Obituary

Obituary







It was a dark and stormy night.

It was a dark and stormy night. I repeated the words on the page—the words I had typed a hundred times since I first sat down at my desk two weeks again, Jun 1, 1949, to write the great American novel. I worked as the obituary writer for the Twin View City Gazette and shot my mouth off about becoming a famous writer for so long that one of the guys called me on it, then set up an office pool on when or ever I would get it done. So every night after work, I sat at my desk and wrote the first line of my story then stared at the blank page the rest of the night. My name was Percival Harding.

A voice came from outside and I looked through the window to see old man Finnigan in the next yard over, staring back at me. The balding, ex-railroad man probably thought me a Looney-tune with a fedora on my head, white shirt and tie, and slacks I wore to work. But I had heard enough about old Finn to wonder why they had not sent him to the funny farm. It was probably because the city didn’t have one.

Waving to old Finn I drew down the shade halfway on the window then took a break from trying to write. I left the room to the kitchen for coffee and a roll then returned upstairs to the desk and the typewriter on it. Setting myself, the cup of coffee and the roll down, ready to start on the novel again, I only stared at the paper still in the machine. I got the Royal Portable typewriter from the news office, Charlie Foster, who had worked at the newspaper and died of old age—and whose personal effects were never claimed. The editor, Bob Murphy, wanted to throw the machine out, but I took it home instead, and now, some jokester had typed on the same page I had worked on moments before.

You have written the same line over and over. It read. Why don’t you write something different?

Insulted, I got mad. “Very funny,” I said into the room. “If you are so good, maybe you could write something better?”

Silence greeted my sarcasm, but a reply would have surprised me more. I lived alone in the house at 4620 Parkline Road.

Certain someone tried to pull the wool over my eyes; I left the room and searched the house for the clown who had their fun at my expense. The house was empty and the doors and windows were locked.

“I don’t know who you are or how you got in,” I yelled. “But if I catch you, I’ll make you regret you ever came around here.”

When the echoes of my voice faded into the walls, I went back upstairs, sat at the desk and tore the page out of the typewriter. I waded the page up, hurled it into the waste basket, grabbed another piece of paper and loaded it into the machine. I typed, A dark and stormy night.

“What gives?” I cursed when the typewriter went crazy and the keys moved on their own. Frantic, I tried to stop them—anticipated their movement, but in the end, I slammed both hands on the keys and jammed the machine so it stopped.

Thoughts whirled in my head to what could have happened, what I did wrong. With no answers or explanation, happy everything appeared normal again, I looked at the paper in the typewriter. I stared then pulled one hand from the machine, readjusted my glasses and read the page a second time.

Not this again. It read. Why can’t you be…?

“Be what?” I muttered, more intrigued then frightened. Curious to know how the typewriter could have worked by itself, I removed my other hand from the machine. Examining it, I found nothing different about it than the jammed keys, which I freed up to work again. The thing was they didn’t—until I slapped the typewriter with my hand. The machine sprang to life like some seasoned secretary played the keys then stopped.

It read. Why can’t you be original and write something different?

Though bordering on fear, ignoring the thought I had turned into a Looney-tune, I took offense to the question—nothing more than an insult to my abilities and I came back as the tough guy. “Yeah, well if you’re so good, why don’t you show me how to do it?”

Challenging the typewriter, the spirit of Charlie Foster that could have only possessed it, I smiled, smug with satisfaction that the machine sat dormant. Like me, it could not come up with anything better to write. Then the machine came to life and typed. I read as the words flowed across the page.

Malevolence filled the air—cold by a gale-wind from the north. The moon and stars had fled the night, hidden by thick, swelling clouds that suffocated the land with the darkness of a tomb. Rain poured down as God unleashed his fury in a voice of thunder and revealed his presence with bolts of lightning across the sky.

The typewriter stopped. I stared, speechless. It was more than I expected, better than I thought and appeared so easy that anyone could do it. Anyone, but me….

Infuriated, jealous it had done in a minute what I couldn’t do in two weeks, I grabbed the typewriter, picked it up from my desk and threw it into the waste basket. With my heart pounding, I sat down in the chair and buried my head into my hands.

“No, no, no. This couldn’t have happened. Typewriters can’t type by themselves. Get a grip on yourself, Percy. It was just a dream. Yeah,” I laughed. “It was just a dream.”

But the dream surged to reality with the sound of the keys of the typewriter clicking away at the paper. I stood, left the desk to the wastepaper basket, the typewriter wedged upright in its opening.

Watching as the typewriter typed, I finally became like before, curious to know what it wrote.

Percival Harding died June 15, 1949 at 6:45pm, at his home on Parkline Road. He is survived by….

What was the machine doing? It didn’t read as a story, but as an obituary. It was my obituary. I looked at the wall calendar. June 15, 1949. “No.” I turned to the wall clock. 6:44pm. It couldn’t be. It was the typewriter—that possessed machine. I had to stop it.

Lunging at the typewriter, I seized it with both hands and pulled, but wedged in the basket, it would not break free.

“Let go!” I cursed then pulled with all of my might. My fingers slipped free and I saw the clock at 6:45pm as I fell backwards and struck the window. The glass shattered behind me and sent me into the air like a rock. I….



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As a crowd of men, women, and children gathered at the side of the house at 4620 Parkline Road, beneath the shattered, third floor window, to gaze at the broken body on the ground, the sound of a typewriter filled the upstairs room.

It was a dark and stormy night. The air sounded with the clickity-clack of typewriter keys that fired in rapid succession to finish the story for next morning’s paper deadline. Stanley Baker sat at his desk in his work clothes. A brown Fedora sat cockeyed on his head, black rimmed glasses gave definition to his bony face, a white, disheveled button down shirt and brown slacks covered his small frame of a body, and a blue, pin-striped tie added color to an otherwise, non-descript caricature of a man. He worked feverishly like a carpenter ant carrying a leaf ten times its weight across the rain forest floor and projected his will on the typewriter before him.

Suddenly, from outside, a woman screamed in a death voice—and in a flash of light, the shrill cry ended with a crack of thunder that came with as much malevolence as any that could ever be imagined….





1,369 words.