The Machine
by Thomas J. MisuracaMy father used to peek into my room every night to make sure I was asleep. He never said a word; he just quietly watched my breathing. I would hear my door open and then close as he slipped back into the dimly-lit hallway.
One night, I heard a door creak open, but it wasn’t mine; it was the basement door, and there were sounds of crashing. I ran from my bedroom to the safety of my parents, only to find my father wrapped in his familiar checkered bathrobe and standing at the top of the stairs that led to the basement. Many times I had pulled open that door and looked into the black hole below - too frightened to go any further. He was throwing all sorts of things down those stairs: plates, silverware, tools, old furniture. I watched as various items were tossed into the darkness. My mother hid behind her bedroom door, watching my father through a crack. As our eyes met, she closed the door completely. From behind it, I heard her consoling my baby sister.
"What're you doing?" I asked my father.
He stared at me, his eyes glowing like mine did at Christmas. "I've got an inspiration. Have you ever had an inspiration, Billy?"
"No."
"Oh." He sounded disappointed. "Inspiration is a glorious thing. It's like there's a spark at the soles of your feet and it shoots a lightning bolt right up to your brain, filling your body with electricity all the while."
"Oh," I said. Inspiration sounded painful.
"I have an idea, Billy. An idea that's going to change our lives forever. Just you wait and see."
He was right about that. From that day on, my father spent all his free time in the basement. Every time we saw him he looked a little different. His straight, short hair grew longer and curlier. His smooth face roughened with a mixture of dark and silver whiskers. He worked in his pajamas, which quickly turned from light blue to a soiled black.
I was forbidden to go down into the basement - not that I ever wanted to. From the sounds of banging wood and clanging metal, I feared what contraption was being created below us.
My mother didn’t seem to notice the change in the beginning. She took care of my baby sister, often rocking her on the big rocking chair in the living room. She went through her daily routine as if oblivious to my father’s absence.
Occasionally my father would run upstairs, crazily searching for something.
"I need all the safety pins you can dig up," he told my mother one morning, about two weeks into his inspiration. Obediently, my mother looked through her sewing kit and under the bathroom sink.
Sometimes he'd have difficulty explaining what he needed: "Those things, you know, we used to have hundreds of them, but we gave most of them to your cousin Ethel."
My mother just shook her head, not stirring from her rocking chair.
Eventually my father stopped going to work. I heard my mother lie and tell them he had the flu. She told me not to tell the neighbors what Daddy was doing. I wanted to ask her exactly what he was doing, but feared the answer.
The neighbors knew something was going on. We lived in a small suburban city; all the houses looked exactly the same and were close together. They heard the noises coming from our basement late at night.
One of the nosy old ladies in the neighborhood asked me: “Are you building an addition to your house? You know it’s illegal. Goes against the building code. Make sure your mommy and daddy know that.”
I just nodded and ran away.
Every day I came home from school and started right in on my homework. Before he’d begun his project, my father would check in on me when he got home from work. Now he left me alone - until one day he startled me by bursting through my door. He looked like one of those heroine junkies I’d seen on television. His eyes were wild and circled in black from an obvious lack of sleep. His hair was out of control. His blackened pajamas hung loosely upon his thinned figure.
"Socks!" he shouted. "I need socks."
I went to my dresser and pulled out all my socks and handed them to him.
"Is that all?"
I nodded.
He pointed to my feet. "Give me those."
Obediently, I removed my shoes, then peeled off my socks and gave them to him. He ran out of my room and back into the basement.
At night I lay awake wishing my father would check on me. Instead, I was serenaded with strange sounds from the basement: clanging, drilling, hammering, even the howling of wind. Once it sounded like a wet towel hit a wall and slid down slowly.
Morning, noon and night there was hammering, shuffling, and cursing - until one Sunday morning, when all the noises stopped. But my father didn't come out of the basement. My mother waited in her rocking chair, holding my sister, both of them crying. As night fell, she rose from her chair, put my sister in her room, and began preparing dinner.
I sat at the kitchen table, watching my mother pour soup into her favorite china. She didn't normally use this set for a regular meal, but my father had taken all the other dishes. As always, she kept a space for him, and after she served us, she sat in her chair. But instead of eating, she just stared at my father's steaming bowl.
"His soup is going to get cold," she said. "Billy, will you go down and fetch your father?"
I looked at my mother in horror. Did she know what she was asking of me?
“Do as you’re told,” she said.
I made my way reluctantly to the door that led to the basement. I placed my hand on its cold knob and pulled; it opened with a long creak. I leaned over the edge of the stairs to reach the light switch. I flipped it up. Nothing happened.
I turned back to beg my mother to save me. She nodded, a signal that this was the right thing to do. With that, I descended into the darkness of the basement.
My right hand clutched the rail as I walked down the steps, searching each step out with my foot before putting my weight on it. The closer I got to the bottom, the brighter the light creeping around the corner became. A humming sound vibrated in the air.
“Dad?” I whispered in the last moment before my foot touched the basement floor. There was no reply.
The ground felt uneven, but it was too dark for me to see what I was walking on. I cautiously turned the corner.
I came face to face with the machine. It was three times as tall as I was and as wide and deep as a station wagon. Pipes, metal, wood and wire all twisted deep into the machine. From the top and sides sprung gages, faucets, levers and other bizarre objects like coat hangers and plastic tubes, as if by the end of its creation, it was just vomiting up its parts.
“Dad?” I called again.
The only reply was the soft humming from within the machine. I couldn’t even begin to guess what it was supposed to do. It looked either very complicated, or a complete mess.
Something began to tick.
The machine vibrated slightly, then lurched forward. I jumped back for fear that it was attacking me, but it remained still, occasionally shaking and letting off little hisses of steam.
I circled the machine. I hardly knew where to look. Oil poured out of one tube, green paint out of another. There was a counter on it that rolled backwards. I think I spotted a patch of fur. And was that a tiny clock?
This machine seemed to have everything - everything except my father.
"Dad?" I called again, fearing that if I didn’t hear a reply soon, I was going to cry. But there was only the machine, looming in the center of the basement. It began emitting clicks and chirps and whistles - and there was something else within those noises. A voice. My father's voice.
It came from deep within the machine, so deep that I couldn't understand what he was saying. I searched around my father's workbench frantically. It was covered with objects that never made it into the machine: dolls' heads, golf balls, egg cartons, coffee beans, nine-volt batteries, even my old socks. His tools were scattered over the table and floor, and I scanned his screwdrivers, drills and hammers until I found what I was looking for: a crowbar.
Throwing it over my shoulder like a baseball bat, I swung angrily at the machine. The metal struck its motors and gears, causing nuts and bolts to fly everywhere. With the hook end of my tool, I pulled off the metal sheets, the rods and pipes, and everything that I tore off the machine was tossed into a pile behind me.
I dug a path deeper into the machine, as though I were shoveling the sidewalk. I smashed and pulled with all my strength, my hands covered in dirt, sweat and blood. I ripped open a container within the machine and ink, oil and other liquids poured over me. But I kept on, motivated by my father's calls.
My arm burned as I pounded the monster into nothingness. I remembered reading about John Henry in school, and felt like him as I let my crowbar ring until there was nothing left. Then I stood alone in the middle of a pile of junk that was once my father’s machine.
My father was nowhere to be found. He was gone.
And for the first time, I had an inspiration.
©Thomas J. Misuraca
Tom Misuraca is the author of over sixty published short stories and one young adult novel. He was recently interviewed by the editors of Midnight Times and will be profiled on their website this summmer. For more of his stories, check out his website.