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 - 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 1320!
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 -
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!
- ----------------------------
- ----------------------------
Monologue Mania Day # 1358 The Clock (Chapter 2) by Janet S. Tiger (c) Nov. 2 , 2017
This is the first chapter, Chapter 2 is below - if you remember Chapter 1, you can skip to the next chapter
---------------------------------------------
Monologue Mania Day #986 The Clock (chapter 1)by Janet S. Tiger (c) Oct. 25, 2016
The sound amazed him. It never seemed to stop. Tick tock tick tock.
It was stunning in its simplicity. And yet so very annoying. He did not understand how it was able to continue, as the battery had to be very old. Henderson had tried to find another battery, but he did not want to arouse suspicion, so he decided to see how long the battery would last.
It had been going for days.
He wondered if it continued while he was at work, and decided it had to, as it did not have any type of on/off mechanism other than the battery.
As he lay in bed and listened to the ticking, he had many mixed emotions. Which was unusual in itself because random emotions were not encouraged - they were dangerous and made for problems in the workplace and street.
But he had them. And they were pressing in on his whole being. First there was fear. Fear that he would be found out for going against the rules. No old devices were to be allowed in new homes. Because of the environment, which was silly, since the clock had been in the neighbor's house for years. Because of the danger to babies, which was silly, as no one had babies any more. Because of the fact that no one knew why it was against the rules, but it still was.
Another emotion was surprise, surprise that he had done something against the rules. He had never done that before, even as a young child. Which was why he was even more surprised now. He could not understand why he had done something....what would the word be? He didn't know it, but the word he was looking for was....revolutionary.
He hoped for the return to calmness, an emotion encouraged by the endless conferences shared on the screens, and through the daily meditations and medications. Calmness was the bland way of life that was best. No highs, no lows. Calm.
Yet there was something.....different about the clock....he didn't want to think it, but in his heart, he sensed something .....something magical about the clock. Even though the constant ticking was very annoying, there was something soothing in its perfection.
He lay awake the first few nights, trying to find a moment where the clock was off by even a tenth of a second, but no, it went tick tock tick tock until he fell asleep, still tick tocking when he awoke.
A miracle, not of the modern kind, but of a different era. A time when things did not last, and when they did, they were the exception, not the rule.
And then, it happened. One night, when Henderson was about to go to sleep, he decided to lay there for a moment and listen to the clock. Perhaps the sleeping meds caused him to miss the mistake he was looking for, so he put off the swallowing, holding the pills in his hand while he listened, his mind not numbed by the ambienoxyline. Tick tock. Tick tock. The sound was mesmerizing, and then, the amazing thing happened. Henderson fell asleep. Sound asleep.
He awakened the next morning with the first light, his eyes slowly becoming accustomed to the sun which was - for the first time in his life - unfiltered by the blurriness of the sleeping meds.
He took a deep breath and there it was. Tick tock. He had fallen asleep to the sound of the clock - and nothing else. That was supposedly impossible, yet he felt wonderful. As if, how could put it? The words did not come into his head that morning, it would take almost a month of the clock tick tocking him to sleep before he would think of the words - but when he did, he knew they were accurate. He felt like a new man.
--------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sound amazed him. It never seemed to stop. Tick tock tick tock.
It was stunning in its simplicity. And yet so very annoying. He did not understand how it was able to continue, as the battery had to be very old. Henderson had tried to find another battery, but he did not want to arouse suspicion, so he decided to see how long the battery would last.
It had been going for days.
He wondered if it continued while he was at work, and decided it had to, as it did not have any type of on/off mechanism other than the battery.
As he lay in bed and listened to the ticking, he had many mixed emotions. Which was unusual in itself because random emotions were not encouraged - they were dangerous and made for problems in the workplace and street.
But he had them. And they were pressing in on his whole being. First there was fear. Fear that he would be found out for going against the rules. No old devices were to be allowed in new homes. Because of the environment, which was silly, since the clock had been in the neighbor's house for years. Because of the danger to babies, which was silly, as no one had babies any more. Because of the fact that no one knew why it was against the rules, but it still was.
Another emotion was surprise, surprise that he had done something against the rules. He had never done that before, even as a young child. Which was why he was even more surprised now. He could not understand why he had done something....what would the word be? He didn't know it, but the word he was looking for was....revolutionary.
He hoped for the return to calmness, an emotion encouraged by the endless conferences shared on the screens, and through the daily meditations and medications. Calmness was the bland way of life that was best. No highs, no lows. Calm.
Yet there was something.....different about the clock....he didn't want to think it, but in his heart, he sensed something .....something magical about the clock. Even though the constant ticking was very annoying, there was something soothing in its perfection.
He lay awake the first few nights, trying to find a moment where the clock was off by even a tenth of a second, but no, it went tick tock tick tock until he fell asleep, still tick tocking when he awoke.
A miracle, not of the modern kind, but of a different era. A time when things did not last, and when they did, they were the exception, not the rule.
And then, it happened. One night, when Henderson was about to go to sleep, he decided to lay there for a moment and listen to the clock. Perhaps the sleeping meds caused him to miss the mistake he was looking for, so he put off the swallowing, holding the pills in his hand while he listened, his mind not numbed by the ambienoxyline. Tick tock. Tick tock. The sound was mesmerizing, and then, the amazing thing happened. Henderson fell asleep. Sound asleep.
He awakened the next morning with the first light, his eyes slowly becoming accustomed to the sun which was - for the first time in his life - unfiltered by the blurriness of the sleeping meds.
He took a deep breath and there it was. Tick tock. He had fallen asleep to the sound of the clock - and nothing else. That was supposedly impossible, yet he felt wonderful. As if, how could put it? The words did not come into his head that morning, it would take almost a month of the clock tick tocking him to sleep before he would think of the words - but when he did, he knew they were accurate. He felt like a new man.
--------------------------------------------
* Note: A few words about 'free' - all these monologues are protected under copyright law and are free to read, free to perform and video as long as no money is charged. Once you charge admission or a donation, or include my work in an anthology, you need to contact me for royalty
---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Janet S. Tiger 858-736-6315 CaregiversAnon.org
Member Dramatists Guild since 1983
Playwright-in-Residence
Swedenborg Hall 2006-8
2 comments:
How intriguing!
How intriguing!
Post a Comment