Young Writers Society

Author's Note: This is a short story about a girl who's spent too much time alone. It's sad, so proceed with caution lol. Enjoy! :P

Kerry

There it sat upon the tall, oak-finished bookcase. The old wooden clock's hushed ticking echoed lightly throughout the cramped little corner that was the living room. It's melancholy rhythms danced a careful waltz across the dimly-lit ballroom floors of a young Kerry Mendler's mind. As she looked up towards the clock's dirty-white face, Kerry felt as though she were looking into her very own. There was no visible reflection and the glass which separated her world from the seemingly confined reality of the time piece was foggy at best. The lethargic progressions of the lackadaisical second hand and the even slower movements of the minute hand made the rhythms of her heat rise and fall in a series of futile attempts to spur them towards their destinations; towards anything. No matter how she would squint or adjust the square-rim frames of her prescription glasses, each ensuing number seemed to be even further away than the last, and the distances just kept growing.

That's silly, thought Kerry as she crossed her arms and let the tip of her tongue poke out of the corner of her mouth, Gram's clock is a silly one indeed. The young lady let out a loud sigh and scratched her head before beginning to sort through the pile of old magazines that sat awkwardly atop the three-legged coffee table. Colorful headlines reading "Gunsmoke Western", "Championship Boxing", and "Man's World" flew eagerly off of a vivid array of front covers and past the vapor-thin boundaries of Kerry's delicate lenses. They're so...loud, she thought, They're all just so loud.

Frightening images of the era's young and beautiful studied the 20-year-old with fierce eyes as she flipped hurriedly through a March 1954 issue of Sunday Mirror. Every single drawing and photograph seemed to be saying something to her and each time, it was something equally upsetting as it was confounding. Maybe they were telling her about the latest trends to follow or about what movies were hot. Or maybe they just wanted to tell the girl that she was wrong, that she could be somebody.

With every new image, Kerry felt her cheeks grow hotter and hotter until her entire face felt like she had been staring at a wood furnace for hours on end. The girl gritted her teeth and shifted in her armchair a bit in a futile attempt to calm herself.

"M-Marilyn was really something else," muttered Kerry as she lifted a trembling hand to remove her glasses, "But I really wish she would stop looking at me that way." The young lady yawned loudly and began to rub her eyes hard. They had become sore from trying to return Marilyn's azure gaze or, rather, to avoid it altogether. Kerry slowly put her glasses back on and looked down at the magazine once more. To no surprise, Marilyn hadn't moved a muscle. No matter how she willed her to, the movie star just wouldn't stop looking at her.

The girl frowned hard at the crumpled page and shook her head from side to side.

"You make me sick," she whispered bitterly as she pressed a long, pale finger to Marilyn's already-crumpled face, "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!" Kerry brushed a few strands of dark brown hair from in front of her face as she swallowed the lump in her throat and struggled to keep a familiarly hot, salty liquid from leaking out of her puffy eyes. She bit her lower lip in a attempt to keep it from quivering, but it went right on. Her very own body was doing just what it had always done: it was telling her that she had lost. This time however, it was telling Marilyn that she had won.

The uninterrupted ticking of Gram's clock and the shameful ringing in her head provided Kerry with the only indiction that she hadn't lost her hearing. She clasped her hands together and began to rock violently back and forth in her armchair, causing the magazine to fall from her lap. Just as Kerry was ready to burst into another tantrum, she caught sight of something even more frightening than the beautiful woman in the magazine. A portrait of her late grandmother with a pearl necklace around her neck and a flower in her hair peered down at her with stony, gray eyes from the opposite wall. Kerry practically jumped at the sight of the woman whom she had thought to be nothing more than a abandoned memory: a broken memory. The wispy young lady wiped the dampness from her cheeks and slowly stood up from her armchair, careful not to disturb her grandmother's open-eyed slumber.

"G-Gram," she whimpered, her voice cracking on the last syllable "I-I'm sorry. This really isn't me." Once again, there came no response. Kerry whipped her head towards the old wooden clock and lifted a broken TV remote from the coffee table. "And you," she spat, "You just but out already! Stop laughing at me! Stop it!" Without another thought, she pulled the remote above her head and flung it towards the clock with all her might. The sound of broken glass littering the hardwood floor made her face feel hotter and the ringing in her head grow even louder than before. "That'll teach you!" she cackled, "That'll teach you to make me feel like a fool!"

When Kerry turned to look at her grandmother's portrait again, all she saw was her own reflection. Two small, red pools of humiliated rage peered angrily at her from behind the precarious boundary of her crooked lenses. A series of dark half-circles clung desperately to the area beneath them. Her pale white lips were contorted into an uneven frown and a random assortment of dark, tangled hairs jutted out from her head like barbed wire from a rusty prison fence. "Oh, Kerry!" she screamed at her reflection, "Don't look at me that way. Why don't you behave like Kara does? At least stop making those God-awful faces. You look like something that just crawled out of the crypt!"

"I'm sorry, Gram," she whimpered back to herself, "I'll try. I just don't like crowds. They're scary."

"Do you think that matters to me?" she screamed, "You don't get a choice, Kerry. Look up when people talk to you and stop scratching at your arms. That's unbecoming...and ugly."

"Yes, Mother."

The girl coughed loudly as she stumbled back from the portrait and onto the ground. If it hadn't been for the front edge of her armchair, her head would have come down upon the cold, hardwood floor. It might've even shattered. Just like glass.

Kerry began to hyperventilate and with each restless breath, her throat felt dryer and dryer. By now, her entire body had become damp with unwelcome perspiration. "Gross," she thought, "I'm just gross." The young lady sat up straight and looked over towards the old television set. She nearly doubled over with laughter upon seeing that she was the ghostly creature who looked out at her from the depths of the television screen. "Oh, sweetie," she cried, "Don't slouch. It's so...ugly."

Just as she began to cry once more, Kerry heard something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. There it was again, that God-awful ticking! The girl leaped up from the ground and stumbled over to the bookshelf. To her unpleasant surprise, busting it's face with the remote hadn't stopped the clock from ticking, nor had it knocked the cursed object off of the bookcase. The clickity-clack of the time piece had never been clearer.

The disturbed young lady clenched her fists and gritted her teeth before letting all of her rage explode upon the clock. "Listen you!" she screamed, pointing defiantly up at the culprit, a crazed rattling in her voice, "I already told you to stop making fun of me! It wasn't a joke! Stop laughing!" Her protests fell on deaf ears and the mournful ticking of the clock seemed to grow louder and louder with each second.

Kerry fell to her knees and began to sob loudly, all the while scratching at her forearms, her upper body rocking back and forth in syncopated disarray. Why had she expected tonight to be any different? No one she had ever talked to had listened to her. It had become another simple fact of life. Even so, she cried. She cried because she couldn't make them listen. Not then, not now, not ever.

"You monster!" sobbed Kerry as she looked up at the clock through a pair of stingy, red eyes, "Please just make it stop! Stop it, stop it, stop it! I hate you!" Once again, her pleas went unheard and the clock's incessant ticking kept right on. Kerry placed both of her hands on her head and let out a series of tortured screams as she threw herself onto her side. The shame didn't matter anymore.

The young lady kicked and screamed, rolling back and forth upon the unforgiving hardwood floor of the living room. Images of her mother, Gram, Marilyn, and that infernal clock spun around her in the darkness, each one filling her ears with their own form of depraved laughter as she began to spiral further and further into her fit of madness. The entire living room seemed to be growing smaller by the second and Kerry was struggling to breathe. Just as it looked as though her mother, Gram, Marilyn, the clock, and the walls would crush her into nothingness, the shrill blaring of the old-fashioned telephone cut through the air like a knife through wet paper.

Kerry let out a few dry coughs and fanned herself off before slowly making her way back up onto her armchair. To her infinite distress, the clock still hadn't stopped ticking. She jerked her head back and spat hard at the clock, missing terribly and wetting her lap instead. "Oh, look!" she teased herself, struggling not to fall into another crying fit, "You're all wet." The girl yanked her glasses off of her face and flung them across the room towards the portrait of her grandmother. It was not until she had already picked up the telephone that Kerry had noticed that both of the lenses had been cracked. The portrait, however, had not a scratch.

"H-hello," she began meekly, wringing her free hand uncontrollably, "W-who's this." For the first time that night, Kerry clearly heard the sound of her own voice. It's tormented grating made her shiver and she covered her mouth in frightened disbelief.

"Hi, Kerry!" boomed an indecently feminine voice from the other end of the line, "Happy Birthday!" Kerry rubbed her aching temples and cleared her throat loudly as she shifted in her chair. It was her. It was Kara.

"H-hi Kara," she whispered bitterly, fearing that a louder tone of voice would have made her true state all too obvious, "Happy Monday to you too, dear." The girl's eyes grew big and she bit the tip of her tongue in erratic anticipation for her sister's baffled response.

"It's not Monday, silly!" teased Kara, "It's Thursday and it's your birthday too! I'll be coming over later to check up on you." The thought of her sister coming to visit her, flowers and birthday cake in hand made Kerry feel sick to her stomach. She nearly gagged as she struggled to hold the telephone without shaking.

"No, Kara," she whispered, "You don't need to come over today. The gang's all here." Kerry's face began to feel hot again and her vision became blurred by the beginnings of more tears. As much as she wanted to end this painstaking conversation with her sister, she wanted a cool rag for her head just as badly. Even so, she couldn't give in. She couldn't let her sister win. Kerry tightened her grip on the telephone in an effort to keep from crying.

"Are you sure you don't want me to stop by?" inquired Kara, her voice riddled with compassionate concern, "Its your special day and you sound like you're in an awful lot of pain." Kerry licked her lips and sighed deeply before responding. She could feel her free hand grow cold as she began to wrap it in the familiar sanctuary that was the phone cord.

"I already said I didn't want to see you." she hissed, "I don't need you. Mother, Gram, Marilyn, and Mr. Clocksmith are all here...the gang's all here!" Kerry let out a sigh of relief upon hearing silence on the other end of the line. Maybe having people ignore her wasn't so bad. Or maybe she was crazy. Just as she began to lower the telephone from her ear, she heard her sister say something that made her wish she hadn't answered in the first place.

"Kerry," began Kara in a tone of grave indifference, "Did you have another episode?" The girl's heart stopped and she felt that at any moment, the ceiling would come crashing down upon her head.

"N-No." she whispered through the beginnings of another crying fit, "Everything's just peachy. Like I said, the gang's all here."

"Oh, Kerry," cried her sister from the other end of the line, "Oh, Kerry."

The End