The Thinking Box - 3 - Come to the Castle
January 10, 2008 by Basil Munroe Godevenos
Come to the Castle
KLARA
Klaus glared at the new slip, fury consuming him. This was the most depraved display of poor taste he’d ever witnessed. Somebody was impersonating his dead wife - Oh God, Klara - mere days after her funeral. He wanted to tear the tubes from the wall, he wanted to find whoever was doing this and cause them pain, but most of all he wanted to be sick.
This joke, if such a thing could be given a name like that, had finally forced him to admit that Klara was gone. For that, he supposed amid his emotional agony, he should be a little grateful.
“She’s dead,” he said woodenly, facing the tubes. He pulled out another slip and began writing the same.
Whoosh-Whump.
KLARA IS NOT DEAD
KLARA ARE … IS … I
Klaus hadn’t even put anything in the tube. But he’d spoken. The Thinking Box can’t hear, can it? Even if the sound carried through the tubes, there were no lateral connections. Every tube went straight up Cutter’s Crag. Nobody in town could have heard him. This was getting to be too much.
Whoosh-Whump.
THEY MURDERED KLARA
TOOK KLARA FROM HER GRAVE
“No! Stop it! You’re lying! She’s dead! She got ill and died from her sickness!”
Whoosh-Whump.
COME TO THE CASTLE
Klaus fled his house. He stumbled wildly into the street. It was night, some time after the witching hour, for the lamp-man had extinguished the streetlamps. Clouds covered the night sky, making it very dark.
Klaus ran aimlessly, taking turns at random, the energy of pent-up mourning and cloistered inactivity ejecting itself through every outlet.
Finally, whether by some cruel twist of fate or by some unconscious desire of the heart, he found himself standing before Klara’s grave.
