A Ticking Time Bomb

A Ticking Time Bomb

On a mild Sunday afternoon in spring, a family has a yard sale. The sale is not busy; most passersby glance at items and soon continue on without buying anything. One man, however, is drawn to a small wooden clock. The second he lifts it from the table the man hosting the yard sale jumps to his feet, seemingly because he has not sold anything all day. 

"How much?" The interested man asks.

"For my first customer of the day, it's on the house," he says in an attempt to remain nonchalant. 

"I couldn't take this beauty for nothing; you must let me give you something."

"Honestly, the gift is knowing it’s in your hands."

"Well, thank you sir, you just made my day!"

"I was just thinking the same thing."

            The man walked on so uplifted by the other man's generosity that he did not even notice that the once blue sky had turned gray and the sun was now shielded by clouds. He walked back to his house where he was greeted at the door by a friendly looking woman wearing a pink sundress and an apron. She told him dinner would be ready in just a minute. Still smiling he walked into his den and set his new possession in the center of the mantle above the fireplace. Instantly, it began to rain. 

"Mel, dear, dinner is ready!" his wife said lovingly.

"Coming, Trish!"

He sat down to a nice meal with his wife and son. Everything went smoothly as usual. They all went to bed blissfully ignorant. 

           When they awoke the sun was shining, but something was off in the Wilson household. Mel went out to get the morning paper, just as he did every morning, but today was different. He grabbed the paper from the curb, smiled at Mrs. Scott across the street, however today she did not smile back, she just pointed in horror back at Mel's house. He turned to see that a massive tree branch had crashed into his garage destroying most of the roof. He ran back to his house and called for Trish to come outside. 

"What is it, dear? Did Tommy throw the paper into a puddle again?" Trish asked in her normal soft tone.

"No, the storm must have taken a branch down last night. I can't believe we didn't hear it!"

"Oh my! Well, I'll call the insurance company!"

          They both went back inside, Trish went to the phone, and Mel to his new clock, in an attempt to remember the good of yesterday to block out today's troubles. He noticed, however, that it no longer showed the accurate time. There was a small knob on the top of the clock to change the time, but when Mel twisted it the clock did not change. It was insisting that the time was one o'clock. Not wanting to become more frustrated Mel walked away and didn't give it a second thought. The insurance came through and the Wilsons would not have to pay a dime for the damage, they would however, have to deal with the inconvenience. 

         The week went by, the garage was fixed and Mel was trying not to dwell. Each day without fail he woke up, got the paper, had his morning coffee, and went to work at Ford, where he worked on the assembly line. That Wednesday at work Mel was doing the same job that he had done for the past twenty five years. It was his job to assemble the brakes on each car that came to him. Today, for the first time in twenty five years Mel made a serious mistake. He had been making an error when installing the brakes--- all day. Mel was called into his boss' office.


"Mel, this isn't like you! What's going on?"


"Sir, I- I- I'm so sorry, I don't know what's gotten into me."


"Mel, you know we've been having to cut back lately. We can't afford these kinds of mistakes."


"Sir, I can go back and fix the mistakes, it can come out of my salary-"


"Mel, over 200 cars, it would take you three times the time to fix the mistake and in the mean time the rest of the team on brakes would have to work overtime, just to make up for your absence."


"Sir, you've known me for 25 years, I- I've never--"

"I know Mel, I wish this was up to me, but I've been given direct orders to-"

"Jim, you know me you can't!"

"I'm afraid I have no choice, Mel, I truly am sorry, I tried to change their minds, but the decision was out of my hands."

"I'll take a pay cut, I- I- I'll do anything!"

"You have until the end of the day tomorrow to clean out your locker, I'm afraid this is goodbye."

         Mel did not go straight home that day, he couldn't. How could he face his wife and tell her that he lost the job that pays all of their bills? The job that puts food on their table and clothes on their backs. The job that has kept her from needing one. The job that he loved. Without that job they had nothing, their savings could keep them afloat for a while, but cutbacks would need to be made. Cutbacks, just the sound of the word made him cringe. He knew this was a possibility ever since the economy had plummeted, but he thought that after twenty five years his job was secure. What a stupid mistake! He would need to get another job, that much was obvious, but where? Brakes were all he had ever known.  After hours of sitting in his parked car, Mel finally mustered up the courage to drive home and face his wife. It was dark out know and he knew that she would be getting worried.

“Mel, dear where were you? I was getting so worried! Dinner’s cold!”

“Trish sit down, I have some bad news. Billy, go to your room and let us chat, will you?”

“Dad what’s wrong?” Bill asked.

“Son,” Mel said more sternly.

         Billy walked away leaving his parents in silence. Mel cleared his throat and began to explain his day to his shaking wife. Trish began to cry. 

“Will I, will I need to get a job?” Trish asked Mel hesitantly,

“Not if I can find work quickly enough, but it’s possible it might come to that,”  

       After a long talk, they eventually went to bed, though neither slept much. They were both overwhelmed with shock from the surprise that day had brought.

          Their lives went on. Mel went to multiple job interviews a day, but was never successful. That Friday, they received a call around three-thirty, it was the police. Billy had been riding his bike home from school, like he did every day, and he was hit by a car. The car had run a stop sign and after hitting Billy, kept driving. The police officer told the Wilsons that Billy was being taken to the hospital by an ambulance, but he would be alright. They immediately rushed to the hospital.

“Excuse me, we’re the Wilsons, ou-our son Billy, is he, is he alright?” Mel asked a doctor franticly.

“Yes, sir, your son is going to be just fine. He has two broken legs and he’s a bit scrapped up, but he’ll recover,” the doctor said in an attempt at reassurance.

“Oh, thank god,” Trish said with a sigh of relief.

“The driver who hit him, do you know, was he found?” Mel asked.

“I’m afraid not, all Billy saw was that it was dark in color and a Ford,” the doctor replied as he walked away.

         That was when it hit Mel. Insurance, they did not have it. Their health insurance had always been from Mel’s job and without it this would cost them a fortune, a fortune that they did not have. He knew that the loss of his job meant cutbacks, but this was going to take the cutbacks to a whole new level. Billy would have to stay in the hospital overnight and that would mean that the bill would be in the thousands. This was an expense that they could not afford and stress that they could not handle.

            Mel went home that night to think things over and Trish spent the night with Billy in the hospital. Mel was forced to trade in their car for a much older one worth only a few hundred dollars, and even this was not enough to pay for the medical bill, let alone the rest of their expenses. As Billy recovered, Mel was not much help. He had begun to retreat into himself. Although he was home all day, his family saw him less and less.

Mel would sit up for hours just staring at the clock. He had given up on looking for a job, and Trish had given up on him. Day would turn to night and night back to day, but Mel remained in his arm chair in the den, facing to the clock. It was Thursday night, Trish and Billy were both in bed, and the clock now read eleven o’clock.  Mel stood up from the chair, weak from sitting for so long. He walked over to his desk and opened the bottom drawer with a key. He reached inside the desk and pulled out a revolver. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was almost midnight. Breathing heavily, he loaded the gun. Without hesitation, he put the gun to his temple and fired.

The clock struck twelve.

Tara McClanaghan

Mr. Provenzano

Honors American Literature

16 March 2012

Poe’s Obsession with Death

            Death is a topic that people do not typically like to discuss. It is frequently tiptoed around and pushed aside, however, Edgar Allan Poe chose to do quite the opposite in his short stories and poems. The vast majority of Poe’s works are centered around the topic of death. Through his repeated use of death as a major theme in almost all of his works it can be seen that Poe had an obsession with death. Specifically in his short stories: “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Premature Burial”, “The Black Cat”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Masque of Red Death”.

            In Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher” the narrator has to take care of his old friend, Roderick Usher, who has a mental condition. The Roderick and his sister are the last descendents of the Usher family. When the sister, Madeline Useher, is proclaimed dead Roderick and the narrator bury her in the family tomb, they face a horrifying surprise, however, when she later bursts through the door of the room they are in, alive. The shock of this event ends up killing both of the remaining Usher’s leaving the narrator to flee the house. The house itself symbolizes the family and it collapses as the narrator runs from it. Poe’s fixation on death is clear in his zealous descriptions of death. “… with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse,” (Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”). Though Roderick’s death was technically sudden, his mental state had been slowly unraveling.  When Poe speaks about death it is clear that it is a topic that he is passionate about. Poe used the concept of being buried alive in other stories as well as “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

In both “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Premature Burial” the concept of being buried alive is a major theme. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the narrator and his good friend Roderick bury Roderick’s sister alive thinking that she is dead. Similarly, the entirety of “The Premature Burial” tells of many cases in which people, including the narrator, were accidently buried alive. In the case of “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Madeline Usher manages to escape from her tomb, however, in the end her fate . Poe uses the common fear of being buried alive to frighten his readers and that is intensified because being buried alive is relatively realistic during the time period. “He is senseless and externally motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek…”(Poe, “The Premature Burial”). When describing the state of those who could be mistaken as dead Poe is well versed. He has a good understanding of the physical state of both bodies that appear to be dead and corpses and portrays them  both vividly. Both of these stories show Poe’s obsession with death through their detailed descriptions of death and the fact that it is a common theme in these and many of his other stories.

Another one of Poe’s short stories, “The Black Cat”, is an example of Poe’s passion for death. In it, a man who claims to be sane is, in actuality, on a downward spiral of alcoholism which results in him killing his wife. In an attempt to cover up the murder he puts his wife’s corpse inside of a wall in his basement. The man is overly confident when the police come to his house and he ends up being given away by the screeching of his cat that had been hiding in the wall with his wife’s dead body. After killing his favorite pet cat, Pluto, earlier in the story, the man felt remorse, however, when he murdered his wife by taking an axe to her head, he only worried about how he would dispose of the body. “This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house,” (Poe, “The Black Cat”). Any remorse that he may have felt at the beginning of the story slowly faded as the story progressed and his rage and alcoholism worsened. Though this story is not written from Poe’s perspective, it does reflect his personality. The narrator being on a killing spree is an extension of Poe’s own fixation with death.  

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is yet another example of one of Poe’s works about facing death. In it the main character does not die, however, he is sentenced to death and narrowly escapes it. He is locked in a dungeon where he would have been killed had it not been for the arrival of the French army. This work differs from the others in that the main character does not end up dying, however, Poe is still focuses on death as the center of the story. The man was expecting to be hung, but he was relieved when he awoke in a dungeon. The narrator in this story survives only because upon facing death, instead of panicking he was resourceful. “Its sweep was brief, and course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear, but more in wonder,” (Poe, “The Pit and the Pendulum”). Though Poe does not end up killing the narrator, he has him face death multiple times. When the pendulum was headed for his heart, the narrator was quick on his feet, which kept him alive. Though Poe did not believe that death could be cheated simply by hiding, he did allow this character to stay alive because he was intuitive, unlike the wealthy characters in “The Masque of Red Death”.   

In “The Masque of Red Death” the Red Death is a plague that bares striking resemblance to the Black Death (Bubonic plague). The characters in the story are wealthy and greedy, most of all Prince Prospero. They try to escape the plague by hiding from it in the prince’s mansion. Death, however, manages to find them. “And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall,” (Poe, “The Masque of Red Death”). Death itself is represented by the man who brought the disease into the mansion. Had they not all gathered together in the prince’s mansion some of them may have had a chance to survive, but because they thought they had cheated death, they all ended up dying. This story is a prime example of Poe’s obsession of death. The story is about the fact that no one, rich or poor, can escape death and that everyone’s time will come. Though this is true, it shows how morbid Poe’s writing was.  

            All five of these stories share one common theme, death. Poe’s obsession with death is made apparent through these works; he shows a great understanding of death and manages to depict it in great detail. Death consumed Poe’s life and that is reflected in his writing. In nearly all of Poe’s works death is the underlying theme, which shows that Poe had a fascination with death that can only be described as an obsession.

Bibliography

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume II." Project Gutenberg's 
     The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe. David Widger, 19 May 
     2008. Web. 16 Mar. 2012. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2148/2148-h/ 
     2148-h.htm#2H_4_0015>.

"Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe." PoeStories.com An Exploration of Short 
     Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. N.p., 2012. Web. 16 Mar. 2012. 
     <http://poestories.com/stories.php>.

Faust Ledgend

            On a humid summer day in Georgia all you can hear is the sound of an old wooden rocking chair rocking back and forth, back and forth. The chair sits on a porch of an old wooden house. In it sits a man whose age can only be matched by the house he sits in front of. He looks out onto a dirt road that leads to an old plantation house. The man does not look pleased.

            The road he over looks is one of the few that is still unpaved. The road does not get much use because the owner of the plantation house does not get many visitors. The house is owned by one of the only people in this small town that is managing to prosper in today’s economy. No one knows how he manages and few question it.

            This day started off no different from any other. The old man, Mr. Williams, got up, got dressed, ate, and went to his post. Most days nothing happened. Today was not most days. A car drove down the little street that only had one destination, the old plantation house. A beat up pick-up covered in as much dirt as road it drove on. The sound of the car’s engine startled Williams, it had been a while. Since his retirement Williams saw this as his sole purpose in life. Eric had his window rolled down and he heard the man say something.

“Don’t,” he uttered only one word. He wasn’t pleading, it was no longer out of desperation, he had been at it for so long. He knew what the man was getting himself into. Nearly fifty years earlier Williams’ brother-in-law had made the same decision as this man would and it had disastrous results.

            The car drove on. Behind the wheel was stocky, middle aged man. He was sweating and not only because of the heat. When he reached his destination he became even more overwhelmed. The house was massive and covered with ivy. The yard had been overrun by shrubbery; the owner of the house clearly had other priorities. When he pulled up to the house the gates opened automatically startling the man. Once he was through the gates he parked his car and got out stumbling to get on his feet. The walk to the door took days it seemed and when he finally reached it it opened and in the doorway stood a tall, lean man with a foreboding grin across his face and greasy black hair. He wore a tailor made pin stripped suit and shoes that surely cost more than the other man’s car.  

“Come in,” he said. A phrase commonly associated with warm hospitality, but from his mouth it was an order. The stocky man said nothing and did as he was told. Once inside the man began to question coming. Did he need the money that badly? The answer to that question was no. Eric Thompson didn’t need anything.

            It was just as hot inside the house as it was outside, a man as rich as this could have surely afforded air conditioning. They walked through the house down a long hallway until they reached a massive wooden door that opened to a large office where the tall man sat down at his desk. This was the only chair in the room leaving Eric to stand awkwardly in front of the desk. He faced a wall that was covered in hooks each holding a different necktie.

“You want something from me,” said the man, Damon Brown, who was sitting at the desk.

“Yes… sir.”

“You know nothing in life comes for free, don’t you?”

“Yes sir, do I need to sign any forms?”

“No, I just need your word.”

“You have my word, and my soul.”

“You’ll have your money by the end of the week.”

“Thank you.”

They shook hands and that was that. Even Eric didn’t think it would be that easy. He got in his car and drove home where his wife was waiting for him in the kitchen, with dinner on the table. She had a black eye and a split lip, both partially covered by make-up.

“So, how did it go?” she said meekly.

“I took care of it like I take care of everything,” he said harshly.

“When do we get the money?”

“I get the money within the week.”

The week went on and that Friday evening the doorbell rang. Emily Williams opened the door, but no one was there. She looked in the mailbox and found a check for $100,000. The sight of it nearly knocked her off her feet. She went inside and walked into the living room where her husband was sitting. He looked up and saw the check in her hands and jumped to her feet. He snatched the check out her hands, looked at it, and grinned.

“I’ll take this to the bank first thing in the morning,” he said sounding thrilled.  

            Emily had a new bruise on her face because Thursday’s dinner was not up to Eric’s standards. They went to bed and the next morning Eric woke up with no one lying next to him. This did not alarm him, in fact it usually meant that Emily was already in the kitchen making him breakfast. He went downstairs to the kitchen expecting to sit down to a nice meal, but the kitchen was empty. He called for Emily, but there was no reply. After checking every room in the house and seeing that the car was still in the drive way he began to worry. He ran to his office and opened up the safe where he had put the check. It was gone.

She left no note or explanation. She was gone. He told himself that she would come back, she was afraid of him, of course she would come back and when she did he would make that bruise on her face look like a paper cut.

 She never came back.

The years went on and Eric Williams grew old. Over the years he had tried multiple times to get more money from the Devil, Damon Brown, pleading that he didn’t get to spend a penny of the first payment, but he received the same reply each time.

“No.”

Forty years went by and it was Eric’s time. Late one evening there was a knock on the door and Eric was hesitant to answer. He didn’t have visitors and knew that this could only mean one thing. He opened the door and saw Damon hovering over him with a smile on his face, he hadn’t aged a day and wore the same pin stripped suit that he wore the day Eric met him. The old man broke down. He begged and pleaded with the Devil, but received no sympathy.

“I didn’t even get the money, my wife did! It’s her soul you want, not mine!”

“But it’s your necktie I’ll be hanging in my office.”