviously this had been the cause of Mrs. Burns annoyance, it was broken and looked very old. No longer caring about the box or new family member to the Burn’s décor, Cory could not resist her food and turned to eat her cold supper when she heard creaking noises coming from down the hall where the clock sat. She shrugged and when back to eating when little scuffling noises followed. Cory swallowed a mouth full of food and forgot about the rest of the cold tasteless stuff when the sound happened again. Crouching low she slowly stalked forward to where the noise came from, the hall.

The cheerful white flowered wallpaper that decorated the walls of the hall seemed ominous. It flowers now looked wilted and the paper held more of a yellowish gray color in the moonlight that streamed through the windows. Walking slowly down the hall she glanced at family portraits. The once happy family smiled evilly back at her with silent promises that she could not understand. Even her own portrait, she looked terrifyingly different, evil even. It too knew something she did not as it smiled smugly at her. Cory’s small stature made the walls even taller, but the seemed to slowly deep in towards her wanting to engulf her in wilted flowers and sickly yellow/grey.

The scuffling noise sounded again louder and closer, Cory turned her head away from the pictures to face the noise, and the clock. It was silent, dead looking. It did not seem possible that it had ever worked. Walking noiselessly up to it she stood staring as if the very wickedness of it was engraved into it along with its finely detailed carvings. They were beautiful and entranced her with vines covered in flowers growing up the sides of the clock and in some places hard to see from being rubbed away with time. Leaning forward to get a closer look she could see small birds hidden in the plants and thorns, and they looked to be hiding themselves. The more she stared at it the more she realized something was wrong about it,  she couldn’t place it. She had never seen this clock before but something was not right. The thought hung over her like a dark cloud building for a storm.

Then the minute hand moved, and then again. It was moving faster now slowly picking up speed so as to match the seconds that went by unnoticed by Cory as she stood before the clock. Her face full of horror, as the impossible happened before her. Cory couldn’t get her legs to work, she was frozen, her eyes following the moving minute hand. The noise she had followed sounded again snapping her out oh her own frozen fear, the noise continued but this time it came from within the clock. Like the cogs in it where alive and moving on their own. Cory’s hair stood on ends as she slowly backed away. A shadow fell across her causing her to jump scaring her even more when she realized it was the clocks shadow. It was towering over her leaning forward as if to swallow her. The great wooden beast. Hissing through clenched teeth she sprang back a little and face the clock as though she were David and it Goliath. Yet she had no stones and this Goliath had no weakness. Her eyes got big as the hour hand moved for the first time, striking out a loud unnatural noise of banging and squealing as it announced that it was 1 o’clock in the morning. Cory screeched as she raced out of the hall. She leaped up the stairs as if she was running from a fire and ran right back to the closet she had hid in earlier.

Mrs. Burns was entertaining her friend Mrs. White week later.

“Where’s Cory? The dear usually comes to greet me” Mrs. White complained lightly.

“I don’t know honey, the little girl wont even come in the living room anymore. Silly cat she doesn’t like the new carpet we put in.”