“It won’t start.”
“It will start.”
“It won’t start.”
“It will start.”
“It will NOT start and you know it.”
BONG
“Hah! See?”
“A fluke. It will stop now.”
BING
“Told you it’d start.”
DOOOONG
“Pay up.”
The old old woman made a face like a snake that had swallowed a stuffed rat and dug into her purse. “Fudge,” she muttered, and out came a single penny consisting entirely of tarnish.
The old man took it in hands made entirely of gnarls and pocketed it with a snort. “That’s forty years running now,” he said, casting his gaze up the edifice of the church tower with a critical eye. “Forty years. That’s a long time to be wrong.”
“Do be quiet.”
“Forty years of complete failure.”
“Shush!”
“Forty years, at a penny a day, adds up to-”
“Oh fuck off.”
The old old woman glared up at the church as if it had pissed on her shoes, and perhaps in a deeper way it already had. For forty years.
“Midday tomorrow?”
“Oh yes. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“Bell ringer?”
“Yes indeed.”
The secretary looked at the sheet of paper. “Ah. And you’re applying for…”
“Right now. Immediately. Today.”
“Ah. Okay, there’s a few problems here.”
“I can’t possibly imagine what you’re talking about, young man.”
“Well… we don’t need a bell ringer right now.”
“Yes you do, you just don’t know it.”
“And this resume doesn’t list any relevant experience.”
“Preposterous.”
“And it isn’t a resume. It’s a grocery list. From 1953.”
“Flip it over.”
“And we’ve had the bells automated for the last twenty years. There’s no ringer, just a little computer that does the job for us at noon.”
“Oh, stealing my job, eh? Heartless scum, that’s what you are. Heartless, liverless, bloodless scum, sitting there in your chain with your wicked skeleton soul and laughing at a poor old woman starving to death in the streets.”
“My sincere apologies, we’ll notify you when a position becomes available, so on and so forth, have a nice day, bye, going on lunch break now.”
The old old woman sat in her chair, simmering quietly but furiously.
Then she got up and hunted around the desk until she had two or three key-shaped things and went on the prowl.
“I’m just going to the lady’s room,” she muttered to herself. “Can’t stop someone from that, can we? Just got a little turned around, yes, yes indeed, didn’t I. Bah.”
She did bump into one or two people but most of them went away very quickly before she even had the chance to give an excuse. The problem was more finding the right place.
After two hours she got fed up and asked someone where the right place was.
“Oh, just up there.”
It turned out the right place was a little panel on the wall, looking more like a thermostat than anything else. A tiny green screen with squidgy little print on it so fuzzy that nobody could ever read. Why did they make text that small? Ought to be a law.
“This should do it,” said the old old woman. And she hit every button at once.
The resulting sound was indescribable, so instead most people settled for repeating the damages in increasingly incredulous voices. The church itself was mostly a write-off, but the real oomph came from the sonic wave collapsing half the restaurant across the street in the middle of the early lunch rush. The lawsuits were both vigorous and prolific.
By eleven o’clock the next day the toll was still rising. No fatalities, but plenty of juicy injuries and bereavements. Exempted from these were the two chairs used by the old man and the old old woman, which had tipped over backwards but remained otherwise unharmed.
The old man was waiting in his. He smiled in his unpleasant wrinkly manner to see Agnes shuffle up, arm in a sling.
“Broken?” he asked cheerfully.
“Sprained,” she told him. “And it stings something dreadful.”
“I bet! Speaking of, still on for today?”
The old old woman looked upon the church, or where the church had been, or what might have been the most expensive pile of broken rocks she’d ever personally witnessed, and she put all of her venom and hatred into her next words.
“Why, certainly, yes indeed.”
“Wonderful.”
And with those words, noon arrived.
Far away, far away, tiny bells rang. Bing bong bang. Bing dong ding. Dong dong dong dong a ding.
Wait, some of those tiny bells were closer than others, and the old man was pointing now, leering in triumph, his shrivelled finger aimed straight at the little speaker sitting in front of the ruptured remnants of the church’s belfry.
“Brought it in this morning,” he said with relish. “Bad luck to not hear the bells. Wouldn’t that have just been the worst luck? Hah! Ahah! Ahahahah!” He slapped his knee with unnecessary violence and cackled over the sound of crackling cartilage.
The old old woman wished him dead with all the will in the world and he knew this and it made him even jollier.
“Ahhahahaha! What’s with the sour expression, Agnes? Got bats in your belfry? AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHerk”
“I’m sure I have nothing of the sort, you old toad.”
“eh”
“Oh, are you having one of your little moments again?”
“h”
“Well, waste not want not.”
The old old woman gently leaned across the old man’s twitching body – still spasmodically clutching at his arm – and plucked at his wallet. Humming an old and acerbic folk song, she muttered math to herself in place of lyrics.
“Let’s….hmm. Ten years since last…times three-hundred sixty-five… plus one leap year…or was it two? Hmph.”
She replaced the wallet and sat back in her chair, staring at the church’s rubble with grim determination.
“There’s always tomorrow, of course. Always.”