The Clockwork Snail by Angela R Hunt

Clockwork Snail

By Angela R. Hunt

She told herself it was not real. 

The idea had been dismissed as impractical and mad, too destructive to benefit mankind. She listened to the gradual whirring sound as the tiny irridescent clockwork snail approached leaving a glowing wet trail behind it. It moved with blind certainty in her direction. She stepped to the side and watched as it adjusted course automatically. She wondered if she had time to run or if she was already lost to dreams.

She saw her laboratory in front of her. She saw a thief slip in and steal away. She saw a shadow approach her door only to hesitate and hunch down. The shadow grew and slid away, leaving a small object. 

She looked at it and it seemed to grow until it was the size of a castle, looming up in front of her. It was the snail with its clockwork steadily turning and whirring. It waited as she made her way to the base of the snail. She found a door with a golden handle shaped like a spiral. She felt compelled to enter the door. 

She had forgotten the world left behind.

Dreams formed around her from her greatest hopes and darkest fears.

Outside the shadow returned, he stepped into the lab. He took his cloak off. He wore giant tinted goggles that he did not remove. He used tweezers and carefully picked up the snail. He put it in a briefcase in a fitted pocket, lined up perfectly with forty other snails. They glowed brightly in various colors.

The woman laid on the floor unmoving, eyes closed. She would never wake again. Her mind, her dreams were gone. They could now be sold to someone who collected and enjoyed wandering through other minds. They assumed the minds they bought were artificially created like the snail, but how many would really care if they learned the minds were taken from the world's finest dreamers?

Not My Song

Not My Song by Angela R. Hunt

It was a dream. I tell myself that. I had no idea what was happening or why a man I barely know was there. He looked just as confused. Stubble shadowed his round face. He spoke but I could not hear the words. Irrationally I thought of sex and shook my head. He seemed unable to hear me but picked up on my expression. He shook his head emphatically, relieving both of us.
I gestured my confusion. He tried charade type gestures, then started changing the scenery around us. He handed me a cheap molded ceramic planter with a false child on it. Skin colored with fleshy bark, it had a gaping hole in the top yawning blackly at the apathetic child. The child's expression was flaccid.
That maw seemed hungry. Empty yet drawing attention, I shook my head and looked at him again. What was he saying? He seemed to want me to play it like a flute, but how would it work and what horrible sound would be wrought? I shook my head.
Suddenly, his eyes went sad and his clothing became dirty and ragged. His shoulders slumped as he stepped into the shadows of a filthy room. He was gone. I awoke. Message unclear, feeling thrown off.

What did the cheap pottery mean? Why a flute?

Shortly after that dream I watched my world turn sour. Music made me anxious. For some reason I feared that music would summon that awful flute. I had an intangible loathing for something I thought was a figment of my imagination.

I found myself searching the web for that imaginary flute. What would I do if it was real? What if I found it? I searched. My spare time became speeding through pictures and descriptions. There are a lot of flutes. There are many varieties. Artifacts of flutes from around the world.

Music was played to change mood, worship deities, and communicate. What worship, mood or communication did I fear? The communication in the dream had failed. It was dead.

It was several years later that I found it. It was sitting in a dusty display at the local historical society. A note next to it mentioned that it was believed to be a cheap reproduction of an ancient flute. Legend said the original was destroyed as it was meant to calm listeners and please the spirits but instead it irritated the spirits and caused despair in listeners. It was used as a defense against another tribe once. The warriors that heard its heavy notes turned their weapons on themselves.

The tribe destroyed the flute to prevent any further discord. The tribe and the legend were almost lost. A copy of the flute had been found. The story given as a warning. A local potter was enamored by the story. He dreamed of the flute. He made the flute on a new moon night, in deep shadow. Sightlessly his hands tried to shape the flute. The clay was not right. He felt blood was needed. He cut his hand. Mixed the warm liquid into the clay. He made the flute. He shaped it as his dreams directed him to. The wood, the child, the gaping maw. As he fired it his heart twisted and burned. He felt terrible. He was fevered, sweating, and exhausted. He was obsessed. The flute cooled. He was found with the flute clutched in his hands. It has never been played.

Will anyone notice if I break it? Do I care? It has to be broken. The dream warned me. I looked around. I was alone amidst the dust and weathered displays. I lifted the top of the display. I set it aside gently. I used my sleeve to pick up the flute without touching it. Somehow it felt much heavier than it should. I almost needed a second hand to pick it up. I turned to drop it on the floor. I was going to stomp on it and kick it until it broke.
"What are you doing with that?" The volunteer had just stepped in and seen me. He grabbed the flute. His face froze. His face became relaxed in an odd way. He slowly raised the flute and played a note. I was glad I had put earplugs in. I felt unimportant. I felt like I should die. I wanted to kill myself. I tried to fight it. He failed. He set the flute down and climbed out the window. It was too far to fall safely. With the ear plugs in I did not hear anything as he went. I knocked the flute to the floor. I stomped on it and kicked it into the wall until it finally broke. I swept the pieces up and later put them in a bonfire. The flames flickered with odd scents and colors. I kept the earplugs in until the largest fragment left was smaller than a nickel.

Expiration Date by Angela R. Hunt

Expiration Date Or The Pertinence of a Date

Shelly looked at him with a careful expression. John had been nothing but kind to her. His antics brought laughter, his words inspired dreams, but he had a terrible expiration date. She shook her head gently and looked past the lively man to the quiet man waiting behind him.  She looked like she was going to ignore him in the hopes he would be repelled from the room by her refusal to look at him again.

When she could not avoid looking at him any longer, John asked her in a quiet voice “Are you asking me to leave because of my expiration date?” I know I don’t have long but I intend to live it wholeheartedly. His expiration date had driven many women to turn him away. No one wanted to invest in loving someone who was going to die in five years. 

Shelly looked at him silently. She did not smile. She held her face in a careful detached expression as she turned her wrist over. Her expiration date was stamped there. It was tomorrow. He looked at her. She held out her hand to beckon him back, to request his assistance standing and living with such a narrow window of time suggesting that if he failed to reach for her that she might withdraw and sit as still as a great Sphinx until she was gone. 

The quiet man grew pale and backed away with spastic speed, eager to avoid encountering someone who was close to expiration. It could change your date of expiration, their looming death could spread like blanket through cities faster than rumors, stronger than prejudice. 

John slowly reached out to her as if half asleep and struggling to control his own body. His arm came close enough for her to lock her fingers around his wrist. He seemed surprised at the physical contact, of her strength despite the nearness of her death. 

He kissed her. She tasted like red wine, she smelled like flowers. She was warm and completely alive. How could she be so close to death? He fell in love with her, listening to her mad ideas and sitting curled around her in the corner booth of the dirty old pub. He kissed her again, and again. She smiled and laughed more loudly each time as if tempting fate to forget it’s plan and join her in the festivities. 

Midnight came and went. She was still alive! Now if she could be kept safely alive through the day and to the next midnight, she would be the first to survive her expiration date. The world might change, the people might become strong enough to fight for their lives and freedom again. For now they served and worked in thankless dangerous jobs for a fascist human puppeteer. 

John was planning how to keep her safe, to keep the guards from seeing the date and forcing the predicted end with a silenced bullet in the back of her head. He was thinking of the life they could have together. His wrist itched. His date had changed. It was today. 

He looked at her as she stared at the change. She drew away from him. She was itching her wrist. Her date had changed. She smiled as she slipped out of the room having planted evidence that would prove John was the mastermind behind a failed revolution. 

She continued working quietly and with desperate determination on plans to engineer a revolution that could not fail. Her plans estimated it would take about five years. She looked at her new expiration date. Five years would be just enough time to save the future. 

Repossessed by Angela R. Hunt

Repossessed

By Angela R. Hunt 2/1/15

Patrick put down his guitar and picked up his can of beer. It was a hot day, he was enjoying the shade. Jon, his best friend, was sitting with him. They were savoring the pleasant heat of winter in the desert. They spent their lives traveling, working odd jobs at carnivals and festivals. They lived, they made stories of their lives. Patrick was pretty sure that Jon had warrants in several states. Jon was in his thirties and lived a fiercely independent life. He always found a way to break the rules, sometimes just to break them. Patrick had his own internal philosophy that determined what rules he honored. Jon had tried college years ago and had nothing good to say about it. He could write in complete sentences and estimate travel speeds of various trains. A train schedule and a grammar editing program could do the same. They didn’t leave a giant trail of debt. Patrick smiled as he thought of Jon’s repetitive loan rant. 

“I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamed that I was laying in my tent and there was a knock at the door. You can’t knock on a tent, but it made sense in the dream. I opened the door and there was a shadow man there. It had a briefcase and it said something about a final collections notice.” Jon looked exhausted as he talked about the dream. 

“You think too much. It was a stupid dream. I don’t want to hear about your college debt AGAIN.” Patrick teased him. The conversation shifted to girls and parties. Gone, perhaps as if it had never been. 

Jon didn’t come by for coffee or to bum a cigarette in the morning. Patrick figured he was hung over. Mid-afternoon he went looking for his friend. Jon was sitting in his tent, chain smoking cigarettes. His hands were shaking. 

“The dream was a nightmare last night. It was worse. The knock on the tent. The shadow man was there with a briefcase. It claimed it was coming to collect on the debt I owed. I asked if it was my college debt. The creature nodded and took out some sort of document I couldn’t read. I told it to look around. I have nothing. A tent, a beat up guitar, a few cigarettes, but nothing beyond that. I asked if it wanted my heart. I was sort of joking. It shook its head and said “Pay up, you have until you sleep again. If you do not pay, you will not be.” What the hell does that mean Patrick?” Jon was really rattled. 

Patrick joked with his friend and spent the afternoon talking him down. By sunset, Jon seemed fine. He kept Patrick up until dawn started to lighten the sky. Patrick finally told him he had to sleep. Jon looked resigned and somber as he walked back to his tent. 

“Hey, if anything happens to me it means this shit is real. Be careful. Hope I see you tomorrow.” Jon didn’t smile as he said his goodbye. Patrick told him he’d be fine. 

Jon did not come by the next day. Patrick had to go looking for him again. He figured he’d drank a bottle of whiskey to chase the nightmare away. When he walked to Jon’s tent he stopped cold. Jon sat outside his tent. Jon’s face was slack and drool ran from the corner of his mouth. Patrick shook his friend, tried to snap him out of it. Jon’s mind was gone. 

Jon was taken to the hospital, many tests were run. No reason was ever discovered for the total loss of memory, personality and essence that seemed to happen. The doctors claimed it could possibly come from drinking or dehydration, perhaps genetics. Maybe he took to much Acid. 

Patrick did not believe them. He always kept the letter he found in Jon’s tent. It was from a debt collector. It was a receipt. Debt paid in full.