A little girl was sitting on her bed. Her brown hair was pulled into pigtails and her hazel eyes stared at her door. She hugged her stuffed giraffe closer and listened to the argy-bargy of her mum and dad.
“Oi should have never had any bleedin’ kids!” screamed a loud, deep voice. “All they do is mock up the place, complain, draw on the walls—”
“They’re children, David! You numpty bloke! They don’t know any better!”
“Oh fuck me, Marybeth! Oi don’t want to hear your shite excuses! I’ve had just about enough of them!”
“And what do you plan to do about it?!”
The girl heard loud footsteps approaching, and hugged her giraffe closer.
The door to her room was wrenched open and there stood her miffed biffa of a father. In one of his fatty hands he held a large textbook.
“David, stop it!” screamed her mum.
But her father ignored the pleading cries. He grabbed the girl by her collar and she screamed kicked, shaking in fear. He held up the textbook.
“This is what you get for drawing on my walls you little cunt!”
Years later the little girl, known as Natalie, was nine years old. Going through puberty, she was naturally a little chubby. Like usual she was siting in her room watching the telly. Her dad was in the other room, ranting on about some economy shite she couldn’t be arsed to care about, and she was munching on some popcorn.
She was currently doodling a picture. There was a bit of gore in it, but she liked drawing blood. Rather than the willies, it gave her a weird satisfaction. Other than that, multitasking was a breeze for her. After having to do so much hard work and labor from a young age, it became easy to see how much she could do. Drawing ended up being her talent and passion. It was her way to escape from the world; whenever some bad doofer would show its ugly mug she would draw, or if she was just bored.
Her door closed. She turned her head to look and saw her 14 year old brother, Lucas standing there.
“What is it?” she could still here her dad having a paddy in the other room. “Dad scaring you?”
He chuckled. “No way. I think we’re both used to his racket by now.”
There was a pause. “So why’re you here?” she asked.
Lucas played with his sleeves a little, twitching nervously. “I have to ask you something,” he said, staring intently.
Natalie frowned, growing impatient with her brother for interrupting her movie and her drawing. “Gab it already.”
He moved closer to her. “You said you wanted to be cool and grown up like a teenager, right?” She nodded, chuffed over his words. “Well, I have an offer for you.”
“Just spit it out, you wanker!”
“You know what…blokes and girls do together sometimes?”
The next day at school Natalie did not say a word. She didn’t speak for the whole day. Not that she had anyone to chat with anyway. Nobody could know, nor should anybody know. Her teacher picked up on a few of her puzzled expressions, but just dismissed it as Natalie being a dimwit and not understanding the lesson. Natalie also felt like she was in pain. She had no idea it could…hurt. Feeling a case of the willies, she walked home and quietly went to her room. But later in the day she was once again greeted by her brother.
Again, nobody would know.
At school, she finally decided to tell someone. Even though they weren’t chums she just felt as if she had to. She walked up to the group of lasses she would occasionally see in the hallway. They looked like nice girls, and they had banted with Natalie before.
“Hey Mia.”
The ginger girl in question looked over at Natalie. “Yeah?”
“I, uh, really need to talk to you about something. It’s been going on for a while and you and your mates…I feel like they’re the only people I can trust with this.” Mia and her friends looked as if they were about to have a little giggle, but they restrained themselves. Little did Natalie know, they were hungry for gossip.
“Yeah, you can bum off us. What’s the craic?”
One day later was all it took. She had been getting constant insults over sites like Facebook. Someone even called her a slag. At lunch someone’s fish and chips ended up in her hair. It was going to be the least of her problems but Natalie, being only 9, was already gutted by everything that was going on.
However she didn’t cut, she didn’t gab, she didn’t whine, or say a word about it. She kept everything inside, figuring that it would be better. She wouldn’t let any pain wallop her.
3 am. A school night. Her mum was going to paste her. Natalie was now sixteen. She was productive in secondary school, a real corker in her classes. For once, she was cheery. Though she still would on occasion become a hermit in her room, hiding away from her dad who still liked to yell about the economy, corrupt bobbies, dosh, and all of the other shite from him that she was flat out cheesed of hearing for so long.
Her eyes started to feel heavy. She had an assignment to work on, but she was so knackered out that laying down for a kip was the only thing on her mind. She closed her laptop and after her eyes adjusted to the resulting darkness, she saw her stuffed giraffe sitting in the corner, old and worn-down. Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked them back. Fuck off, she thought to herself, still continuing to stare at the giraffe. “What the bloody hell are you lookin’ at?” she snapped at the object. It simply stared back with soft, beady black eyes. She shook her head and stood up, staring down at the stuffed animal before she picked it up and began to stroke it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, petting its rough fur, tears running down her face, before crawling into her bed and holding the toy against her chest. She slowly drifted off to sleep.
She was woken up by the angry growls of her mum. She opened her eyes to see her mum glaring at her.
“I can’t believe I forgot to take that stupid laptop away! You were on it all night, weren’t you!”
Natalie sighed and pressed her face into her pillow, hugging her giraffe closer. Her mum sighed and left. Eventually Natalie got up and took a shower (skipping brushing her teeth), and had a breakfast of Yorkshire pudding and eggs to go along with her tea. Then she got dressed, putting on a gray-blue hoodie on top of her outfit. It wasn’t her favorite, but thanks to the fur inside it was warm, and all of her others were in the wash anyway. Her black pants and boots followed, then she went downstairs and hopped in the car and her mum sped off towards her school.
She was still pretty knackered from having so little sleep, though, and soon Natalie put her head on the door of the car and almost immediately began to drift off. But her sleep was never pleasant. Plagued by nightmares of her dad abusing her, and Lucas’s sexual abuse that lasted for four years before she got the bottle to tell him to sod off. She started twitching in her sleep, but her mum didn’t notice. She never noticed.
It seemed as if she had barely closed her eyes when she was being shaken awake by her mum saying: “We’re here.” She sounded miffed, no doubt from her sleeping, but Natalie just climbed out of the car and slid her rucksack over her shoulder.
“Cheerio,” she said, closing the door.
She walked into the school, stopping to chat with a couple of her mates, until she went up to her locker on the second floor. She grabbed her books and before the bell rang she was in her class.
Her English teacher put a hand on her desk. She seemed wound up about something. “Where is your homework, Miss Ouellette?”
Natalie swallowed. “I—uh, forgot it at home. I’m sorry, Miss Homenuik.”
“Your time is up, Miss Oullette. Don’t disappoint me.”
For a moment, Natalie was puzzled about those words. She had no idea why, but the words just seemed to melt through her. She simply ignored the feeling and tried to listen through the lesson—only to lay down for a kip not too long into it.
Later that day she was heading to her locker when her boyfriend Chris came up to her.
“Hey, um, talk to me after school, alright?” he said. She smiled at him and nodded, watching him walk away. It was a barmy thing for him to say, but Natalie didn’t suspect anything. Chris was a blinding fellow.
During her French class she decided to just doodle instead of listening to some bint drone on about the cheese eating surrender monkeys. Across her paper was blood, gore, blokes getting stabbed, other macabre things of the like. Other blokes who would catch a glimpse of what she was drawing would say they were really dark, but she saw nothing wrong with it. It was normal for her.
“Miss Ouellette.”
She quickly covered her drawings and looked up at her French teacher, trying not to show her fear. “Um, yes Mr. LeVasseur?” she asked.
He gestured for her to move her arm. “Show me your work, ya wanker.”
Hesitantly, she moved her arm, revealing the drawing she had been working on before her interruption: a poor bloke getting stabbed by a nutter. The teacher stared at her, as if he thought she was off her rocker. She smiled at him nervously.
“Erase that and get started on your work.” His voice was strangely calm and he began to walk away. Natalie sighed and began to do as she was told when his voice interrupted her again. “And Miss Ouellette? Your time is almost up on your work. I suggest doing it now.”
She growled a little at the words. Time always seemed to be against her. As far as she was concerned, time could go sod off.
After school was out she walked out to find Chris standing by the fence near the sidewalk. She smiled and walked over to him, hoping that the day being as balls-up as it was could be made better by her boyfriend. But as she got closer, her smile slowly began to fade, as he wasn’t returning it.
“Chris, what’s wrong? What did you want to chat about?” she asked.
“Natalie, I think it’s time we should…start seeing other people.”
She felt her heart break. “But—why?”
“It’s your mindset. Your drawings, they just…give me the willies. I think you don’t really have all your marbles. And the worst part is, you haven’t ever told me why you’re acting like this. It makes me feel irresponsible. I just…I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.” And with that he began to walk away. “Cheerio.”
Natalie slammed her hands on the bathroom counter back in her home. She stared at herself in the mirror, her eye giving a twitch. “I won’t hurt myself like the others. I-I will stay strong—”
There was a pin and thread in her hands.
“It’s so bloody stupid. Nothing helps.” She chuckled a little. “No, I haven’t lost me marbles. I’m doing this because I want to.” She held up the pin. “Time is up.”
Pierce after pierce.
Even though excruciating pain was going through her, she did not whine. She made no noise, only smiled. There were no more tears for her to shed. The only noise was the blood dripping from her chin into the sink and counter. When she was finished with her work she stepped back and stroked the stitches she had sewn onto the sides of her mouth, smiling still.
She felt the warm, wet blood on her fingers and licked it, finding a strange delight in the taste. Better than haggis, that was for sure. Almost like tea. Suddenly she noticed her mum in the mirror, standing behind her. Natalie whipped around, eyes wide, and just then it was like she was aware of the pain in her face and the blood on her hand. She started to cry. “Mum?” she whispered.
What the bloody hell had just happened to her?
Her mum had scheduled her to visit a shrink. Natalie had not gotten rid of the stitches yet, afraid of the pain they would bring, so she went to see her shrink with them. She made sure her hood was up, so some blokes wouldn’t see and call the bobbies on her. She sat in a comfortable leather seat in the room and stared at the blond woman sitting across from her.
“So, your name is Natalie, right?” the woman asked. Natalie just nodded. “I’m Debera. I’m here to help. Now tell me, what has been tossing you lately?”
“Time. Time has been my problem.”
Debera gave her a confused look. The “lost-her-marbles” look. “What about time, dear?”
Natalie gripped the armrest of the chair tightly. “Everything. It makes you live through it, being controlled by a bunch of wankers in society, only to end up being tortured to no end until you no longer have a purpose. It’s a shagged cycle.
She had no idea what she just said. Maybe she really was going mental. Could it be because all of that crazy shite she kept contained? Or no, that was rubbish, but she kind of liked it.
The shrink leaned closer. “Treacle, I want you to tell me what happened to you.”
Still, Natalie stared. There was a long pause. And then she smiled a little, stretching the stitches. “Why don’t you tell me? You’re the doc, or are you just a damp squib?”
Debera tried not to show her annoyance. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong, Natalie.”
“Natalie isn’t here anymore, ya git.”
With that Debera’s eyes widened and she got up. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.” She walked out, leaving Natalie alone. Of course, if she hadn’t been such a useless bloody shrink and had actually done something at this point, Natalie might not have gone nutters. Maybe more blokes would have been alive today.
As much of an interesting story it would be to say that Natalie said “sod this” and walked out, she didn’t. She sat on the chair, being utterly boring, and waited it perfect calmness until her parents opened the door and came in. She finally stood up, happy to go, but she noticed her parents’ expressions. Even her dad looked a little down. Natalie was puzzled, but she didn’t say anything, and she simply followed them to the car and got in. On the way home, she started to drift off once more.
In her dreams of blackness, she heard a voice speaking to her. It sounded a little like her own.
“Your time is up.”
“Fuck off ya cunt!” she yelled, shooting awake.
She wasn’t home. She wasn’t even in the car anymore.
She was laying on a white bed, in a white room. Looking to her side she saw a heart monitor, beeping quietly. She tried to get up, but then realized that she was strapped down.
Panic hit her and she started to struggle, but a door to her left opened and she froze. A bloke in a white coat came in and looked at her, just like one of those Jocks you see in every cliche stock photo of some science lab. Then he started to speak.
“You must be pretty lost, I imagine. But I’m letting you know we’re only here to help. Your parents signed a contract to give you some drugs and hopefully help your noggin.” She tried to interrupt but he kept talking over her. “You don’t need to worry. You’ll feel chipper in no time. Just try to relax.” He walked over and she tried to move away from him, but she couldn’t. Taking a surgical mask, he pulled it over her mouth and nose. Stubbornly, she tried to tear it off, but she could feel herself starting to slip under influence the drugs and her eyes slid shut.
Fucking wanker, she thought as she fell.
And suddenly she was awake again.
She couldn’t comprehend what the hell she was seeing.
She was being given multiple injections, there were things being rubbed on her skin, she felt woozy but completely aware of her surroundings. She wondered if this is what getting pissed felt like. What she was really feeling was a rare state that some surgery patients go through where the anesthetics don’t work properly, where her mind and senses were awake but her body was unable to respond. However, she could still feel the pain.
Her heart started to race, which made the heart monitor start to beep louder. The doctors looked at her, and then suddenly they were all yelling at one another. Natalie began to shake violently, and slip through her bonds. One of the blokes moved as if to hold her down, but paused suddenly and started to back away with the others. She sat up on the edge of the bed and ripped the tube out of her arm, then began to stumble toward them.
“Blimey,” one of them whispered.
Just then she gasped, clutching her chest where her heart was and fell to her knees, blood dripping from her lips as she coughed. Then she blacked out.
When she woke up again, groggy and drained, she saw that she was laying in bed once more, and the wanker of a doctor was sitting next to her.
“Something went arse over tits,” he said without preamble.
Anger and hatred welled up inside of her and she clenched her fists. Sensing as if she was going to spare, he looked away.
“You weren’t supposed to wake up during that. We aren’t really sure how it affected you, but there are some things.” He took a small mirror that he had next to him and showed her her reflection. “Your mug, for one.”
She looked at her mug in the mirror and felt her eyes going wide immediately. Her eyes. They were now completely green. And for some barmy reason she still had stitches across her mouth. And yet she felt rather chuffed by the change.
She smiled and her heart monitor began beeping again. “Hey doctor,” she said.
The doctor jumped, seeing that she was suddenly standing over him. “Crikey!”
“Your time is up.”
A loud scream was suddenly heard throughout the hospital. Two security guards rushed in, kicking down the door.
Blood was the first thing they saw. It was everywhere, on the walls, floor, and the ceiling. Natalie had taken the wanker and strapped him down to the bed, and then used the adjustments of the bed to snap him almost in half, bending him backwards like a sandwich. Blood was pouring from every orifice of his body, and standing in the corner, was the nutter who killed him. She was drawing pictures on the wall in the blood, followed by phrases like “YOUR TIME IS UP” and “WANKER.”
She slowly turned to look at them, a grin spreading on her face.
“Hello mates. Would you like to have a giggle with me? Heheh…”
The guards pulled out their guns and she charged at them, moving so fast she could dodge the bullets. She grabbed a large knife from the sheath on one of the bobbie’s belts and slashed him right across his waist. Blood and organs spilled out and he collapsed to the ground. She inhaled, loving the stench of death, while the other bobbie trembled, dropping his gun. Natalie walked forward and placed the tip of her knife against his chest.
“Your time is up, ya tosser.”
She slide the blade down his chest, all the way into his gut. Like his chum, his organs spilled onto the floor as well and he collapsed, dead.
Natalie’s mum was having a kip in her room, next to her husband. She awoke to the sound of knocking. Tired, she got up and went to the front door. Outside, rain was pouring down like any typical night in Britain, and thunder was booming. She walked up to the door and paused when she put her hand on the knob.
There a faint sound of laughter. The rain and thunder seemed to be much quieter all of a sudden. She pressed her ear against the door and listened closely.
“Hello mum.”
Natalie burst through the door, wielding two knives. Her mum stumbled back and hit her head on the coat rack, and one of the hooks conked her right on the back of the head. She bled profusely and lay on the ground, paralyzed but still conscious. Natalie knelt next to her and showed her the knives covered in blood.
“I was suffering, mummy,” she said, running the knife across her cheek. “But you did nothing.” She crawled onto her mum’s chest and began to make a V-shaped cut on her chest. Her mother gasped and shook, but her breaths started to gurgle. Natalie worked quickly, opening her mum’s chest with a loud CRACK and reached inside and grabbed her mum’s heart. She could feel it beating in her hand, and she ripped it out, blood spraying all over her face. She stared at her mum’s face as she slowly died.
“Cheerio, mum,” she said. “Your time was up.” She put the heart into her mum’s mouth and got up.
David had stirred awake, seeing that his wife hadn’t come back yet. He looked around in the darkness, and when his eyes started to adjust he started, seeing Natalie standing at his bedside with her glowing green eyes. Blood was all over her. She pulled her face into an exaggerated mask of sorrow.
“Oh bollocks, mummy’s gone… I wonder who will get all the dosh?” She laughed and grabbed her dad’s forehead. “That’s all you ever cared about anyway.”
Her dad, however, was a fighter and he sprung up and grabbed her neck, throwing her to the ground. He started to stomp on her chest until she started to cough up blood, and he glared down at her.
“Doesn’t it feel good, daddy?” She coughed again. “After all you never gave an arse doing it all those years ago, didn’t you?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t my daughter, ya bint.”
A wider smirk spread on her face, and she looked at him with her glowing eyes. “You’re right. I’m not.” She kicked her leg, tripping him and causing him to fall to the floor. She got up, knives in hand. While he was distracted she grabbed a pillow and stuffed it over his face and then started to stomp on it, harder and harder until she finally paused. She could hear him groaning in pain. “What’s the matter, daddy? Pain too much for you?”
She stabbed both knives into his stomach, then ripped one of the long wooden poles off his bed. She set it down on his legs and then yanked her knives out, seating herself on the pole, facing away from him. She used her legs to push herself back, rolling the pole up the body, using her weight to push his innards up through his body. He started to gag like he was pissed, and his breath was quiet. Natalie shoved herself harder, and then his organs all suddenly burst out of his mouth like confetti, piling on the sides of his face. She got up and started to walk out.
“Cheerio, daddy. Your time was up.”
Then she snuck down to her brother’s room. Quietly, she opened the door, and noticed that her brother wasn’t in bed. Hiding somewhere, then.
“Oh Lucas, dear chap. Come on out now and we can have some tea together.” She crept into the room, looking around, listening for any noise. She even sniffed the air a little. Then she noticed a faint breathing—
WHACK.
She fell to the ground and Lucas was above her, holding a cricket bat in his hands. He was panting in rage. She tried to get up, but he hit her again and again.
“Mum always did like you best you stupid, bleeding cunt!” He hit her one last time before stopping for a breather. She was staring at the ceiling, eyes much dimmer now. She remembered looking at the very same ceiling for four years as he tortured her, and the sudden rage gave her a rush of strength. She began cackling and he went to hit her again, but she blocked the cricket bat with her knives.
“You’re going to hell you tosser!” She leaped up and shoved him, sending him flying across the room where he hit the wall and then slumped onto his bed. With a growl he tried to lunge for her, but she stabbed her knives through each arm, pinning them in place.
“Now let’s see,” she muttered as Lucas screamed and kicked, calling her a bint and duff and slag and all other sorts of names. She looked around his room, eventually finding a butter knife. “They say the eyes are the softest organ in the body,” she said calmly, fingering the knife. “Soft as butter. How appropriate.”
Lucas could only look at her in horror before she started digging the blade into his eyes. He shrieked, but she quickly stuffed a rag into his mouth and kept working. “Quiet, wanker,” she muttered. Blood was leaking from his eyes violently, the pain was unbearable, and if he could anymore he would be crying.
“Hm.” Another search turned up a pair of scissors. She stabbed it into his gut and then started cutting, treating him like paper, cutting out his large intestine. She laughed as she worked on him, breaking his toes and fingers, ripping them off, sawing into his organs, until his muffled screams were choked off by his own blood. She ignored the sounds, working until he went still, drowning in his own blood and fluids. Smirking, she took the cloth out of his mouth.
“Cheerio, chap. Your time was up.”
Natalie walked into the bathroom, dripping blood. She started at herself, until she became aware of a ticking noise. She looked down and saw a pocket watch.
She stared at it for a very long time, before she took it and started to disassemble it until only the small watch remained. Then she took her knife.
“Time makes you like through torture,” she muttered, slowly digging the knife into her eyes. Her vision blurred and became red. “Slowly progressing through life, being controlled by a bunch of wankers in society, until you find you no longer have a purpose.” Her eyes started to slide out, blood pouring into the sink. “It’s a shagged cycle.” Her eye dangled out of the socket, pain shooting into her head. “Time doesn’t end, it doesn’t slow down, or speed up. It’s cranky.” She grabbed her optic nerve and tore it right out. “It makes you live through the torture again and again,” she held up the clock, “unable to speed it up.”
She shoved it into her eyes, fitting it in place with a squish.
“I am Clockwork.”
She walked away from her house. Despite the rain, the flames behind her were consuming everything. The carcasses of her family, and the small, stuffed giraffe that still sat in a forlorn corner of her room.
Some say she still lives, mad as a hatter.
She leaves dead in her wake, deciding when their time is up.
The only way to detect her is if you’re cuddled close under the covers at night. But in the darkness she watches, she determines. The only way to appease her is to leave some tea out next to your bed.
You hear ticking.
There is a flash of green and the putrid clock eye.
“Piss off, wanker,” you mutter in your sleep. It doesn’t help.
Your time is up.