The Great Red Shifting: Grueberfest '07 (839 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 17 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Ballare (View user info) at 2007-10-17 15:37:21 EDT
On All Saint's Eve, in the sleepy little town of St. Marlin, it was customary for the clock tower steward to deck out the crumbling brick edifice with orange and black streamers. The steward was a thin and nervous and insubstantial man, who, after years of solitude with only the moaning rasp of great metal cogs and the pervasive tick-tock-tick-tock of the timekeeper for companionship, had gone a bit odd in the head, and often refused to practise this custom and instead spent Halloween tossing bits of bread down at passer-by children, who ducked and laughed and lobbed eggs as high as they could reach back at him.
His name was Arthur Bowne-Williams, although a select few knew him as simply Art, and considering fewer still cared to brave the winding, mouldering steps to the creaking top of the tower to call upon him, Arthur rarely saw another soul excepting his own, a haggard wrinkled face staring back in the yellowing mirror that hung over his wash basin.
This night, on the thirty-first of the tenth month, was no different, save for one small event that would change the course of Arthur Bowne-Williams' thus-far long and rewarding (as far as could be said for a clock tower steward) life.
There was a noise.
The noise was a deep and grinding and ghastly noise, and Arthur turned away from his small square window, bread in hand, as swiftly as his aging bones allowed. It was the sound of some cog, somewhere, grating against unmoving teeth. He grimaced, and shuffled towards the sound.
He knew this tower inside and out, claimed he was born in it, knew every huge gear intimately as a close friend, and so he recognized immediately the horrible screeching as Differential 17.
Old friend, he muttered, what troubles you now?
He picked fretfully at his hands as he tottered around to the vast turning wheels, pulling at the papery skin until it tore under his persistent inattention.
No, no, no, he murmured, it's all wrong, this, this, it's all wrong, when was the last time these have been oiled? Art, old chum, you are getting scatty with age and one day what will happen but the whole tower will fall, and you will not even notice but be wondering where you had placed the twine!
A spider-like hand crawled into a nearby toolbox, picking daintily over each mysterious device and gadget and what-have-you until it wrapped around a similarly enigmatic dowel. Arthur lifted it to his eye and peered closely at it then turned to the cogs, great vast revolving wheels with sharp metal teeth that could, his father had told him so many years ago, take a man's arm off.
Arthur scoffed at the notion. He lived, breathed, he knew cogs, the fascinating intricate machinery that drove the round clock face, kept it ticking as accurate as a cockerel's morning crow.
And at the moment, the gears within Differential 17 was rasping against each other with a painful discordant squeal, and the old man carefully folded his insect legs beneath him so he could put his eye up close to the reinforcing nuts and nails and washer that held the entire construction together.
Nodding and mumbling, he was idly fingering at a loose bolt when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
It was perhaps that Arthur had simply grown too old and doddering, but when he glanced up, he saw - well, no one knows what he saw, to be precise.
It may have been Death himself, tall and dark and hooded, come to claim the man personally; or perhaps it was a ghost or banshee or spectre, escaped during the night's witching hour and longing to feed on the terror of a feeble old man.
Perhaps it was simply a long, flicking shadow cast from his single flame lantern.
In any case, he started at the sight, and opened his mouth to shout, and lurched forward, and threw his hand out before him to steady himself, and placed his frail fingers out on a motionless, straining, whining cog.
The other hand went to his heart, as he gasped and shuddered and tried to calm himself, and did not notice as the gear jerked and moaned and slowly began to turn, and it turned and turned and turned and crushed his birdlike bones under the blunt teeth of another cog.
Arthur screamed a short-lived scream as he was pulled into the mindlessly rotating Differential 17, the open metal gaping mouth filled with sharp gnashing teeth that readily drew him in. He pulled back, but his knees, his brittle knees, gave out and he fell into the eager open maw.
The square glinting pitiless teeth ripped into his frail flesh leaving horrible torn strips of skin dangling from his arms and torso and suddenly he was within the stomach of the great chomping beast. It was all mechanical creaking and oiled gushing and, horribly, Arthur's body was tossed and chewed and his old heart burst under the weight of one pressing wheel and another broke his ribs, puncturing his lungs and his last breath was ragged and gasping and filled with misted red blood.
And his bones - oh, his weak tired old bones - crushed easily under the lifeless groaning maw and his skull popped and his eyes bulged and his soft grey brain spattered and the cogs halted for a moment, droning. This new foreign body, wedged in the closing jaw, gave the great beast pause until with one awful crunching spatter it spat the corpse out towards the gently curved innard of the face of the clock.
And Arthur's mangled corpse struck, bounced, and landed heavily and began, slowly, to bleed.
And the gears finally turned silently, gracefully.
There was a noise.
"Ha ha!" The mayor of St. Marlin cried, glancing up at the faint thud to see the sight of the great tower clock face shudder with the outline of a body, and a hazed red mist sprayed the glass, and the sight was so duly sinister and eerie that he grinned. "Old Arthur is finally getting into the spirit of things!"
He turned and clapped his hand on the back of a near ghost, a young child shrouded in a white sheet, whose knees nearly buckled under the weight. The boy kept his eyes turned upward at the clock face, his mouth noiselessly working on a piece of candy, and the two of them, the boy and the mayor, stood in silence staring as the glass disk slowly filled with swilling crimson blood.
The sight was delightfully macabre, and the mayor made a mental note to send the old steward a fruit basket in the morning to congratulate him on the superbly frightening sight.
User Reviews
Submitted by corn_nugget (user info) at 2007-12-18 15:18:33 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2007-10-21 15:55:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Gruesome in a very good way.
Submitted by zwerg (user info) at 2007-10-19 12:34:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent
Submitted by BlazinBull (user info) at 2007-10-19 10:09:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2007-10-18 14:29:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent.
I doubt a little town would hire a full time goober to sit up in the clock, but it's cool.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-10-18 08:49:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
nice
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2007-10-18 07:09:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Congrats mate. I totally fell at this hurdle.
Submitted by ChaosJester (user info) at 2007-10-18 06:34:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Well, okey-dokey then...
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2007-10-18 01:13:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Too many commas and a few grammatical errors, but fun nonetheless.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2007-10-17 22:35:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
koooollll....
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2007-10-17 17:36:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by triangle_man (user info) at 2007-10-17 16:09:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
timeless
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2007-10-17 15:59:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
For some reason, after Art's death, I had a mental picture of Mr. Spacely running up to the cogs and screaming, "JETSON! YOU'RE-B-B-B-BR-BR-BR-RE FIRED!"
Submitted by Zampano (user info) at 2007-10-17 15:48:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by DudeThatsBOSH (user info) at 2007-10-17 15:45:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
cool
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-10-17 15:44:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I like your style.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2007-10-17 15:41:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
More shamless St. Marlin link whoring:
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http://www.ubersite.com/m/101314
http://www.ubersite.com/m/110997
http://www.ubersite.com/m/110970