The Story is Understated

The sounds have clicks and ticks and various inflections that I just cannot recreate. Ever since I arrived, the natives… let’s call them benefactors… have been incessantly hovering, though, odd enough, their attention is erratic. My food, normally provided regularly, is sometimes forgotten. This means I have to sidle up to the bars of my…

“This damn clock—why are they always so difficult when he is around?” The old, haggard clockmaker hunches over a bench. The man in the dark cloak sits in the corner, waiting. The clockmaker struggles with this piece. He must get it working. It is no longer a matter of payment, but one of pride. He…

The book lay open on the desk, the cigarette in the ashtray still trailing smoke. The soft murmur of the television barely covered the incessant ticking that filled the room with audible angst. The darkened room filled with a flickering puddle of light from the movie being played. The oasis of light from the desk…

Detective Morris glared across the interrogation table. “You said you were where, Friday night?” He said, for the umpteenth time. The smug grin on the perp’s face… matched only by the eerie silence. That face, highlighted in red from the light in the hall, occasionally flickered with someone’s passing. Ugh. Hours. He didn’t recall right…

The fog-laden evening chilled him to the bone as he stood beneath the street lamp. “I am getting too old for this,” he mutters. The juxtaposing hard-soft glow of the lamps created an eerie duality of light on the street. The longshadows dancing in the wind-blown lamplight. The headlights shine on him briefly as the…

The anticipation of the launch filled the room as everyone waited with bated breath. The tanks of the rocket were full, and the countdown had begun. This damned rickety control station, hastily constructed, rocked to and fro as everyone concerned focused on the impending launch. Somewhere, two solid objects of the control platform were thumping…