Rather Simple and Acute
Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO). Now it’s time for the news:
***WARNING***
This story may be considered crude.
The crude cuckoo clock struck seven and the jagged, silver doors opened. Instead of a bird springing from the opening, a rather thick, carved penis inched out. Once the penis was fully unsheathed, a hydraulic mechanism took over. Seven times this mechanism lifted the penis, and seven times it plonked the penis on the carved head of a woman, which formed the clock’s body. Once finished, the penis retreated through the tiny zipper-like doors and the room fell silent.
At the dining table, the father and son stared at their plates, chewed their food and prayed the scraping cutlery would fill the silence. They resembled battery cows, chewing cud. The mother, however, was too disgusted for silence. She shook her head and kept shaking until both men looked because only then could she cease to be angry.
“Tonight of all nights,” she said, pointing the steak knife at the clock. “Tonight of all nights…” The men said nothing; the first cow that moos goes to slaughter.
The father built the clock when the son was only eight. Each piece he carved himself, whittling away for months in the back shed among the huntsmans and the dust. Then came the big reveal. The father tore away the bedsheet and the son gazed up and beside his towering father was the giant clock, as if one building had built another, and the world opened for the son then and never closed. The father then said the carved penis was a self-portrait. The mother laughed - at what, the son did not know. But he understood laughter. He understood his father’s cackle almost as a birthright, so he cackled too. He sounded like a baby hyena learning how the world works, blissfully unaware that it doesn’t.
But the reveal was over a decade ago now and the clock was no longer funny, not that night anyway, not given the son’s condition and what was to befall him.
After dinner the family moved to the lounge where they normally watch television. The earth had spun, so the clock struck again (this time eight times).
In silence they listened to the distant cock plonk on the wooden head and endured the audio recording that accompanied each strike: the father’s ancient voice crying, Oh yeah baby, Daddy’s home... Oh yeah baby, Daddy’s home...
The father grunted and began wriggling his butt as if it were possible to fall through the seat’s seams and disappear. Never before had a man in a leather recliner looked so uncomfortable. When escape proved impossible, the father rubbed his sweaty palms on the beige armrests and waited for the inevitable.
“Tonight of all nights,” said the mother. “I cannot believe you. Tonight of all nights.”
The father fanned his arms out in response, as if to say, “What? What now? What have I done? How can you hold me responsible? I am only fate’s servant. We all are. So why me? I didn’t do this to our son. I did not bring us here; to this moment we were brought.”
The mother rolled her eyes and turned to the son. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
The son was staring at the ceiling, at nothing.
“Why can’t we watch a movie?” he replied.
The son was nineteen years old, dressed like he had just returned from some gang initiation ceremony. He had on the backwards cap, the baggy jeans. He sat with one leg dangling over the armrest, shoe only half on, the heel broken from all the times he was too lazy to undo his laces. Each time the mother appraised her son acting like this, she felt a pang of fear. He was not ready yet.
“You will regret watching a movie, that’s why,” she said. She paused to give her son time to see the wisdom of her words, but she did not have an eternity. “You will look back and regret it,” she continued. “I’m telling you: you will never regret anything more in your life than watching a movie now. It’s just-”
Still the boy stared at the ceiling, at nothing and whatever that represented. He was not ready yet, that much was clear, so the mother choked on her words and started to cry. She quickly gathered herself, however, and sat upright with hands clasped in her lap. She called his name, and again, and waited until he turned.
“Is this how you want to spend your last night?” she asked.
The son glanced from the mother to the father, who was short and stout, wrinkled and horrified. The mother had said the thing the men tacitly agreed not to say: this was the son’s last night. The son said nothing and returned his gaze to the comforting blankness of the ceiling.
“For God’s sake,” cried the mother. “Don’t you have anything to say to your son?” Again she yielded to her tears. “For God’s sake. Tonight of all nights. Our boy. Our boy. Why?”
The men said nothing.
Without the usual comfort of the television, the only sound was the mother’s heaving and crying. In many ways this was hardest on her. The son was not ready to see it yet, the father could not say it, but the mother felt duty-bound not to see or say anything else. It felt like a weight she carried alone, a weight that suddenly proved too much, so she left to get some air outside.
On the back porch, the mother took in deep, tortured breaths. She wiped her eyes, and in the grass, the trees, the fence, she was reminded only of bad luck. That is why the world is curved, because if it were flat the mother could have seen the entire misfortune of life from her own yard.
Their son had a disease. A few years ago he started exhibiting the symptoms: the eye-twitching, the bouts of silence... The father knew straight away because he had the same disease. He started saying to the mother, the boy has it, the boy has it.
This diagnosis he made at odd moments and with growing frequency. One night he rolled over at 3am, woke his wife and said it. He said it once at a red light, over the tick tick tick of the indicator. Often he called from the toilet, door ajar so his wife could hear from the garden, from the mailbox: the boy has it. When the mother asked what could be done, the father became angry and silent, only to bring it up while shaving, driving to work, cooking tea…
They took their son to a doctor and then another, and then six more. When the mother asked what could be done, they said nothing. They said nothing at all.
All the doctors were men, so the mother gathered the impression that the world was like a lit detonating cord, a place filled with these laughing men all watching the spark gallop down the straight. They place bets, cheer and cackle. But not one dares to intervene because they all want the race run, because then it will be said and done, because it’s the uncertainty that hurts, not the failure, nor the ruin or humiliation, but the not knowing - the photo finish of the world’s end.
When the mother returned, her husband and son were silent. From their demeanour it was clear neither had spoken, and maybe neither could. Tonight of all nights, the boy has it, yet they remained silent. The mother felt a sudden sympathy for her muted men and a renewed sense of duty. She clutched her own heart and approached.
Under his wife’s touch, the husband softened. He draped an arm around her as she kissed his template and the coldness of the world retreated.
“Honey,” she said in a warmer tone, “don’t you have anything to say to your son?”
This time he nodded and offered a frown to signal that he understood the moment.
Though no one could tell, the son was watching. Seeing his father’s nod, the son swung his leg off the chair and sat up upright, entire body now facing his parents. But he looked too eager, he figured, so he softened his posture, checked his nails. He pretended not to care.
The father cleared his throat and hesitated. What words carry enough wait for the unsayable? No one knows, of course. No one also knows what the father was going to say (if anything) because the penis clock struck nine.
Through the open dining room door, all three watched as the carved-out penis dripped artificial semen from the pumping mechanism and it was not funny, not tonight of all nights, not when the boy has it but is not yet ready.
Before long, the son was in bed. The mother begged him to stay up. Of course they would watch a movie, any movie, if only he would stay up. Please, she cried. Please, she begged. But the son went to bed like it was just some normal night, because he cannot see it yet.
The disease is called RAS (Rapid Ageing Syndrome). The consequences are rather simple and acute: a young person goes to sleep one night and wakes the next morning at roughly sixty-five years of age. The bulk of their productive years, gone, as though four decades passed in one night. At least nowadays they can put you in the bright tube, run the scans and tell you the exact night it will occur. For their son it was that night: tonight of all nights.
After her baby went to sleep, the mother openly wept. The father moved from the recliner to the couch and held her. She was shaking and strangely cold to the touch. Then without warning the father stood up and left for the bathroom.
The communal bathroom was beyond the kitchen at the far end of the hall. To reach the bathroom the father had to pass his son’s room. Outside his son’s room, he swayed a moment, then turned the knob quietly and opened the door a fraction.
On the closest wall reflected a glossy band poster and a collection of crooked polaroids of his son and his mates. In the bedside table, the boy hid condoms, and the floor was littered with dirty clothes. Wedged behind the closet was a bottle of whiskey the boy couldn’t stomach. On his bed were month-old sheets. On the floor, a gym bag lay unzipped, its innards spooling out. There was a single shoe on the desk, but most of all the boy had time, so much time, until he did not.
The father gripped the doorknob tight. His knuckles whitened and it was like he was trying to break it off, like he was holding the doorknob culpable for everything about to transpire. Then he gripped a little harder and bit down on his lip. The doorknob began to crack.
Tomorrow the boy will wake and first see his wrinkled hands. When the father wakes each morning, it is those hands he sees and it takes him so long to remember who he is. For thirty-five years he worked at the same firm and some mornings he cannot recall its name, its function, its form or purpose. His son will now rotate his hands every day in that same confused way. Then he will remember, and he will scream.
The sound of his gravel voice will drive his hands to his face and he will feel the loose, grey skin, and that first time he gazes into the mirror, well, his mother best be close. His mother best be right there because she is strong enough to hold him through that, strong enough to stand all the ills should they come at once, should some evil god pick up the entire world from the corners like a picnic blanket and send every wrong and indecent thing tumbling to the middle, to her.
But who holds the mother’s hand when the world betrays?
The father in the doorway; he did not know his son was awake, though if he just stepped inside, he could have seen the boy’s eyeballs reflecting what little light was left. He could have seen the sweat on the boy’s brow and heard the rapid beat of his chest as he tried to sleep.
The son, too, could have called out. But he hesitated and the penis clock struck again.
In darkness, the son listened to the plonking carved penis, the Oh Yeah Baby, the pumping mechanism, and the sharp cursing of his mother. He heard his mother topple the penis clock and felt something inside that caused him to surrender to a fit of laughter. He laughed harder and longer than he ever had or ever would.
After a time, his father released the doorknob, threw his head back and erupted with laughter. The two men cackled. They cackled together in that manner the boy observed from his father, just as his father had observed from his father and his father before that, all the way back.
When the cackling stopped, the house fell silent. All night the mother and father sat against the wall outside their son’s room, holding each other and waiting for the inevitable screams.
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Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction and prose. Literary influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald. That’s all we have time for, folks.
"The only thing an old man can teach a young man is that is goes fast, real fast."
Been thinking a lot lately about the speed of my life and what I want to do whilst I can. A timely story about what's been on my mind. <3
I almost didn't read this one past the first paragraph but I'm so glad I did. I found Rather Simple and Acute as bazaar as it was deeply moving. A great read!