THE JACK-IN-THE-BOX
Tim wrote horror stories.
He was sick to the back teeth with jokey situation comedies on TV ridiculing his craft. Just because he had chosen to be a perpetrator of nastinesses with words, didn’t mean he enjoyed being pointed at and jeered for aspiring to such an unbecoming career. He thought he deserved more respect . . . after all, there were a few individuals who had made a mint in trying to think up the ultimate freight of frights . . .
He believed the general public needed to be scared stiff, their bodies jolted out of their skins and brains eased from their skulls like shellfish, so that, eventually, they might be able to forget the real evil within themselves already.
*
Tim scribbled through what he had written. Too pretentious by half. He needed a story to grab them. A toyshop, back of the last alley, had a curved window full of gaudily painted face-masks, costumes fit for the fanciest dress parties, speechless dummies whose eyes follow those few passers-by trying to ignore them, puppets with tangled strings and contorted limbs . . . and, just visible at the back of the shop, perhaps the largest jack-in-the-box in the world.
He went in, desperately trying to prevent the clapper above the door from jangling out to whomsoever purveyed such wares. He could have sworn that this shop had never existed here before but, tonight of all nights, it was attempting to prove reality had got it wrong.
*
Tim couldn’t get it right. He turned to his wife who was reading in the other corner of the front room. He had once written her into a story, knitting her own brain as it coiled in endless wriggling grey worms from the spindle of her revolving ear.
No help there. She was deep into her book.
*
Back in the shop, a dwarfen shopkeeper shambled from the rear parlour, sporting bottle green overalls and a full set. Tim could discern the mouthpiece of a pipe poking out of the top pocket.
“Yes, can I help you?”
The voice was like Tim would imagine that of a ventriloquist’s dummy to be, if it could possibly have had one.
“I’m interested in the jack-in-the-box.”
Tim pointed to the container, as large as a tea chest, a colourfully striped awning stretched around it. Sticking out of it was a grinning clown’s head. Tim particularly liked the red bulbous nose, complete with nostril hairs.
“It’s not for sale.”
Tim’s immediate reaction was to ask why the devil it was on show if it were not open to offer. However, he decided to be more subtle.
*
His wife had now left the front room. Her leaving had seemed to darken the place. He moved his chair nearer to the fire and continued to write by its flickering light.
*
“Can I test how strong the spring is?”
As Tim spoke, the shopkeeper shuffled closer. Tim could smell his meaty breath.
“No point, sir, it’s not for sale. What good would it do you to know the strength of its spring?”
“Curiosity.”
That answer, Tim felt, was a stroke of genius, this shop being little more than a refugee from Dickensian London.
Without waiting for further dialogue to ensue, Tim approached the box, pushed the head of the clown down (finding it very difficult to do so) and just managed to fasten the lid with a loud click before it had the chance to jump up again into his face.
“What do I do to set it off?”
The shopkeeper pointed to a button hidden at the bottom of the box.
*
“Want some hot milk, Tim?”
His wife had returned, interrupting the flow of the storyline. He cursed inside. He would never be able to get back into it.
“OK, thanks, leave it outside the door when it’s ready.”
She nodded silently.
*
Tim got down to his knees to push the button.
“Wait! He’s not ready. He’ll be changing. You see, it’s an extra special jack-in-the-box, and he always springs back out as something different.”
Tim accepted what the shopkeeper said as a matter of course. After all, in many ways, Tim knew that was what the dwarf was going to say before he said it.
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
“How will I know?”
“He will knock on the inside of the box when he’s ready.”
Ten minutes passed, in which nothing much happened. So why waste words on them?
*
Rapping came on the door to indicate that his drink was waiting. This intrusive knocking of his wife made a mockery of her leaving the hot milk outside the door in the first place.
*
Tim pushed the button. His limbs were aching from crouching on the toyshop floor for so long.
It happened quicker in real time, no doubt. But in Tim’s world, all seemed to be clockworking in slower motion. The lid rose like a lazy monster’s yawn. And out flew, in all directions, the red, raw, under-ripening innards of a creature which had not fully set.
Its skin was no more than that forming on top of hot milk left too long . . . so it could not possibly have even hoped to withstand the thrust of the spinal spring.
“Too early! Too early! It was not the jack-in-the-box knocking at all!” screeched the dwarf as he hopped round the shop, amid the babble of dummies.
*
Tim sighed. He couldn’t write really scarey horror stories for love or money
The fire was out and the house more silent than the tomb.