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TRUE--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? Noticing the tick on her watch sharpened my senses--not destroyed--not dulled them. Above all the sense of hearing acute. I had just lain myself down, inside my hard, joke of bed, tired from teaching Korean kids how to repeat, "Miles Davis is king in jazz innovation" on cue, when instead of falling into dreams the ticking began. I suppose that it had always been there, except of course for the long period of its sleep. Celeste bought the Swatch from an older woman at a garage sale which we were visiting to sell OUR oldities. I should have been suspicious of someone willing to sell for a pittance one of the first Swatches ever placed into production. It had an avocado colored band and the face was quite plane other that the numbers which were turned, backwards, and otherwise a sque. The woman selling the watch said that she bought it back in the 80s. "It works fine!" she said. "All it needs is a battery!" and then she lowered the price another dollar. Celeste snatched the opportunity, and true to form, all it needed was a battery--a battery to be revived from its long, unpeaceful, sleep. I hadn't noticed it's tick in the weeks before, but now, as I laid in bed, longing sleep desperately, it seemed to be calling to me--speaking to me. Through the dark, I heard something a methodical and steady, tick, tick, tick, tick. . . It reminded me of a metronome hanging on the edge of a spinster's piano, clicking away the measures of an etude with which she was torturing one of her young piano students. At first I thought the ticking might have been the clock hanging on the wall across the room, but then no, that that tick was much lower and smoother. The tick in my ear seemed to be coming from much closer--beside me and right next to me. My head throbbed and though I thought the tick, tick, ticking peculiar, I was confident that I would be gently pulled into my dreams and forget it. Instead the ticking seemed to crawl closer. Annoyed, I pulled back the covers to get up and get a drink of water. Surely I would sleep soon; I was dead tired. Upon climbing back into my deadly cold board-with-covers-masquerading-as-a-bed bed, I saw the pale white arm of my wife, already asleep, next to me. On her delicate wrist was secured the watch she had purchased at the garage sale weeks earlier. The moon shone a single ray through the window and onto the face of the watch. I watched for a full minute as the second hand inched around the face--every movement accompanied by a taunting tick, tick, tick. So that was my teaser. I pulled the covers to my chin but couldn't sleep with the tick, tick, tick. My eyes would not close. I pulled my pillow over my head yet still I could hear the distinct only slightly duller tick, tick, tick. I sat awake all night, my wife laying next to me, dead to the world, and my only company was the tick, tick, tick, coming from her wrist. The following night was similar, as was the next and the next. On the fourth night, I lie down, my head suffering from a dull throb after hours of "Mir-es Davees is king in jazz ilovation," I again lie tortured by the clicking on her watch. I had refused to say anything to sweet Celeste who loved the watch so much, so there i lay in growing mental agony. For a much of the night, I counted the clicks as they formed minutes, then hours. Finally, I was aroused to my senses as if something snapped inside my brain. I threw back the covers and sat up in bed, my head pounding, my eyes bulging. There it lay. Celeste's delicate arm and that dreadful watch screaming out the seconds. There I sat as I looked at the watch. Another hour. Then two. Then, pulling me out of my maddening trance, the first rays of dawn began to brighten the room with the a cold blue. Soon Celeste woke as she always did in the early hours of the morning and left the bed to shower and prepare for her day. Before her shower, she bounced around the room with annoying chipperness which seemed to mock my sleepless night. I laid my head on my pillow and closed my eyes but even with Celeste in the shower, and her watch resting on the bathroom vanity, my brain still counted the seconds of the watch as if my brain were controlled by springs and cogs. Oh, that watch! That damning watch. And the ticking continued. Each night for a week the same program ensued: I would lie awake until Celeste had fallen asleep. Then, as sleep took hold of her mind and her breath became long and peaceful, I slowly and gently uncovered her wrist and . . . and that watch. I would stare at it as it marked the seconds, minutes, and hours--each tick poisoning my brain. I was frozen. I could do noting but sit and stare and watch it tick, tick, tick. One night, after 7 or 8 days of little or no sleep, I was mad with fatigue. Celeste had been asleep for hours and my mind pounded as each second rung, louder than ever, like a church bell in my ears. With trembling fingers, I pulled back the covers to reveal the watch in the thin moon light of the room. Instead of simply staring, my fingers crept, as if with a mind of their own, to her wrist and gently, slowly unlatched its band. She stirred only slightly then rolled over, taking her left arm , and consequentially her watch wrist, with her. The Swatch, however, remained where her wrist had been, its band undone and face down on the bed. Though it lay face-down, the watch's ticking rang louder than ever mocking my fatigue. My quivering fingers immediately snatched up the Swatch and held it tightly for a minute or two, my eyes blinking wildly. I crept out of bed, quietly but quickly put on my slippers, walked over to the door, and slowly turned the doorknob, the watch ticking away in my hands. I wondered how she could not hear it's deafening tick, tick, tick. Surely, any moment she would wake. We have but one door in our apartment, it a studio and quite small. I knew that if Celeste heard the door she would wake up and see that I had her watch, the watch she so loved yet the watch that tortured my every second of life. If she found me, found out my sudden plan, she would stop me. My torture would continue. No, this couldn't be. So, Quietly, so quietly I turned the knob. After I could turn it no more, I began to slowly open the door. The hinges creaked only a little, causing Celeste to stir slightly in her sleep. I froze and waited in that position for ten minutes until I was sure that she was deeply sleeping again. Celeste asleep, I resumed opening the door only wide enough for me to slip through, then just as gingerly, closed it behind me. In the hall, my eyes stared madly at my prisoner, the watch, and my breath turned shallow and quick. Our apartment is on on the ground floor of our building and the hallways and stairs are central to the building. Every whisper of sound echoes loudly off the synthetic marble stairs and floor. Indeed the smallest of sounds is amplified in that echoy space. In the hall, I clutched the watch tighter and tighter to quell it's ticking--it's life. But the ticking escaped my hands and seemed to boom in the echo of the hallway. I ran outside, into the cold november night. The building's front was in the shadow of moonlight and therefore very dark. The air was thick with pollution and as it met my gasping lungs it burned and made me cough with a rank taste on my tongue. I began to look frantically around the perimeter of our apartment building for some method of destroying the cause of my torture. I remembered a small brown kimchi pot that had long since abandoned red paste and cabbage for cigarette butts and spent matches, sitting half hidden under an outcropping of another tenant's apartment. I found it easily enough despite the lack of light and hurriedly grabbed it from under the outcropping. Lifting it, I noticed that despite its size, it was deceptively heavy. Pot in hand, I released my tight grip from the watch and placed it on the ground. I stood there for only for a few seconds, as the ticks boomed loudly and menacingly from its face, tick, tick, tick, tick. I lifted the pot above my head then brought the pot down hard, smashing it down upon the face of the watch. Again and again, I smashed the pot upon the watch until finally both the pot and the watch were in pieces. At last! I could rest. My torturer was dead! With trembling hands, I picked up the remnants of the watch as leavening them there would attest to my guilt of destroying the watch that Celeste loved so much. I kicked the broken pottery back under the outcropping and headed back inside the apartment building. Looking greedily at my broken enemy, I stuffed the pieced into the pocket of my pajamas and crept back into the apartment. I would find a burial place for the watch later. Now I must sleep. As I opened the glass door to the apartment, I noticed that it was beginning to become light. Dawn was near. I crept back into our apartment, the many pieces of the dismembered watch in my pocket, and as careful as before, gently slipped through the door and into bed. I lay there awake, my heart racing, sweat upon my forehead, with feeling of ecstasy surging through my veins--I was free free from the ticking. I closed my eyes and waited impatiently for sleep to come. I could hear my heart beating rapidly as if in my ears, quickly at first then slowly it returned to normal. Soon, my heart beat was slow and steady. It seemed strange, though. It was perhaps too steady. At this thought, my heart began to quicken again but the sound in my head remained the same. Then I realized with horror that, no, the beating did not come from me. If not my heart, I figured that the sound must be and insect, the seeping of water through the warming pipes in the floor, or something. Soon, Celeste jumped out of bed and began her usual painfully happy morning routine. I lay there awake with a gnawing worry in my stomach that she might find out I had killed her watch. After her shower she began to dress and finally called over to me in bed, "honey, have you seen my Swatch? I was sure I went to bed with it on" To this I feigned sleep and didn't reply. I hoped that she would forget or assume she'd lost it somewhere. I knew she'd be sad but surely she cared more for me than that watch. I lie there more awake than ever, the beating still beating against my brain. Despite my fatigue, I tried to think of what it could be. I wondered if it were our drummer neighbor practicing. That couldn't be. Though he had little regard for the sleep of his neighbors, he never woke before noon. Then I wondered if it were perhaps the techno beat that constantly sounded in Korea like a giant heartbeat to a newly and overly modernized country. No, it was too faint for that. Maybe it was the water in our floor pipes heating our floor. Not that either. Then a horrific thought entered my mind. Could it be? Is it possible? But I had killed it. I had shattered it and drained it of its life! I was free, wasn't I? The ticking grew louder. It couldn't be! I'd killed it. It was dead! Tick, tick, tick, tick. Louder and louder the ticking grew until it exceeded the booming before I had smashed it. My head was going to burst. Sweat again began to drip from my forehead. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Celeste was finished dressing now and was beginning to prepare her fruit for her breakfast. Again she called over to me, "honey? Have you seen my Swatch?" Again, I lay there, pretending to sleep, although my heart was racing and my breathing was beginning to become shallow again. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Finally, she walked over to me and gently put her hand on my shoulder. I lay on my side, my back was to her so she couldn't see my face, my bulging, mad, eyes and the sweat on my forehead. "I say, Honey? Have you seen my swatch?" No doubt I grew very pale--but I continued to lay there pretending to sleep. Yet the sound increased--and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound--much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. She heard! She was making a mockery of my torture. I screamed. I admit the deed. I ripped off the covers, and pulled out the gruesome contents of my pockets. "Here here it is the ticking of your hideous watch!" The Tell-Tail Swatch--Scottro [2003-05-14]
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Last five letters Gathering [2009-09-04] ?2002, Scott & Celeste. |