Difficult Child, Page 2

dresses and the men, button up shirts and knee breeches. All of them looked dreadfully thin, their skin covered in open sores, black blood dripping from their mouthes. They made no move to advance, standing in rank and file, looking out through milky eyes.

  "Alouette, my boy. The world is ending." The hairy man held out his blistered hands. "Don't you want to be with your pappa?"

  Seeing no other means of escape, Jayden tossed the jack-in-the-box to the side causing another chorus of "Alouette" and dove through the opening in the shelves. He came out between two bicycles and jumped to his feet. His loafers squeaked loudly on the floor as he ground to a halt. The way to the front was blocked by a growing crowd of sickly nightstockers, all staring at him with peeked interest.

  Jayden ran the other way toward the back of the store and through the double pivot doors. They swooshed shut behind him and he was surprised at what lay before him. He had seen enough television to know what a stock room should look like. This was a workshop, complete with worktables lined with tiny little parts. As Jayden drew closer, he could see incomplete jack-in-the-boxes strewn across the tables along with blocks of wood, cloth, springs, gears, and metal. In the corner was a little boy's bed, hay peeking out from under the course blanket.

  Jayden found himself suddenly flooded with memories of his pappa. Only, Jayden had never met his father. Jayden was "conceived in sin", as his mother put it. But why then did he now recall his pappa toiling away at these very work benches, Jayden helping him test his newest creations, singing along with clockwork tunes, or the tickle of his pappa's scruffy beard as he kissed him and tucked him in for the night?

  Jayden shook his head vehemently from side to side. These were not his memories. They were memories of some other boy from some other time that somehow made their way into his brain. Or was his grandmother right? Was he really such an old soul? Either way, that sick man out there scared him and Jayden wanted his mother.

  A split plastic curtain hung to one side of the workshop partitioning off another room. Jayden ran through the curtain just as the double doors creaked behind him. Now he was in the stockroom proper, filled the shrinkwrapped pallets of merchandise. He heard someone call out for Alouette behind him and Jayden took off at a sprint. He slammed his way through another set of double doors on the far side of the stockroom and dashed through the sporting goods section.

  "Attention shoppers, the time is now Eleven P.M. and your friendly neighborhood convenience store is closed. Your time is up..."

  Jayden cringed at the sound of the mechanical voice. He was nearly to the front when he saw his mother, the very last shopper in line, rolling her bagged groceries for the door.

  "Mom! Mom! Wait! I don't want anything, just take me home!" Jayden yelped as he slid to a halt beside her, hands on knees, panting from the exurssion.

  She looked at him with a blank expression. "Excuse me?"

  "Mommy, I just want to go home." He tried to grab her arm and she yanked it sharply away.

  "I don't have a son; you mean, selfish child."

  Jayden was so in shock and on the verge of tears that he just stood there watching his mom roll her cart out the door. Movement at the corner of his vision caught his attention and he looked to see one of the women from the crowd of nightstockers make her way to the door and lock it behind his mother.

  "Do not worry, Alouette," Jayden turned numbly to see his pappa walking towards him, hands behind his back. "You are home again."

  The crowd was gathering behind his pappa and Jayden had nowhere else to run. He didn't think he wanted to run anymore. Jayden felt sick. He itched all over and he was sure he was running a fever. He coughed and something thick drizzled down his chin. His pappa pulled the jack-in-the-box from behind and began cranking it slowly in time with his steps.

  "Alouette, gentille alouette. Alouette, je te plumerai."

  Step.

  "Je te plumerai les yeux. Je te plumerai les yeux."

  Step.

  "Et les yeux! Et les yeux! Et le bec! Et le bec!"

  Step.

  "Et la tête! Et la tête! Alouette! Alouette!"

  Step.

  "A-a-a-ah"

  The jack-in-the-box popped open and Jayden's world ended at Eleven-Oh-One P.M. on June Sixth in the Year of our Lord, Sixteen-sixty-six. The last thing Jayden saw was his plague riddled father bending over his small bed in the corner of the toyshop to kiss him one final fairwell.

  An Afterword to the Curious:

  With London still in the throws of the Black Death in 1666 and the science of the age able to offer no reasonable explanation for how the Bubonic Plague was spread, small outbreaks were still cropping up along London's trade routes through Europe, especially concentrated just beyond the English Channel in France. Many of the villagers living through such outbreaks thought surely the world was ending, that on 06/06/1666 Christ would call his faithful home. It is a sad thing to think of those people so sure of their belief, finding no relief in sight. But on that day, like every other day of the Black Death, thousands of the faithful and unfaithful alike were indeed called home. All told, it is estimated that 75 million Europeans died of the Bubonic Plague by the time it finally ran its course.

  Coincidentally, at this time in Europe a new clockwork craze was taking hold among the elite. It was an automaton, so advanced -in fact- that some today have gone so far as to call it a robot. Its name would come to be called jack-in-the-box, based off characters from Punch and Judy. These first clockwork marvels from Switzerland had over twice as many gears as the finest Swiss clock, played the most beautiful music comparable to a full orchestra, and some of the finest examples have been rumored to 'sing' by manipulating intonations to mimic the sound of a voice. In France, it was not "Pop Goes the Weasel" that these mechanical jesters sang, it was a folk song recently brought back by the French-Canadian fur trappers, "Alouette".

  The singable translation of the chorus and verse I have used in this story goes something like this:

  Little skylark, lovely little skylark, Little skylark, I'll pluck your feathers off

  I'll pluck the feathers off your eyes. I'll pluck the feathers off your eyes.

  Off your eyes! Off your eyes!

  Off your beak! Off your beak!

  Off your head! Off your head!

  Little lark! Little lark!

  O-o-o-oh