FICTION Tanya Jacob
That Longcase Clock at the End of the Hall The day the cat was killed, Maddy watched her mom wind that damn clock with her same little smile, cranking the gold key into its funny little hole, as grandma wandered around the dining table in her see‐through lingerie while her nurse snuck a cigarette on the front step, while her brothers scraped their forks against the table and dripped the last bits of potatoes and corn from their open, awful mouths while that clock sat heavy on the white carpet, at the end of the hall, mom humming along to that terrible ticking all sing‐song. It made Maddy’s teeth clench. Truly, there was no point to these silly, endless family dinners. Always being six o’clock sharp and never over until that clock was wound, thirteen years of her life wasted for this nonsense so far, burnt up in boredom, when all the while she had some very important matters to attend to back in her bedroom. The longcase clock had been left by the previous owner, or maybe the one before that, no one was sure. Cloaked in pine wood and 22
