The Clacks | Short Story

I was in my early teens when the typing inside my head started. The sounds of the keys – not the soft, muted depressions of a laptop keyboard, but rather the staccato clunk of typewriter slugs hitting paper – were distinct and immediately identifiable. It goes without saying that I found the sounds strange, worrying even, but I soon learned not to mention it. There’s not even a name for something as weird as that, is there? Hearing the sound of someone typing in your own head?

The typist was unpredictable. The narration – for narration it surely was – seemed to be idiosyncratic in what it chose as subject matter. The writer rarely bothered to record my university experience, banal and predictable as it undoubtedly was. It seemed inordinately interested, on the other hand, on my reading material. It takes a certain level of concentration to read a book whilst another manuscript is being typed inside one’s head – this was a skill which I had to master.

In time I learned to follow the clacks, treating them almost like a Geiger counter for seminal events in my life. One evening I followed the key strokes from the publishing office where I worked, through St. James’ shopping centre to where a man was slumped on a bench clutching his arm. Christmas shoppers strode past, concerned only with making it to the bottom of their shopping lists and getting back home, so it was a good thing I let the keys guide me to someone who became a good friend. Beta blockers and a lack of red meat and booze in his diet have not made Derek poorer company; indeed, we still meet for coffee every week. Brought together by the clacks.

Trusting the clacks brought me to her in the end, of course. The keys had started slowly as I sat at the rear of the X95 bus, as though the typist was unsure of where to start the chapter. As we wove northwards through Stow and Newtongrange and Newbattle the battering of the keys began to wax, the strokes becoming more confident, heavier.

I could barely hear myself think as I got off the bus on the North Bridge, following the clacks down into a winter-blasted Grassmarket and into a café whose windows were running with condensation. Through the crowds and the waiters and the steam and the noise, I saw her sitting alone at a table, her nose buried in a book.

Amidst the bustle it was difficult to separate the keys clacking in my head from the beating of my heart.

Thanks for reading folks. Recent short stories include ‘A Prompting at Greysteer House‘ and ‘Ribbons in the Valley‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.