first year - Feb. 13, 2014 - Feb. 12, 2015 second year - Feb. 13, 2015 - Feb. 12, 2016 third year - Feb. 13, 2016 - today! *********
I've continued with a monologue a day until the spirit moves me to stop, so if you have any ideas for a monologue you want me to write, please let me know at tigerteam1@gmail.com.
I've continued with a monologue a day until the spirit moves me to stop, so if you have any ideas for a monologue you want me to write, please let me know at tigerteam1@gmail.com.
If you just started this blog and want to read the earlier monologues- for a list of the titles and blurbs from each day, click here There are now over 960!
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Get more great award-winning monologues - MonologueZone.com
If you'd like to write your own monologues, I happen to have a book for that -
Thank you for your comments - and for liking and sharing this site. Wishing you much success!
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Monologue Mania Day #986 The Clock (chapter 1)by Janet S. Tiger (c) Oct. 25, 2016
The Clock (chapter one)
by Janet S. Tiger
tigerteam1@gmail.com
© all rights reserved March 19, 2009
The
Clock by Janet S. Tiger© Oct. 25, 2016
Janet S. Tiger all rights reserved
Chapter
1
Most
people don't know, but Henderson James did, exactly what changed his life
forever. It was a clock. Well, maybe not A clock, but THE clock.
Henderson had been
born in the era of the end of analog, and had grown up in a home bereft of
machines that told time in any other but digital mode.
Everywhere he looked
in his home there was a digital reminder of the time - over his crib when he
was born, in every room, and outside on the door, along with the safety
buttons, lights, emergency request slide bars and thermometer.
Henderson had barely
any knowledge of the analog clock - as he was brought up in schools that were
living computers - and therefore digital was king....or queen....or
ruler....whichever pronoun you preferred. And digital was enhanced by the
lovely sounds of the gentle robotic voices that would answer all questions -
What day is it today? 'Thurs-day, Jan-u-a-ry Nine-teenth, two thou-zand-se-ven-ty
one. And what time is it? Eight-thir-ty two. Time to go to
work in ...fif-teen min-utes.'
So it was with an
amazing jolt that Henderson first encountered the clock.
It was in a box that
had been left out for collection for the history society. The old man
Henderson barely saw in the old house he lived next to was dead. Finally.
He was over a hundred and sixty-five, and did not believe in using much
of the modern methods of life-extension, so he looked like a withered prune to
Henderson. He was also very annoying and could be rude, as rumor was that
he did not take his evening pills, as his sharp tongue certainly indicated.
His name had been John
Rattamaker, the order from the old days, with his parents’ name last, and he
had once told Henderson that Henderson looked like an ass for wearing the
required hat.
Henderson knew what an
ass looked like (he had Googled it) and found (also by Google) that it was a
term meant to insult. But Henderson did not take this personally at all, as
Henderson always took the evening pills, which were a funny play on words - you
took them in the evening, before bed, and they were good at 'evening' out your
emotions.
As Henderson left his
home, he saw the box, waiting for the History Society pick-up. It had
probably been collected by one of Rattamaker's many children, who had swarmed
over the rickety stairs as soon as their father had died. They had left
with many items, and Henderson was sure they were auctioned off to pay for the
taxes owed on the property, which it was rumored, Rattamaker had not paid in
decades.
Due to the fact that
older people had started not dying and many had no way to earn more money, a
law passed in the early days of the century mandated that old people could not
be removed from domiciles they occupied for any reason except if they had
killed someone (all other crimes were excused for the elderly) or if they were
dead - , allowing the old to remain in places until they literally faded away.
But once they did, the families descended like vultures, and the result
looked like bones picked clean on videos he had watched on his viewer.
So the left behind
remains were interesting - and in spite of the need to be on time for his
assigned job as a watcher of the news feeds for impending troubles, he stopped
to peruse the pile of junk by the curb.
Most of the items held
no interest, and if he hadn't dug his hand deep into the container, underneath the old VCR tapes and postcards and other useless trash, he would
never have found the clock.
When his hand touched
it, it was a strange shape. Round, yet with edges. Most items in Henderson's time were produced by 3D machines - and they had a different feel.
This was.......old.
He pulled it out and
perused the face of the clock, even though he did not know it was called a face
at that moment. but when he learned, he knew that is exactly what he thought
when he saw it - a face.
The numbers looked at
him, and the hands, did they move? He shook the clock and....he saw a
faint motion, looked around quickly and shoved the clock into his pocket.
It was his, he thought, as he rationalized that no one from the history
society could possibly want an old plastic and slightly bent item like this!
Knowing the cameras
would be recording this, he made sure bent over carefully to shield his actions
as he concealed the clock. Then he made a big issue of sneezing loudly,
which would require him to return to his home, take a wellness pill, and
sanitize himself before heading to work. This enabled him to go into his
home and put the clock in what he considered a safe place, under his bed.
Nobody would look there.
And so it began.
Henderson could barely
wait to get home that evening. He was a bit giddy at work, and tried hard
to disguise this with a few sneezes, just in case. He left that
afternoon, telling the others he was going to take an extra pill that night,
just in case. as he had sneezed too much, and did not not want get a cold,
which was something highly feared, as even though all illnesses had been
completely eradicated back in the 2070s, for some reason, no one ever had been
able to stop the mutation of the cold virus, and it still plagued humanity,
despite trillions of dollars of medical research yearly, and the protective
industry which had arisen to combat the cold.
Deep inside, Henderson
wondered sometimes if the cold was allowed to continue due to the huge industry
it supported, but the medications he took daily quickly stopped the thought
from developing into anything resembling a troubling idea.
But the clock was to
begin a series of troubling ideas - only Henderson did not identify
this at the time.
Had he, the psychotropic medicines would probably have brought
an end to the entire
sequence quickly. What happened, as we now know, was the
start of something
only history books can properly explain, as no one could have
predicted that a
simple man would cause the end of society as it was known at
the time.
And all because of a
simple, plastic, made in China, originally $4.99 Walmart analog
clock........Tick
tock.
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Janet S. Tiger 858-736-6315 CaregiversAnon.org
JanetSTigerMonologueMania.blogspot.com
Member Dramatists Guild since 1983
Playwright-in-Residence
Swedenborg Hall 2006-8
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