Tonight was a fantastic night. I had a wonderful evening with my two friends, where we hit the bars until half an hour before midnight - that moon blaring its grandest silvery beacon, it makes that party animal in you alive. More so when I punched a man in teeth no less than four times, loosening perhaps a dozen of his own teeth. It was all purely self defence, as well as protecting my own friends who were being insulted with racial slurs about their Asian and European backgrounds. Shortly after, management demanded we leave, we had too many boozes and should walk it off. We withdrew with anger, hesitated leave for just moments, yet decided against further conflict.
Quite drunk and intoxicated, as we were. We held each other around the shoulders sinking along the pavement, like it was water. One of my friends, Daniel; he wasn't exactly the social type - enough booze soon fixed that baffling social anxiety, turning him into a sort of, well, absolute douche.
He hassled a few predestines as we plodded on, but our more sober friend, Alex, was more than capable with handling his queer mood; often swatting his hand away or gripping his mouth, his sticky breath slapped his hands when muffled.
A street, most often related to serial crimes through drug cartels and insidious murders of which I dare not explain even to my friends as friendly banter. We stumbled on for a good twenty-five minutes until we had come across the watch factory that was shut-down three years before, during times where nightclubs weren't to popular or commonplace.
Daniel declared we should explore this complex, find ghosts or something. Before Alex had a chance to lasso him with his arms, he bolted outright over to a clumsy wooden fence, pushed aside a board and leapt in. We had no choice but to follow and capture him. Alex and I stumbled over rotting boards and danger signs, declaring that the structure was unsound and could collapse. I mentioned the sign, and we agreed upon apprehending him immediately.
Conveyor-belts stood rusted all over the interior. Pigeons cooed and flocked out of the deep orifices of rust in the high rise roof, that held long stretches of metal board-walks; we stared hazy eyed across its engulfing expanse. There was Daniel, playing with something in his hands, next in a moth chewed office chair, exposed with gashes of stuffing and avian faeces.
"What the hell are you doing, Daniel?" I said. "Can't you see this place is a death-trap waiting to happen." I declared, waving my arms through a thick cloud of dust, which may of been dried faecal matter spraying up, sweetening the air with cancer. Through my drunkenness, I caught silver in currents of milk-bottle lenses, being straddled in the hands of Daniel in the moonbeams that sawed their ways through the dark, dampening this abandoned monolith of steel. Daniel took notice as well, giving a sulphurous moan and asked what it was.
It looked like a watch.
Not any watch, I swear you. It must of been worth hundreds of dollars during this companies production. Its housing was polished seamless, a long spooling metal chain hung away from the pocket-watch' ring that braced carved bone; barely a scratch and even Old Father Time's talons hadn't even had its way with it. Its similarity to normal pocket-watch halted instantly, as I cocked a quizzy eye over its face. Funny, as I heard myself in my turbulent thoughts. The watch' face, has a face. A chalk drawn feature, strong curved and dead, yet vivid with exquisite detail; having its eyes drawn shut, a mouth that was on verge of whispering, but soundless. Two ornate wheels clicked almost soundlessly around its cheeks, portraying pictures of a large baroque sun, mirroring with a lunar image. The larger wheel drew clockwise around its circumference, then bisected the lunar wheel behind the paled face, brushing smoothly in a figure eight.
"Amazing." Alex called, staring at its architecture.
"I know." A completely silent Daniel said, until just this moment. "I found it here, on this chair. Why would it still be here, thieves would of gobbled it up ages ago." he mused over its origin. Daniel flipped over its case, taking notice of an inscription in ridiculous Pig-Latin.
Infinitum Insanius - May he lie slumberous before midnight; never awoken across the breach to cull heir Cronus.
"What do you think that means - Infinitum Insanius?" Alex asked. staring.
"Absolute bullshit." I said to no one in particular, because I was staring at something else.
It was staring back. A thick membranous husk of muscles lumbered, peached spontaneously during some moments like a tick, tick of a minute movement of a milliseconds hand. Metal gears whirred like howling engines in a cavernous clock-tower, deep-set in a dark leathered tunic bound to its gut in the rafters.
I pointed shaking up in to the board-walk, my friends stopped, perceived my white-faced terror that had swallowed me whole, turning my veins to crystallised, primal fodder, and almost screamed as loud as I.
The pocket-watch chimed with a muffled cracking of metal. The face on the watch had opened its eyes, Gears spun with hell-fire. A larger sound erupted from the creatures face - only opening a singular featureless orifice, known only too wrongly as a mouth - ululating a gong of monastery standards - inflating sacks of bloodied flesh that sickeningly appeared humanoid, attached with brass pipes strewn across its mass; spewing monotonous wails of screaming men, shaking the factories interior, sifting rust, dust off its walls. It leapt, dangling on a spool of piano-wire, A set of industrial needle like devices that hammered to a buzzing rhythm like the beating wings of flies, acted as its gruesome brass hands. We screamed, locked dead to our positions as it spiralled down, unfurled wings of polished clockwork set under glass. I forebode my audience to this creature as it dragged its mass in a complex helix of motion, bladed gears and needles working their way through flesh, rending bone. We were gutted, relieved of our throats along with our voices; our organs being held in banquet to this monstrosity. We fell, sounding like metal caskets. My eyes shut in bathes of blood, like glass shutters. I felt heavier than I did; felt I was stuffed with concrete and sewn up tight. I heard a sound as my conciousness was robbed. It was metallic and cold.
Tick... Tick... Tick...
It was soothing in my agony. The moonlight was gone, yet the sound remained. I allowed myself to slowly drift along its tide and be swept to see.
Tick... Tick... Tick... Clack.
Glass eyes blinked open. Gears span and weights contracted, spinning wheels and trading teeth. I came to, standing upright. I was with my friends, standing in the factory. It must of been a dream, we had possibly past out due to the alcohol. No, I tried to gasp and retort in horror. I couldn't move my body, I was immobile as a statue. I swivelled an optic iris over the stains that was unmistakeably our blood.
In the distance, it hung without legs, tattered cloth fluttering on its person. Its maw still encouraged the steep cavern of chilled wind seeping through its pipes. It rung out in a multitude of different, monotone bell chimes. My body moved without reason, my heart fluttered and hissed like bellows. Before late, we were walking like tin soldiers, out into the night. I demanded my muscles to cease, yet no response. I was a prisoner within my own skin. I have no mouth, but I must scream, I howled into the deepest fathoms of my mind, yet only my echo rung back.
The pocket-watch had dropped to the ground. Dirty as the ground was, none surrounded its immediate proximity. The deathly aeon aged face had a deep uplifting crease across its dial, and slowly closed its eyes with a subtle - click.
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