10/2/14
Tick, tick, tick, tick. I become aware of the sensation I have grown numb  to feeling for countless hours. . Suddenly the room I know too well is engulfed in a warm golden light that seems to come from above  that pulls me from spacing out. I cannot tell from where exactly, but the light  radiates throughout the entire scene before me. There is movement around me – a sound to my left, a crisp click to my right, the smell of… well there is no smell exactly. The room is quiet; a hint of chill is in the air that a superstitious person would mistakenly assume was a ghost passing by, though it was merely the vent above the arched entrance to the space. The room is gloriously lavish with plush carpet, everything so rich and elegant and expensive like the red velvet curtains cascading down the window panes that stretched from floor to ceiling, and the antique furniture filling the room.
The crackling of the old radio, the one the woman who comes in often to listen to, breaks through the silence of the room. There is that voice everyone can recognize giving a well written speech, addressing the country with a stern voice. The woman walks over, gingerly lowering herself down onto the plush chair that holds her in like a hug.  By the way the woman is sitting, her body hinting that what the man is saying is important, she looks much older than she is. Her face looks tense, her arms rigid, eyes dark almost as if in shock from what she is listening to. The radio turns to static and the woman lets out a whimper, the ends of her hair are visibly  shaking from the waves of tremors going through her. The fear exuding from her very being.
The old radio turns back on and she cries out with fright and immediately leans back in to listen, as if being closer will give her a better understanding of the words, yet we know this is not true.
The president ends his speech with the words everyone is dreading to hear but know is looming. It is almost as if the country, together as a whole, finishes the speech with the president in their minds with the words “imminent nuclear war.”
I want to reach out to the woman, her brown hair put up, her usual 60’s patterned dress flowing over her legs as she is too weak to continue sitting up and slumps  to the floor with tears in her eyes and fear in her heart. I know that I do not have arms that move like a human and I cannot help her more than show her how close her death is coming.
Tick, tick, tick….
I want to speak with her and comfort her but I do not have a mouth, simply a face. She slowly walks over to me, staring so intently as if into my soul. The more she looks, the more she sees the countries forthcoming war by  the movements of my limbs.
She touches her fragile hands to her face and rubs her arms with her long fingers to try to feel the remaining ounce of life she has left to live. She thinks this may be the last time she will feel the blood course through her veins. She reaches out to adjust my hands to give her a minute more of the precious time she wishes for and then she traces the carvings of the engraved wood that frames me. I do not know how many more times she will be able to gaze at my old appearance, a characteristic that gives me my name.
The blood drains from her olive skin becoming a pale white and the unmistakable piercing shriek becomes the only thing she can hear. She immediately falls to her knees and clasps her sweaty hands together for one last plea to the almighty. As the sirens wail out like  screams of a baby, her heart is torn in her chest and she feels around with her numb fingers for the ring she knows lives there but suddenly cannot feel. She wishes she had more time in her young life, married so  immature and divorced so early she did not know what life was about yet and she was utterly alone in the final moments of her life.
The earth quaked and her heart dropped and she lifted her tear marked face up to the ceiling. The sound of it was like nothing she had ever heard and felt the rumble of the explosions off in the distance each successively closer than the last. The shockwave reached her first, then the intense heat. The windows shattered into a million shards capable of blinding her, the curtains tattered from the blast, the wallpaper singed and hanging limply from the partition. She could see clearly now in the reflection of the front glass on me that covered my clockwork inside that the immense fireball was roaring toward the house in an explosion of white and she lifted her arm just in time to-.