Clang ker-Bang goes the Grandfather Clock
Dong ding ding dong
A cacophony of chimes begin the morning.
Cuck-ooo
A small whisper ends the night.
You do not speak much to customers, and you do not share glances with strangers. They are foolish, squishy, unpredictable beings, who confused you and made a mess. How lovely the tick tick tick of the clock sends you through the passage of time, without any confusion or disorder.
Of the clocks that tell the time of day, your favorite is ironically the one that does not speak. Silently it gazes upon its small brethren, tall and stolid like a silent soldier. You feel a special sort of kinship with its grey visage, how it does not speak and therefore does not need any tuning. If only the other clocks can emulate this great paragon of chronism, its independence to go on displaying the time for all eternity without necessitating the flawed touch of man.
You dust the great grandfather clock every other Tuesday. Unfortunately dust is one thing you still cannot control.
On this Tuesday, much like any other, you clean it with a blue rag soaked in warm water.
On the next Wednesday, you find traces of white dust scattered around the clocks. You break the schedule and treat the day like another Tuesday, running over all the clocks with the blue rag.
On Thursday the dust is back. Upon close inspection, you find a small insect wing cached inside the heart of a cuckoo clock. You use a pair of tweezers to dispose of it, as you heard that touching the wings of butterflies causes blindness. You go buy some mothballs to spread around your clocks.
Dong ding di—EEEEE---dondondon
A clock sounds in the hall at two in the morning.
You scatter more mothballs around the rooms, but the moths do not take any heed. In fact, they seem to be becoming braver, fluttering without care or whim, landing upon all your clocks and spreading their awful white dust upon the shelves and landing upon your sleeping nose.
You bear it for a week. Then, you break down and buy pesticide, scattering the foul liquid everywhere to eradicate the vermin.
The fumes begin to make you very, very dizzy. In your madness, you stare up at the grandfather clock. The grandfather clock does not move, does not speak; he only passes judgment upon your foolish actions, looking at your despair with disdain and mild pity.
You fling the bucket of pesticide at it, and it goes Clang ker-BANG, opening up like a ribcabe. Out from the depths flutter thousands of tiny white moths, scattering their dust across the room and your eyes and your nose and your mouth.
The grandfather clock rocks, and falls.
Clang ker-bang, it goes a second time.