The Old Clock

Tick.

I look up from my book. It's some boring, dry piece of literature they had the audacity to call a classic. The clock looks at me assumingly from its position upon the mantle.

“Don’t play coy me with me,” I murmur, looking back down at my book.

Tick.

I look back up from my book and sigh, exasperated. “What do you want?” I ask it.

Tick.

“If it were up to me, you would be nothing more than next week’s garbage, you know that?”

Nothing.

“What? Did I hurt your feelings?” I ask the question in as pandering a tone as I could manage.

Nothing.

“Of course.”

Tick.

I get up from my very comfortable chair and throw the book into the seat. “What is your problem?” I snap, staring down the clock, “I’ve already told you, and I’ve already told them, I want nothing to do with what you’re asking.”

Nothing.

I nod, satisfied. Being in that room was obviously an issue, so I turn to walk out and up the stairs to my room. My computer was in that room, which meant the internet, which meant endless possibilities as to how I could waste my time until mom and dad got back home with fixings for dinner. I was starving, but then again, I was a teenage boy. What else was new? I was always starving.

Tick.

I hear the sound as I vault up the stairs in threes. If I went back down, the damned thing wasn’t going to stop, so I choose to purposefully ignore it.

“I don’t care if I do hurt your feelings,” I say defiantly.

That was probably a mistake.

*~*~*

“Hey, Mikey.”

“Hey, babe.” My girlfriend’s face is pixelated; her connection must not be great, but at least we could still talk.

“What’s wrong?”

I snort. “How can you even tell? I can barely see your face right now, the internet is so spotty.”

“Because, dummy, you have this funny little thing called inflection. You’re upset, what is it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, V.”

“Come on. You’ll feel better if you do.”

I sigh. “Look, it’s just the same stupid crap, okay? My parents keep pushing for me to make a decision, and I’ve already told them that decision is no, but they’re going to try and keep asking until I say yes or until I can afford to fly out and move in with you, so can we drop it already?”

V raises her hands in defense, but the image freezes halfway, totally obstructing my view. Her audio is starting to get spotty too. “Sorry….okay….forget….better….”

“V, I can’t hear you.” I hit my refresh button repeatedly, but nothing happens. Maybe it’s on both of our ends. “V!” My screen goes black. “Dammit!” I slam my laptop shut and reach for my phone and quickly type out a text. I hit send without proofing it.

sorry. didtn mean 2 snap. i miss u. when r u flying out so I can c u? <3

I watch my screen for the three telltale dots letting me know she’s typing back to say it’s okay, but they don’t show up. Maybe I really pissed her off. I set the phone back down on the desk. I would try to call again tonight, maybe send her some flowers. I smile. She was such a sap, but she was my sap. We’d been together for five years now. My goal was to get the hell out of my parent’s home just as soon as I turned 18 and fly out to Utah where she lived. My birthday was next month, and I was counting down the days.

“Michael? We’re home!”

I hear my mom’s voice downstairs. I heave myself out of my chair and head downstairs. She and dad are making small talk as they rummage through the groceries.

“Hey, sweetheart, how’s it going?” Mom asks.

Even though she’s my mom I can see how beautiful she is. Most people wouldn’t guess that she was fifty-plus a year or two. She could easily pass for my sister or girlfriend.

Dad was also super handsome and super fit. You would think that I would have been doubly blessed with their genetics, but whenever I look at myself in the mirror, all I ever see was a gangly mess of black hair, glasses, and baggy clothes that I can never seem to actually fill out, no matter how much weight I lift or how much protein I consume.

“It’s going.” I respond, grabbing an apple that had rolled away from her reach. I chomp into it noisily. “Our internet is down.” I wipe the juice running down my lips.

“Dude, you need to wash that before you eat it. Pesticides and all. Also, don’t talk with your mouth full.” Dad ruffles my hair as he patronizes me.

“Don’t eat too much. We’re having steak for dinner. Doesn’t that sound yummy?” Mom asks as she shimmies her shoulders in what I’m sure was an attempt to mimic teenage behavior. Really, it just looks dingy.

“Did either one of you hear me?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. “I said our internet is down. I can’t get stuff done without the internet.”

“Sure you can!” Dad replies brightly. “Read a book, or go outside. It’s beautiful. Or, hey! You wanna play chess?”

“Um, no. I want the internet back.” I flip the hoodie of my sweatshirt over my head so dad wouldn’t ruffle my hair again and go into the study to reset the router.

“Oh, you just need to turn that frown upside down!” Mom calls after me.

I groan at my parent’s antics and unplug the router for a few seconds before plugging it back in.

*~*~*

Dinner is quiet, but it's always quiet. All you can ever hear is the scrape of forks and knives against meat and salad and the occasional click of mom’s glass of red wine. She always had a glass. For the antioxidants or something like that.

Dad has a nasty habit of reading while at the dinner table, but he’d been doing it since before I could walk, so Mom eventually gave up on trying to break him of it. She always said you marry the man you get, not the man you try to make him into.

I try to eat my steak as fast as possible. Mom has a look and that look usually means a fight. She was chewing her food slowly, and her head was tilted to the side, like she was listening to something that no one else could hear.

“So, Michael, your father and I were talking.”

Here it comes.

“And we wanted to know if you had given any more thought to what we were talking about last week.”

“Nope.” I respond, my mouth as full as I could make it, just to irritate her.

“Chew your food, dude.” Dad murmurs as he keeps his eyes on the book. I can tell he's more interested in me than what's on the pages though.

I shut my mouth and chew slowly and deliberately. I was going to make this take as long as I possibly could. Several times mom gestures for me to continue, but I just point at my mouth and keep chewing. Eventually, I had only a tiny little bit of meat left in my mouth, but I was going to do everything in my power to make that sucker stay between my teeth for as long as humanly possible.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Michael, just swallow already!” Mom slams her palms on the table. The only time my mom looked ugly, like really ugly, was when she was mad at me.

I roll my eyes and swallow. “I told you guys I’m not changing my mind.” I say finally. I keep my stare even with my mother’s. I wasn’t going to back out of this, and I wanted to make sure they knew it.

“Sport, have you really thought about the consequences? You haven’t even had a chance to really think about it, you know.” Dad was the voice of reason between me and mom. He had always been the calm one, the calculated one.

I hated it.

“Yes. I have. I don’t need a lot of time to think about this. I made up my mind and it’s final. I’m not going through with it, and there’s nothing you can do to make me!”

At least, I didn’t think there was.

“Son, we don’t want to force you into anything, we just….” Dad trails off and removes his glasses to rub his eyes with his fingers. “We just know that you’ll be happier in the end if you do.”

I look at him like he had sprouted a second head. “How could I possibly be happier?!”

Mom sighs and joins in, trying to keep her voice level. She was failing. “Sweetheart, we just don’t want to lose you. Don’t you like your life here? Aren’t you happy?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I’m not happy.” I slam my napkin down and stand up. My chair falls backward and one of the legs clips my ankle on its way down, but I don't care. “How could you possibly think I would be happy when my parents are monsters and those monsters want me to join them in their...monsterdom?”

Okay, that was lame, but still, it was true.

My mother looks like I had just slapped her. “We are not monsters! How could you say that to your own parents?”

“Sweetie, he just doesn’t understand.” Dad rubs Mom’s back as she wipes tears away from her eyes. He turns to me, dead serious. “Michael, you’re running out of time. We can’t keep arguing about this. Who knows when your granddad is going to decide that it’s over for you? I don’t know that your mother and I will be able to protect you if that happens!”

“I don’t care,” I snap, lifting my chin defiantly. “Grandpa could say that it was over for me in the middle of my sleep tonight, and I still wouldn’t change my mind.” I turn and stomp up the stairs. When I'm halfway I call out over my shoulder, just to put some salt in the wound, “And you guys can just deal with it.”

As I pass the fireplace I can hear the clock on the mantle.

Tick.

*~*~*

I try calling V as soon as I get to my room, my door locked, all of the lights flipped on. I tried to put on a brave face in front of my parents, but honestly, I'm terrified. And Dad's right, I don't have much time. The clock had started to tick sometime last week and they told me that each tick meant less and less time. And it was ticking pretty quickly.

“Hi, you’ve reached Violet, amazingly I don’t have my phone attached to my hip right now, or it’s possible that I just don’t want to talk to you. Either way, feel free to roll the dice and leave and message and I’ll think about calling you back.”

I growl and hit the end button on my phone. “Why won’t you pick up?” I ask the black screen. I send her another text.

Pick up phone, V. need 2 talk now. Pls call back. need 2 get out of here. Can u pick me up @ airport? I<3U

Still nothing.

“V, come on.” I groan and flop onto my bed.

I look at my laptop and flip open the lid.

“Huh.” I comment to no one, cocking my head to the side.

The screen had been black, but now there was V’s face on the screen again, still frozen in her half surrender.

“It’s better than nothing, I guess.” I prop myself up on my side and stare at the screen until my eyelids started to droop.

I'm too sleepy to notice that V’s image as it unstucks itself. She's staring at my sleeping figure. The pixilated image smiling, her teeth pointier than they should be, her eyes too dark to be the baby blue I remember and love so well.

Tick...Tock...Tick...Tock...

I open my eyes groggily.

When had I turned off the lights in my room? I look over at my laptop. I'm met with the telltale sign of the blue screen of death.

“Great.” I mutter and roll out of bed, reaching blindly for my phone.

The screen is blinding and it takes a minute for me to be able to read the time.

3:00am

Normally I would have been bothered by the time, the witching hour always made me uncomfortable, but now I barely register it. Instead, I look in horror at the string of texts on the screen.

[Message from <3Violet<3] 5:30pm Sorry. Must have had a bad connection, call me later?

[Message from <3Violet<3] 6:30pm Are you ok? Usually you get back to me by now. I didn’t mean to piss you off baby. Call me back?

[Message from <3Violet<3] 6:45pm Ok, you’re being silly. I won’t bring it up again, I just really need to know you’re alright. Call me.

[Message from <3Violet<3] 7:30pm You’re such a dick.

[Message from <3Violet<3] 7:45pm Okay you’re not a dick, but this is stupid.

[Message from <3Violet<3] 8:30pm Mikey...this isn’t cool, the last time you took this long texting me back I almost broke up with you.

[Message from <3Violet<3] 9:00pm Mikey...come on

[Message from <3Violet<3] 9:30pm Whatever. I’m going to bed. Screw you. I love you, but screw you. I’ll call in the am.

[Missed call from <3Violet<3]2:45am

[Missed call from <3Violet<3]2:48am

[Missed call from <3Violet<3]2:51am

[Missed call from <3Violet<3]2:55am

[Missed call from <3Violet<3]2:57am

[Missed call from <3Violet<3]3:00am

My breath hitches in my throat as another text pops up on my phone’s screen.

[Message from <3Violet<3] 3:03am Tick...tock…Tick...Tock

[Message from <3Violet<3] 3:04am Time is up.

“Michael?”

I yelp and turn towards my bedroom door, getting out of bed abruptly. My phone falls out of my hands and the screen cracks. My mother is standing in the doorway. She has the clock from the mantle in her hands. The second hand is whirring around so quickly I can barely see it in the dark hallways.

“Hiya, dude.” My dad’s voice rumbles behind me.

I shout and turn around. He has the butcher’s knife from the kitchen block in his hands.

“We told you you were almost out of time.” My mother cooes from behind me. “You’ve always known this was a possibility. It’s eat or be eaten, as my father always used to say. He gave you as much time as he could, and even more so. Anything for family, isn’t that right sweetheart?”

“Sure is, Honey.” My dad smiles and he stares down at me. “Don’t worry, sport, I’ll make this as quick as possible.

The knife wrenches its way into and out of my stomach with more force than I could have thought. I fall to the ground, holding the wound as it quickly begins spilling over with blood.

My eyes go wide. As my head hits the floor of my room, I can feel my mom’s hand as it pushes into the cavity above my stomach. I already know what she's looking for. The heart is the most precious part of the body. It would keep them alive for years.

“It’s time for you to sleep, sweetie.” She says softly, smiling at me, her teeth a little too pointy. “Goodnight, Mikey.”

Tick...tock...tick...tock…

*~*~*

“I really thought he was the one.”

“You can’t blame yourself, love. Your dad knows best.”

“I’m just so tired of trying over and over again. When am I going to have my forever baby?”

“When it’s the right one. We always knew Mikey was too weak in the knees to join us. We were just waiting for The Council to tell us when it was time to let go. It was our fault for getting so attached.”

"Put the heart on ice. The iron from the steak should help with the decay, but we need it to be as vital as possible for the ceremony. It’s tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

I hear the murmurings of my parents as my life faded away from my body...only it doesn’t fade entirely. Instead, it just shifts from my body and settles in my heart. I no longer perceive sight, or really understand sound the way I used to. Instead, I just feel the vibrations of their words coursing through my many veins.

I know what’s going to happen. I know that my soul is going to be sent into the deepest bowels of hell. My innocent soul will be sent there so that my mother and father can remain on earth, immortal, young.

I think about Vivian, yearn for her touch, but almost immediately I force her out of my head, lest her soul be taken with mine. It is now a game of indifference. She never knew the secret of my family, and I can’t betray her now. The less I feel, the less I show in my little heart self, the shorter their life will be, the sooner they will fade and the safer Vivian will be. If I play it right, they’ll fade before they can have another baby. Another me.

“How long do you want to wait before we try again?”

I hear my father’s voice rumbling as his hand wraps possessively around me.

“We try again as soon as the Ceremony is completed. There’s no point in trying when we haven’t been restored yet. We might as well wait until we are at our best selves. Otherwise, we might botch it.”

My mother’s voice is silky smooth, sinister.

She was born into this. She knows her place and how to time things. She's most comfortable in this state of betrayal and bloodlust. My dad, on the other hand, had been made into it. Made into it as they had wanted to make me into it. A human being adopted into the immortal coils of demonhood. Only babies born with the blood gene really embraced the transition.

I had known from the beginning that I was as human as my father was the day he was born, some 100 years ago now. And I had known from the beginning that I would never embrace the transition, that I would do whatever I could to fight it and run away from it. To live a normal life with someone I loved - Vivian. To die as humans were supposed to do.

I guess my parents had known too.

I feel myself being dropped into something cold and dark. I can no longer hear the voices of my parents. My time has come. I must prepare.

From the mantle, I hear the clock, ticking as normally as any other clock might, it’s ticking and tocking almost comforting to the unknowing ear. Only I and others born to those of the Order understand how evil its true intent really is.

Tick…

Tock…

Tick...

Tock…

Tick...