Like Clockwork by Patrick de Moss

known. They were
just voices then, and bodies holding one another happy and close in the dark.
    “Evie,” he said, and her eyes closed, just
to hear the way she felt him say her name. “What happens to us now?”
    “Shhhh,” she said, and held him close. She
wanted him to stay. That was her prayer, to whoever might be around them,
working through them in the dark, whatever gods and goddesses that were, it was
all she wanted. Please . She thought to them all, if they were listening,
and her eyes were wet, though she didn’t want to know that, then; she just
wanted to stay happy for once.
    Please let him stay. Please, just for
him to stay and stay. With me.
     
    But it didn’t last. It couldn’t. They
didn’t even make it until Sunday.
     
    In the end, it all became just another
story, a stupid story about the stupid things Evie did. Every time she told it,
she felt better. Colder, but better. Harder, but better. More together and
better. She left out the machine part. She would leave out a lot of the
details, actually, because (let’s be honest here) she felt so stupid about all
of it. So foolish, and such a sucker.
    “It was just a movie,” she would tell
people. “It was a stupid fucking movie.” The thing was, she kept telling the story.
She kept going through it, reliving it. The whole ridiculous, stupid thing, how
she had managed to get all wrapped up over this guy in one week. Dumbest
fucking thing ever.
     
    But at the time. At the time, though ....
    It seemed so harmless. It was Saturday
night, and he had never seen a movie with her. So she rented it because, well,
she thought he might like it. It was a fucking kids move, for Christ’s
sake. What harm was it going to do? What kid didn’t like Pinocchio?
    Apparently, Adam. Adam didn’t like it one
bit.
    He sat under her legs, she leaning against
the side of the sofa eating the popcorn he’d made, and she could tell he
didn’t like it. But he watched, and from time to time his eyes clicked to her,
and then clicked back to the screen in front of him.
    She could feel it. She could feel him going
away already. The way his back was so stiff. The way his hand, which at the
start of the movie had been resting, stroking against her thigh (which had been
slowly turning her on and she wondered if she’d be able to make it through to
the credits) had gone still. And the movie didn’t stop. The stupid fucking kids
movie played on and on and on.
    No, they didn’t make it until Sunday. They
didn’t even make it to the end. When Pinocchio and Gepetto washed up on the
shore, saved from the whale, and Pinocchio was wonder of wonders, miraculously was
–
    Adam got up, her feet thrown to the floor.
    “Adam?” she said, but he was walking away,
thudding into the bedroom. He closed the door. There was a crash.
    “Adam!” she yelled, and followed him, and
behind her that Disney fucking music swelled as Pinocchio woke to discover he
was finally and truly –
    “A real boy?” Adam was a tower of furious
whirls and clicks. Her bedstand was on the floor, all the little figurines
broken.
    “Adam! What the fuck?”
    “A real boy?” he said again, and somehow he
had recorded that voice, because it was Pinocchio coming out of him, mocking
her. “A real boy?” it said again.
    “Adam, what the hell? What’s wrong with
you?” Already she was shutting down, closing off, closing up. This was another
threshold crossed, the last – no one broke things or threw things in her
house. Not anymore. That was a rule she’d made looong before she met his ass in the woods.
    Not anymore.
    “It was a fucking movie.”
    “Was it?” Adam said, and stepped towards
her, and she drew back, but she wasn’t going to be frightened. Not by it .
“Was it?”
    “Adam – ”
    “A real boy?” he chanted. “A real boy?”
    “Adam!” she yelled. And the silence that
followed tore them away from one another.
    “You need to leave,” she said. And he was
an it again, and Evie was