The strained ticking of a broken clock was the single noise in Oscar Brum’s living room, but was enough to clasp him from his staccato sleep.  His spindly body shook convulsively as a nervous wave shot from feet to torso and sprung him upwards. He immediately made note of his latest night terror: ‘suffocation’. His dreams were becoming progressively violent, all ending with painful, contorted deaths.  They had, for a while, been morbid, but it was a gloom he’d basked in. As the unfortunate butcheries had involved others, he found no reason for concern.  Now that his visions had taken an unwelcome personal turn, he sought a confidant but couldn’t trust his neighbours. They were the epitome of paranoia, walking like maniacal hens, darting their gaze nervously from sky to ground, unable to settle on either.  They would brand him a ‘lunatic’ which, for an up-and-coming comic trying to network a venue to hold a breakthrough routine, was a severe risk. He was being watched and studied; vacant eyes lingered, strained eardrums fought the fog.

However, Oscar reminded himself that he is not a madman but is instead renowned for his good manners and easy company. He hated confrontation unless passively observing and even then, his skinny frame quivered with nerves. These nerves had worsened since he moved to Maladjusted Fields, a town which holds strange and bleak influences. A deep and mournful hum rises from the villagers’ throats; a tortured mist of regret lingers in the rain. Oscar owned a notebook, recording the fragmented and mysterious visions he no longer trusted to memory.  Being resolutely private, he locked the notepad in a briefcase which was itself hidden within an industrial dehumidifier. He avoided leaving the house for fear of having the dehumidifier snatched. But now he had to leave to avoid an appointment with a piano student who he had recently learned had tattooed his face onto her forehead with a penknife. As he had no intention of answering the door, he decided to walk to town. He would distract his fears by spending his day focusing on door knobs. He sought to purchase one to match the wit of his bell which, when pressed, played a recording of one of his own stand-up comedy routines. Oscar had yet to hear it be played.

Before leaving, he glanced at the six wicker hens adorning his highest shelf. Each of them, it struck Oscar, had a curious glint of mischief in the eyes. He treasured the hens and made them the focal point of the room – as they were left to him by the previous owner, he felt duty bound to do so. He thought he saw handwritten notes suddenly appear beneath each hen, but was in a rush and felt that such a vision must have been caused by nerves, so explored no further.

Walking to town, Oscar rhythmically switched his gaze between sky and earth and walked with squat posture, feet angled outwards. The wind held his mouth open in a peculiar grin and the cold gave him no choice but to bury his hands in his armpits as he walked.  On the road opposite, his neighbour waved at him. However, Oscar, still feeling guilty at a recent dream involving him dissecting the man and his family as they lay strapped and paralyzed on a bed of mangetout, averted his gaze shyly. The crispness of the air stuck in his throat, causing his tongue to swell. The air had a particular lightness in this town, piercing the lips and catching the lungs. Oscar saw phantasmal movements in the mid-distance, creating a fog in the gloom. The individuals held wide grins, their lips curling like saucers.  The grins were false, thought Oscar, as the wind again forcefully stretched his lips up and outwards, making their fleshy undersides visible. He witnessed children dressed in dark uniforms playing catch with fillets of cod. Women talked about their dread of flatulence as they stood outside boutiques. Elderly men wore extravagant hats for fear of revealing their true ages. All had the same fixity of expression. The image was familiar, set in his mind, but he moved on.  The townspeople close-up appeared ornamental – defined and diligently woven. But these figures were watching him, eyes tinctured with eerie vacancy. To distract himself, Oscar thought only of his comedy routine.  This immediately brought Oscar a sense of superiority and bravado; he suddenly welcomed stares from any source. He majestically raised his pointed chin upwards, squatted lower to the ground and tucked his grey scarf into the back of his trousers. He then frowned sternly as if contemplating the physics of a self-peeling banana. He now looked the part as a funny man. However, as he moved in this manner towards the town’s local door knob expert, he noticed a short, moustached man on top of a ladder, boarding up the shop’s windows. This man’s relaxed appearance and fluid movements made him a striking contrast to the rigidity of the townspeople. Whilst they all seemed to have woken from dreams of being slapped to death by manic swans, this outsider seemed to have woken from dreams of weaving daisy chains and placing them on the heads of angels, whilst his feet were being gently massaged by wriggling salmon. Although Oscar felt a personal sympathy towards him for this reason, he was concerned by his actions and decided to charm him. He swiftly imitated the gait of the charismatic figures from comedy, squatting lower to the floor and positioning his nose higher towards the sky before interrupting the man’s work.

“Seahorses are slow. I am not a seahorse, but if I was, I would’ve taken all my tests at a restaurant because the customer is always right.”

“I was playing chess with my friend and he said, ‘Let’s make this interesting’. So, we got an oscillating fan.”

“I can’t have seaweed as a houseplant because I’m very proud to say I’ve been dry for six months.”

The hilarity of his jokes surprised even him and he at once felt positive about the response.

However, the man continued his work, boarding up the other windows. Oscar’s good spirit turned to a spasmodic and violent impulse.  He wanted to rip the man’s tongue from its cavity to punish it for not vibrating in delight, break the demon’s jaw, preventing him from ever laughing instead at a lesser comedian.  But Oscar controlled himself. He then channelled his passion towards finding a different doorknob expert. A feeling of vacancy took control of his body, amputating him from his mind as he mechanically frequented shops, numbly picking up items. At first, he compulsively bought door knobs, but his basket soon also became a home for extravagantly framed paintings of geese, expensive blocks of soap that smelled of hibiscus and a single wicker woven hen with the curious, passionate expression of those on his mantelpiece.  As his basket of oddities filled up, the stares he attracted grew increasingly curious. Once again, this drew a strange contentment from Oscar, everyone had become aware that he was a funny man. A small crowd soon congregated around him, speaking so quietly that Oscar could only pick out odd phrases such as “How strange” and “don’t look at him, Matthew!” Being admired, for what must have been an involuntary sight gag, drew an overwhelming giddiness, making him light-headed and hungry. Oscar saw apparitions of rich cuts of beef drowning seductively in thick wine sauce, floury potatoes yielding easily to sharp cutlery and parsnips, bottoms in the air, asking to be bitten. He travelled in this dreamy manner to his favoured restaurant and set about ordering immediately.

However, after waiting in the queue quite patiently for an hour, providing tissues for customers who looked like the type to have runny noses, Oscar became frustrated.  He politely controlled his anger for fear of appearing angsty, but people were ignoring him just as the demonic, humourless worker had.  He managed to delay a nervous twitch for an hour before it manifested in the violent back and forth motion of his neck. Whilst his neck spent the next few moments in this employment, he heard a sound that was part voice, part sigh. The sound came from a man whose face seemed to have been seized by joy. The face itself resembled a belly of pork that had been quickly disguised to look like a face.

“Bit naughty of me to come ‘ere.’”

Oscar tried to ignore him, but the sound continued.

“The Mrs’ll kill me when she sees my bank balance. I’m trying to distract myself from spending money down the dogs, so I’ve been spending it on fillets of beef instead, ha!”

“How about you, what’s your story? I don’t suppose you fancy having a flutter with a stranger after this? I have good odds on- “

The man stopped short for it was at about this point that Oscar noticed the beauty of his eyes. They looked to him like the egg whites of a bee hummingbird, centred by a grain of wheat. Oscar could not contain his excitement. He squatted once more to the ground, then leapt into the man, with the rigid peak of his face impaling an eye. Once the eye was removed, Oscar twisted his torso and leapt at an angle, allowing him to jump a few places in the queue. Meanwhile, the man’s body seemed to embed in the carpet, rooting. The doorman ripped him from the binding fibres and blew streams of air into his mouth. Oscar felt the air rearrange itself around his neck and the bodies tick around him. He felt like he was being nibbled at by tiny invisible mouths and decided to try another restaurant, perhaps an Italian. But the townspeople closed around him like a seam, their expressions studying his face, their sinewy frames effortlessly synchronised. The air’s sickening skin wrapped around him like a shawl and cut Oscar’s lips, before spreading through his body. He felt the blood curdle and solidify from within as a dark cloak descended – his body a mere toy for the hands above.

The strained ticking of a broken clock was the solitary noise in a small living room in Maladjusted Fields. Oscar Brum knew the sound well. It didn’t scare him anymore. Nothing could startle him in his comfortable spot on a quaint mahogany mantelpiece, alongside six playmates. Each had a curious look of mischief in the eyes, though one seemed to carry more wit than the others. Oscar sensed that there was a note beneath each of the others and he felt curious, although he knew he would never read the notes, for he was blind. As consolation, his body would always be admired with his in woven frame glistening like God’s broken fingers, as his dead eyes sequestered words and recycled them into humour. He wished he could write a note of how he came to find such circumstance, but it would be impossible. Perhaps he could charm someone into writing it for him.

Trust in your humour and one will. You must trust in your humour.

– Imran Khan