Like Clockwork by Franco Machado-Pesce
Did you ever wake up shaking? You know? With a strange ringing in your head?
It has to have happened to you, at least once. Come on, you remember. You twisted and turned in your bedsheets, but it wouldn't go away. For a second, you thought you had tinnitus or something, but then you finally hit your head five times and that got the job done. It stopped.
Still? Nothing?
Okay.
What about when you got dressed? This one is universal.
You always stretched out your shirt, so that your head would slide in its hole perfectly, no effort necessary. Then when you put your arms through the shirt's sockets you realized that it shrunk. In a weird way though. Your right hand slid through, but for some reason your left one was having a harder time. You looked through the shirt and noticed that your left arm was much too large for its sleeve. That's odd, last time you checked both your arms were the same length and you never knew that only half of a shirt could shrink.
You thought to yourself: lesson learned, I'll never buy a 99 cent shirt again.
That sounds familiar, doesn't it? No? Hmm.
Well I know that this morning you looked in the mirror. You saw 12 wrinkles caressing the edges of your face. Each one equidistant from the one before it until it went around your entire head. You're only 21, so this caused a little bit of concern. You shouldn't be getting so many wrinkles when you're that young. Should you?
That's what your father always said to you at least. He warned you about it, didn't he? Don't smile too much. If you do, those holes on the sides of your lips will stay. Forever. No one likes a marked up face.
Now look at yourself.
When your sister knocked on your door, it felt forced. She never had to tell you to wake up. You always were the first one up. It made sense because you had the earliest work shift at the Call Center and you knew what happened to the last person who was late. Kaput. Gone. Vanished from the formal economy. You couldn't afford that so you made sure to be up by 5:30 AM every day, except for the weekends.
You woke up at 4 in the morning on those two days— only to be sure that you'd be up when the sun rose. That's the only moment when everything felt normal. You loved how you looked when the orange tint would glow in your eyes. You enjoyed thinking about how far away the sun was. 92.96 million miles away to be exact. You were always interested in how fast the large star would move around in space, but how slow it would appear upon the horizon.
You liked feeling so small. So distant.
But when your sister got no reply, she opened the door and didn't see you. Her eyes glided from left to right, lost, until she ran off, calling your mother through the hallway. Oh no, your mother is going to be worried isn't she? That wasn't your fault though— she always was distressed.
You felt bad for her because you knew that your mother was more than a maid or waitress: she graduated top of her class in University, went on to work on television productions, was recognized by many local celebrities. She would always tell you stories about her short modeling career. When she was your age, she was learning how to catwalk by Osmel Sousa, a Miss Universe molder. She was always so well recognized and definitely a prized member of your family. She had so much potential.
Before your father knocked her up and left. Left her. Left your sister. Left you.
If only he would have left earlier— then you wouldn't even remember. And the pain wouldn't be there whenever you saw your mother's tears.
When she walked in, it was worse than you thought it would be. She didn't see anything out of the ordinary, instead you heard her say, "she's already left." She turned around and walked away, even when you called out to her.
But she didn't hear your words and strangely enough, neither did you.
Your arms started to move without you telling them to and your shirt strained because now you saw that one of your arms was definitely larger than the other. You tried to stop, but you couldn't. Finally they spun and landed above your head and the ringing was back, but this time it was synchronized with an annoying tick tock tick tock.
You screamed and your sister ran back into your room.
Everything stopped. She stared. You looked back.
Then everything resumed.
She called out for your mother again and she was gone.
You yelled one last time and this time you heard yourself.
Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.
