Author's Note: A new update? From me? Yup!
This is actually an old story I had forgotten was lying around in my documents folder; which is why it still follows old plot threads (and that weird appliance gender system) I'd decided to get rid of in my new stuff... when I get around to making my new stuff.
Tabloid man finally gone, I return to my backroom only to find that somehow the box has moved again. Not only that, but my drill is lying on the worktable instead of where I left it next to the other tools, and I could swear that the appliances I scavenged to replace the ones the ghost took are in different places than they were this morning.
Sighing, I put my drill back where it belongs and, in the absence of anything better to do, pull out another story. This one is actually two sheets of paper stapled together; both appearing to have writing on both sides.
I sit down and start to read.
TTH [Placeholder]
By Shar Lee Love the pencil sharpener
A placeholder title… is this another unfinished story? It's already four pages; how long would it have been finished?
Content that my experiment will not explode in the night (as has happened in other unfortunate incidents), I begin to prepare myself for bed.
"Oooh, first person! How novel!", I snark aloud.
My guest, the hunter who was driven to my estate by the storm that rages outside, is already sound asleep- even as my eyesight wanes my hearing ever increases in sensitivity, and I can determine his snores quite clearly over the rush of rain and pounding of hail.
Lemme guess- the narrator's "experiments" will turn him into a bat monster.
He is an odd man, could be said to be almost in love with his gun, but I do not believe he will harm me tonight.
Smells like foreshadowing...
I yawn as I gently slide under my covers, my aching bones glad that my weight -slight as it may be- is no longer pushing down on them.
Hey, this is the first story without random living appliance stuff!
The clock by my bedside- one of those new digitals- says it is 10:48. In my youth I would stay up until midnight or later, experimenting or theorizing, but I have not been able to sustain such habits for many long years now. How I do despise the frailties of my form, such that I must walk with a cane, see only with strong spectacles, and rely on a machine implanted in my chest to keep my very heart, the most central organ to life beyond of course the brain- abeat.
More foreshadowing.
Indeed, I do wish that I was more machine than man, or even entirely electric, so that my failing parts were possible to simply replace, so that with the simplest upkeep I could live on and on into the night instead of facing my dusk.
Oh, so he's going to be a cyborg bat monster?
But is it not the goal of science to seek such things, as told to all of us through thousands of writers of "science fiction"? Is it not… is it not…
What's this line here for?
My Master fell asleep at precisely 10:53:27.
Perspective change, and, judging by the use of "Master", random living appliance stuff.
As is his norm, he spoke in his sleep for roughly the first ten minutes, with utterances becoming less and less frequent over the course of that time period, and the last one at all occurring at 11:02:47. His statements were incoherent and mostly involved talk of engineering, of what makes an appliance- wires and circuits and other such electrics- as well as more biological concepts.
Wow, this new narrator sounds more scientific than the mad scientist!
If I may be allowed to, I do wonder whether his pacemaker- undoubtedly electric- is or can be considered an appliance. It is undoubtedly of such construction that normally results in a mechanical intelligence such as I, but so odd of function that it may not be one.
Yep, random living appliance stuff.
And, if I may wonder, if it is indeed alive in our way what sort of life does it lead, hemmed up and away inside human flesh, never alone from its Master, never given a chance to talk to a fellow machine.
That actually does sound kinda awful.
Oh, and yes you're allowed to wonder, Clocky McDigital-Clockface.
It is the proverbial tragedy of the air conditioner in the summer cottage who is never taken out of h' window for the winter, magnified a thousandfold.
What proverbial tr-Oh. It's a random living appliance proverbial tragedy. Got it.
If the body of my Master indeed holds two lives within, the electrical one- the one who can even, from a certain point of view, be considered my distant relation- surely holds a sordid existence.
Aaaand perspective change line.
Also, what was the point of this whole section?
I knew he was a madman from the moment I stepped foot in his manor- why would a man of this day and age live in a manor like that of eighty or more years ago?
If horror movies and novels have taught me anything, it's that people who live in "manors" are never to be trusted.
- and saw him, saw his devil's eye. How hard his breath rattles him, how his heart pounds so that both can be heard- to my sharpened hunter's senses- from several feet away.
Oookay, this guy's nuts too.
How he talks in vague terms of his "experiments", surely twisted perversions of nature's order- I can hear them rattle and moan in the basement below, even as I lie in my bed on the third floor. I can hear, at the very edge of my senses, twisted voices. I do not know what would be worse- if the sources of those garbled words were once human or if they never were.
I bet they're more random living appliances.
I think I have successfully concealed my fears and suspicions from the man, still managing to keep my trusty rifle by my side. Yes, I can hear him now, in bed tonight, snoring away with all the force that rattled his chest in his waking moments.
Does everyone in this story have super hearing?!
He does not know that I will put an end to his experimentation, that no more abominations will be produced in this horrid place. How he shall scream, when I drive a bullet into his heart and a knife into his devil's eye. How that scream shall echo through the empty woods- he lived utterly alone to hide his twisted deeds, but that will be his undoing. And, when the storm has stopped and I have stocked myself up with all the provisions I require, all the provisions I desire, how this horrid place will be licked by tongues of flame, how the smoke shall rise, how all his creations will scream, beautifully scream, in that moment as they are stripped of the pale dark life he gave them. How beautiful the red and gold and orange will be, a shifting tapestry- but I cannot think of that yet. I must first eliminate the madman. How trivial it will be, to one who has faced great grizzlies and mountain lion's claws, to kill a weak madman who can only walk with a cane, and then only at the pace of a snail.
How this guy needs to stop starting his sentences with "how".
I have had enough of lying here and waiting. I get up, snatching my trusty rifle from the nightstand. How I shall hunt tonight!
Oh no, Howie's on a rampage!
A-hunting we are going, me and my Master.
So does this alternate between humans and Random Living Appliances? (Should I just call them RLAs?)
True, the prey and the environment is a little different from our usual, but that only heightens the excitement. He slinks through the darkened hallways as easily as he slinks through the dappled shade, dodging betraying floorboards as he dodges betraying twigs, needing only the occasional flash of lightning to find his way.
Aaand the gun is just as much of a nut as the hunter.
I had feared that the storm might have awakened the scientist-our prey, but he is still sound asleep as Master noiselessly opens his bedroom door. He moves to the bedside, and I am leveled and aimed straight at the old man's heart.
EEEEE!
A spark ignites a blast inside me. Oh, the rush of acceleration, the propulsion of the bullet. In microseconds, sound waves build up at its head before ringing out as it outraces them. That is my power, to make metal outrace waves of sound.
That actually sounds kinda cool, pun not intended.
Blood leaps on high in a fountain
EEEW
– as the shattered heart still attempts to pulse, under the desperation of a pacemaker that was spared my bullet by millimeters. Master stands still for a moment, as I taste the iron in the warm liquid. Humans and animals have metal in them, but broken up into atoms spread throughout their fluids, and electric wires made not of copper but of their strange organic building blocks.
Why does the rifle know biology? Or is it just a RLA thing?
Come to that, why does a hunting rifle (and probably a pacemaker too) count as an "appliance"?
The madman's "circuitry" sparks and sparks, his death throes playing out while Master has brought me back to a safe distance. Then, when the storm of neural lightning has ceased, he raises a hunting knife and drives it into the left eye of the dead man, the one he called aloud to himself a "devil's eye".
So the author didn't just forget about that line.
It was hardly a challenge, the man hardly a threat, but I suspect that soon I shall be embedding lead into prey that has never been hunted before, the creations of science unbounded by morality, seeking to be unbounded by mortality.
-What is my Master doing? His knife cuts in to the scientist again and again, severing chunks of flesh. As I watch, his limbs are removed, his neck is cleaved in twain, his abdomen is sliced open and one by one his organs are cut from their connective tubes and vessels.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW!
He carefully cuts around the quivering heart, deftly avoiding the pacemakers electric leads, and when all is done he lays me and his knife down on the bed's stained sheets, picks up the entire mess of viscera in his gloved hands, and with his foot tilts back a floorboard (how did he know it was loose?) before depositing what remains of the mad scientist inside it.
Is it over? Please tell me it's over.
Why is this section a poem?
Heart-beat
Heart-beat
I-won
der-what
Did "wonder" just get cut in half by a line break? Is that allowed?
Is-be
yond-this
Dark-ness
And-flesh
Lemme guess: This is the pacemaker's perspective.
I-re
mem-ber
I-was
Once-out
side-there
Was-light
And-air
Air-that smelled-of antiseptic-and sick-people.
And-there
Were-ma
ny-things
Mas-ters
And-Mis-
tress-es
And-ma
chines-such
as-I
That-was
So-long
A-go
Now-there
Is-on
ly-blood
And-beats
To-count
How many beats has it been?
And thou-
ghts-to
Learn-from
Crick-
Learn from Crick how? What thoughts to learn?
BLAM!
Rifle blast
What-has
Just-ha
ppen-ed?
It was a rifle blast.
Mo-tion
Past-me
That was the bullet.
Air-and
Light-it
And that would be the bullet hole.
Tore-apart
My-Mas
ter's-heart
We're at the 48th line in the poem and we're just now getting a rhyme?
(Oh, wait, I just remembered that "there" got rhymed with "air" when it was talking about the hospital. But still, 48 lines and only two rhymes?!)
I-must
Pulse-now
Keep-his
Life-on
I don't think that's going to work, buddy.
But-blood
Squirts-out
His-chest
Is-open
My-pul
ses-are
Fu-tile
Told you.
But-still
I-pul
se-on
Flesh-is
Cut-and
I-am
Lif-ted
And this would be the "cutting the corpse apart" scene that we just saw.
In-the
Hands-of
A-mad
man-Mas
ter-who
You're right, I guess both the evil scientist and the homicidal hunter are madmen.
Drops-be
Buries-me
In-dark
Ness-more
Dark-ness
Did "TTH" stand for "Tell-Tale Heart"?
Crik-son
Is-dead
So that's the scientist's name.
Why-do
I-still
Beat-on
Why, indeed.
I-will
Not-stop
As-long
As-his
Heart-can
Still-pump
It can? After being shot and cut out of its body? Really?
His-heart
Is-hooked
Up-to
My-leads
E-lec
tric-ity
Still-makes
Its musc-
les-beat
I remember the one time in 10th grade Biology where Shonda used some spare wires from our Engineering class to make the legs of the frog she was supposed to be dissecting twitch. Mrs. Vetic did not want the wires back after she found out what she'd done with em…
Like-Frank
en-stein's
Mon-ster
Yeah, that's what I thought of then too.
(From-Crick
son's-nerves
I-gleaned
That-name)
Wait what? Could the pacemaker read his mind? Why? Does it know all of his mad science secrets? Please elaborate on this, Shar Lee Love "the pencil sharpener"!
The madman is dead, but how his heart refuses to cease its incessance!
I was right; TTH does stand for "Tell-Tale Heart"
I would grind that thing under my heel were it not for the dangerous electrics of the pacemaker- but I have bigger concerns than the thumping that echoes from down the hall.
Wow, that's one loud pacemaker…
I hear the creatures move in the basement, here them growl, hear their pitiful attempts to mimic human speech. How blood shall be spilled downstairs, be it green blood or blue blood or blood with color miraculously unchanged from nature's red, untinted by experimental serums.
As I progress throughout the house, the thumping of the madman's vital organ echoes louder and louder even as I step further and further from its source- but I have great will. I shall bear it, and how satisfied I shall be when the flames reduce that maddening thing to ash.
I bet Howie's second favorite part of hunting (after the blood, of course) was lighting campfires.
The basement door betrays me with unoiled hinges- how it shall pay in fire!- and the creatures, the creations, scramble to silence as I step down the narrow stairwell, but I know they are here. None can evade the sights and slugs of my trusty rifle.
Oooh, monster fight!
I see two specimen freezers side-by-side along the wall, a table with a microscope, a centrifuge, and many scattered playing cards atop it, and along the wall a desk bearing a desk lamp and one of those newfangled TRS-80 computers.
So were the monsters playing cards while he was "hunting"?
No trace of organic life graces my sight- how they hide, but how I shall find them.
I have a sneaking suspicion that there aren't actually any monsters other than Psycho Hunter Guy.
I can hardly hear the hum of the freezers over the beating of his heart, but I must not let it take me in, must not let it distract me.
I investigate the desk, and its out-of-place playing cards. I pick one up- the jack of hearts wears a lab coat and holds a pair of forceps from which dangle a simple heart, plucked from the dissected frog on the table before him. How cute- a mad scientist's take on gambling. He must have gambled with lives, at some point.
That reminds me of that time in middle school art class where I drew up some "Electric Appliance Playing Cards". The four suits were Plugs, Bulbs, Batteries, and Thermionics (vacuum tubes), while the art quality was… dubious. I was never that great an artist. I want to put a bullet through the card on principle, but I must conserve my ammo- how I shall need it in the coming battle.
How Howie probably won't.
And how, when I have emerged victorious, I shall put a second slug through the pacemaker that still, after all this time, keeps his heart abeat. In a realization, I turn in horror- The door atop the basement stairs lies open, ajar. It has escaped behind me, while the madman's heart pounded a distraction. I can almost see the footprints in a deadly monster in the thin layer of dust coating the stairwell- How can it be that the layer belongs only to the stairwell and not to the basement as well?
Answers: Those are your footprints, and RLAs.
How could I have been this careless, how could I have let my prey escape while my back was turned? How I shall atone for this, when I put a pellet through the creation's heart and dance in its blood.
You… really shouldn't be exposing yourself to that much blood.
I ascend the stairwell, my rifle aimed up at the doorway that the monster could-yes, it would, with the natural killing instinct the man made into it- lurk in wait to either side, to the hallway side so I can't run. But it knows not the fear of firearms, knows not how a supersonic slug of lead could end its life in a torn heartbeat.
"Torn heartbeat"... that's actually pretty clever.
The monster is not there- the purpose given by the madman must be dark, darker than simple delivery of death, for it to abandon such a seemingly trivial kill- how I must hunt it down, but how I will, how I shall stalk it through the dark and the everpressing pulsing of the madman's beating heart.
Are you sure you don't want to shoot the pacemaker so it'll stop first? Or are you just hearing your own heart pounding from adrenaline or whatever and attributing it to the pacemaker? (But if the second one is true, why would the pacemaker be a RLA?)
How that beating has changed, how it has moved, how I will track it.
I am standing at the door to the madman's bedroom. A trail of blood stains the floor, splattered around the path it took. I need not check the floorboards to know that his heart, powered by that insufferable, inceaseable pacemaker, is gone.
Climatic fight: Nutzo hunter versus living pacemaker.
I snort out loud at how ridiculous that sounds.
Now I understand. The madman has not made monsters; he has made himself the monster, able to exist in electricity, dodge death. How I shall shoot him, and burn him until he is dead to the last!
Although "living pacemaker" does have some actual visceral horror value, unlike the "cyborg bat monster" I guessed about earlier.
I was sleeping when the blast rang out- had an experiment blown up? I thought Professor Crickson had learned better than to experiment in chemistry rather than his native field of biology…
If you replace "biology" with "appliance repair", you get the lesson I learned in college.
We in the kitchen stood in curiosity for approximately thrice the time it takes to toast a slice on my 3rd darkness setting until Digit from the bedroom came, frantic.
So this narrator is a toaster.
Also, that time measurement is hilarious, but in a good way not a stupid way.
"Master's dead! Master's dead! The hunter put a bullet right through him!"
We all gasped, except for the nameless cast-iron stove-the idiotic cast-iron stove- who merely asked, "How would that kill him?" .
"Right through his heart! Right through his heart!"
"Is that important?"
When art students do biology.
"YES!" we all shout.
"Oh…" 'e paused for a second, opened h' "mouth", and was about to continue when the realization finally hit h': Master is dead. Gone. Murdered.
How would the toaster know when the realization finally hit Idiot Stove? Are the RLAs psychic, or do they somehow have faces that the other RLAs can determine emotion from?
"What do we do?!" asks Fridge, and suddenly they're all talking. Electrical voices blend together into a meaningless hum as tears fill my eyes and run down my chrome, each drop of-it is not water, though it certainly resembles the organic's necessary liquid- reflecting my chrome and being reflected in it in turn, an infinity of mourning, of empty mornings.
What color did the "deeper" parts of the recursive reflection turn? With ordinary mirrors they turn green because mirrors are ever so slightly green, so what ever-so-slight shade do chrome and "appliance tears" possess?
Every morning for two and a half decades I popped up Crickson's slices just the way he liked them, and in turn he smiled into me, kept me polished, as certainly as the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection, as certain as chrome is 24.
Oh, that's chromium's element number! (I do remember a few things from my disastrous semester taking chem.)
Then I hear it, a pulse. Pulses repeating like images in a hall of mirrors, repeating like my tears. I turn, hearing the others turn behind me.
So the disembodied heart's beating is loud enough that it can be heard from several feet away but certainly isn't loud enough to be heard as deafening thunderclaps all the way down in the basement- that's actually a nice way to maintain the "murderer is hallucinating the beating" part of The Tell-Tale Heart while having an actual heart monster.
Just beyond the kitchen doorway stands a thing that I have never seen in all my life, though part seems to possess an odd familiarity. I suppose that it most resembles a snail in its shell, except the foot is what is hard and solid and the shell flops around, expands and contracts, leaks slime- or is that blood? That is blood, indeed.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Tendrils- no, electrical leads- wrap the "shell" and send volt after volt into it, making it pulse. Making it beat, making it spray blood, making the sound I heard. The vague familiarity collapses into a certainty- that is a human heart, badly damaged but not enough that the muscles will fail to contract when supplied with electrical energy- that will come later, in more than just the fifteen minutes since Master died.
The machine under the heart, though devoid of mouth or even eyes, speaks, in rhythm to the broken heart's beating.
"Where-is the-mur der-er?"
"And-yes, I-speak in-rough poe-etry"
None of us know. We step back, afraid of this merger of man and machine.
"Tell-me where-is he-!?" it says, skipping a beat as Master's heart begins finally to seize up in rigor mortis. The pacemaker devotes more power to its pulses, following its function beyond its use, and the heartbeats are regular once more.
Part of me says that that seems roughly logical, but another part of me says that if Shonda could activate the muscles of a frog that had been floating in formaldehyde for who-knows-how-long the pacemaker shouldn't start having trouble so soon. I guess I don't know enough about biology (or pacemakers) to have a definite answer either way.
"I-must"- It cuts itself off, as footsteps sound in the hallway. We appliances of the kitchen scramble to our places as Digit hides behind a trashcan, but the beating heart beats on in place, turning towards the hunter.
And in that moment, as I hide my face,-
Oh yeah, the RLAs do have faces that they somehow "hide" when humans are around.
- I wonder what madness it must be to be a pacemaker, ever pulsing, never ceasing, buried alive in flesh and muscle, ever alone in an organic prison. It is a terrible thing, a breaking point beyond the junkyard, and it is not a wonder that such a machine, once freed, would break the most vital rule of appliancekind,
"Most vital rule of appliancekind"... I snorted.
And so the hunter is confronted by the heart he put a bullet through, and the pacemaker he missed.
The-hun
ter-the
Mur-der
er-is
Here-at
Last-
Aaaand another skipped beat.
Clever way to cheat at making poetry, Shar!
He-fac
es-me
Face-of
Dis-gust
He-rea
dies-his
Gun-but
I-am
Fas-ter
I-leap
For-ward
High-up
Sproing!
Some-mech
anical-in
stinct-tells
Me-this
Is-called
A-coun
ter-jump
Named-for
Kit-chen
Ma-chines
Who-use
It-daily
Random RLA detail that didn't need to be there…
(Hey, if the "R" in RLA stands for "Random" then was I not supposed to add another "random" in front of it?)
Kit-chen
Ma-chines
Watch-me
Fro-zen
Hi-ding
This should say "Hi-ding their-fa-ces".
Shock-ed
Sca-red
My-leads
Re-lease
Crick-son's
Heart-
No, no, throw the heart at him! That would be (disgustingly) hilarious.
And-reach
Out-for
The-mur
der-er
He-twitch
es-con
vul-ses
I-stop
His-heart
As-I
Pow-ered
Crick-son's
KZZZZZZZZZT!
His-skin
Burns-where
My-leads
Dis-charge
This is actually a pretty disturbing death scene…
He-col
lap-ses
Drop-ping
His-ma
chi-ne
It-springs
To-life
Aims-its-sights
Three "beats" in one line? Is that another effect of the "rigor mortis"
It-is
Fast-but
I-am
Light-ning
Hah, I get it.
My-power
Dis-charges
Pow-der
In-it
Ex-plodes
So, it… set off the gun that was pointing at it?
A-blast
Rings-out
Some-thing
Dings-off
The-stove
Oh. I get it now. The pacemaker set off the gun before it could aim itself (now that's a rare sentence).
'E-is
Un-harmed
That's actually a brilliant returning joke; the stove was so sturdily constructed that a bullet to its casing couldn't do more than dent it a bit, and was too stupid to realize that humans are more vulnerable.
It-had
But-one
A-tack
"Now I know what yer thinkin'; did he shoot six shots 'r only five?"
It-is
Spent-now
But-I
Am-not
Quite-out
Of-power
Elec-tricity
Fuses-mech
anic-al
Com-ponents
Melt-together
Its-face
Fades-as
It-dies
My-bat
tery-has
Run-low
So I guess now you're spent.
Att-acks
Drain-it-so
Well, if you'd known that it actually only takes 300-550 milliamps of direct current to kill a human, maybe you wouldn't be out of juice so soon. (Although the jury's out on how much the two shocks to the gun would take).
Also, isn't this just the third rhyme in the entirety of both poetry sections?
My-pur
pose-is
Bro-ken
I-cannot
Serve-it
I-
Reach-out
Grab-Crick
son's-heart
And-turn into-a heart-snail a-gain
I-send
My-power
My-dy
ing-hour
4th rhyme!
Light-ning
Life-blood
Pours-out
Pumped-out
Pulsed-out
The-light
The-heat
The-sparks
The-steam
I-see
I-magine
A-ghost
Crick-son
Trans-parent
And-in-side
Pul-sing
Gent-ly
Me-
So that's how Pacey dies?
And did the entire giant poetry sections really only have five rhymes between them?
The heart muscle steamed and charred as what little blood still pooled in the four chambers boiled away into what seemed like scab.
Well, thank you, "Shar", for that mental image.
Sparks flew from the pacemaker's leads, from the casing made to keep out not water but blood; mirroring the bursts of lightning that cut through the sky outside.
Oh, right! I'd actually forgotten it was A Dark And Stormy Night in the story.
But unlike the thunderheat, the pacemaker had scarcely any power, soon none at all. The sparks stopped, the sizzling stopped, and there was soon nothing to see but the slow rising of steam from what had once been the beating heart of a professor.
The appliances stood round the four dead bodies- two of man, two machine- and wondered but one question: What should we do?
That's it? That's seriously it?
I was right; it is an unfinished story.
Wow, "Shar" is only three for five with actually finishing their stories.
"Ding-dong!"
I quickly set the story down and hurry to the door. Here's hoping it's an actual customer and not just The Return Of Tabloid Man.