STORY

How to Work as a Bell-Ringer in the Only Clock Tower of a Small Town

by Kenton deAngeli

First of all, you must have an excellent sense of time. You should also buy a watch, because you will be the only way the people of your small town tell time. It is advisable, too, that you learn to sleep in the spaces between the hours and half-hours, because at all other times you will be required to ring the bell.

You are the most important person in the town. Everybody waits on you to know when to get up, when to go to work, when to kiss their children goodnight, and exactly how long bedtime stories should last. It is a lonely existence, so take lots of books and lps. luckily, you've already extensively listed all the things you would take with you should you be stranded on a deserted island. You are now, after a fashion, stranded on a deserted island, except you are surrounded by people and you live very high in the sky.

Your only friend is the scientist at the town's only observatory. You can look at each other from your respective heights, only he can see you much better because he has a high-powered telescope. Be sure to keep your pores small and clean so you won't lose your astronomer friend. Every day at nine A.M. the milkman brings you your food. Sometimes you can ask him to bring other things, like books or toxic waste. However, do not ask him for the second one any more, because it doesn't go with your decor. To have your skin bubbling and flaking off.

You can become very rich, if you like. People can get off work early if you ring the bell sooner. They can sleep in, they can never miss their favorite television shows.

Lovers will bribe you to stretch their moments, to change time for them. Daily you will be swamped with phone calls from young romantics, asking you to give them just a little more time before one of them has to go off to war, or to make return trains arrive faster, or to make the stars of the night sky linger. They will always have very compelling reasons. You will need to decide if you will sacrifice punctuality and the sacred schedule of the cosmos for these reasons. Do not become drunk on your own power. Instead, drink the vodka that the milkman smuggled up for you.

Someday, you will be asked to delay the end of the world.

What the fuck, do it.