Flash Fiction Friday: Alarums

And again, another prompt from the Monkey. (I wrote one up yesterday on the way home from work, but the end result didn't fit the prompt -- and the character wouldn't have an alarm clock, so is that.)

When the alarm clock shrieks each morning, my first conscious thought is always the same question.

When did I get an alarm clock?

I don't even know anymore. It rings, I stagger out of bed and hunt the corners of the building. No alarm clock. No cell phone. No computer. Just a wide and empty old house I'm renting in which to write a novel. I asked the owner about hauntings, odd noises. Got jokes about wanting to steal material.

But every morning, without fail, the alarm clock rings like the ones in movies with two bells on the top like eyes or ears. I wonder if it is somehow my typewriting typing without me, the sound of the carriage return woven into guilt-dreams. I make coffee, mark another day off on the calendar.

My editor is going to find me soon, to demand to know where the finished story is, and all I can think about is buying an alarm clock. Maybe that would stop it from ringing. Maybe everything would start to make sense, then.

I sit instead and begin to type chapter seven.

The alarm clock rings.