Milo James Fowler

And to the clockwork man was given a heart of flesh agreeable to the gears within him, to pump his oil like blood through a wrought iron body; and over his heart was mounted a glass door hinged with brass and padlocked shut, so that all in the town could see he bore an organ much like their own.

Dr. Horstmann saw what he had made, and he pronounced it good, tucking the lock's key into a front pocket of his waistcoat. It would take only a single bullet to shatter the glass and puncture the clockwork man's heart, leaving him rigid as a statue. But the good doctor considered it worth the risk, to allay the fears of superstitious townsfolk. His creation was no monster; it was vulnerable, as anyone could plainly see. And it served a purpose, taking the place of a beloved blacksmith who had passed away that winter: Dr. Horstmann's only son.

Then arose Asaph, itinerant man of the special cloth, who rode across the barren wastes into town and saw an abomination which the townsfolk had considered a thing of dread curiosity. Asaph's will was a thing of steel; no one questioned him. He commanded good Dr. Horstmann's ankles and wrists be tied with stout lengths of rope to four different horses in the town square.

“This is what we make of your devilry!” Asaph cried, and he fired off his Colt revolver, two explosions in quick succession.

The horses bolted wide-eyed. The townsfolk screamed as Dr. Horstmann's arms and legs tore loose of his torso, trailing behind the animals' hooves in a screen of dust. All could see what was left of the doctor, bloody and wrong, as he thumped across the ground and rolled over in the dirt. Yet death did not come to him quickly.

Standing in the shadows of the smithy shop, the clockwork man watched through eyes like marbles. They carried swirls of blue, contrasting with the black iron of his face and the limbs that protruded from frayed denim overalls.

“You thought you could play GOD? Replace a man with a machine?” Asaph's boot heel rolled the doctor onto his back. Chest convulsing, Dr. Horstmann gazed upward, meeting the eyes of his judge and jury.

The blistered townsfolk crowded around the spectacle like thirsty horses to water. The man of the special cloth held up a hand, and they froze in place.

“Listen now,” Asaph said. “The instrument of Satan speaks.”

Dr. Horstmann's head jerked forward, and he spat a mouthful of blood onto his waistcoat. “Don't fear—my child,” he gasped. Then his head fell back into the dust, and his mutilated torso lay still.

“What's that he said?” murmured the crowd.

The man of the special cloth had heard, though he knew not what the good doctor meant. The clockwork man had also heard, and he understood the meaning of the words, for he knew the origin of the pulsating organ within him.

“Now for the creature!” shouted Asaph, spinning on his heel with the Colt raised. He stood head and shoulders above the townsfolk who pressed close around him, and when he came halfway through a complete revolution, his eyes caught sight of the clockwork man lingering in shadow.

The townsfolk turned to follow Asaph's gaze, and they released strangles of horror as the machine emerged carrying a massive hammer in his iron fist, his joints clanking against one another, sunlight glinting on the glass door that contained his thumping heart of flesh.

Dr. Horstmann had not gifted the creature with speech, but even if he had, the clockwork man would not have known what to say, seeing his creator lying in such disarray.

“Do you see?” the man of the special cloth called out, and the townsfolk nodded as if they knew what he meant. “It knows it should die.” He cocked back the hammer of his revolver and took aim at the quivering organ behind glass. “As should every abomination.”

He fired. The townsfolk cringed at the blast of the .45, and some of them let their astonishment be known as the clockwork man brought up an arm to deflect the round. It glanced off him like granite. He did not slow his approach.

Asaph eyed the blacksmith's hammer in that iron fist and pulled the trigger again, twice, shots as close together as before. When the clockwork man deflected them as well, the townsfolk scrambled to turn tail and scatter. Only the man of the special cloth remained rooted—either by fear or determination—with one last bullet in the cylinder of his Peacemaker.

“Come meet your doom, golem!”

He did not fire, not until the clockwork man had come within three yards and dropped the hammer into the dirt, reaching with his right arm of iron for the shoulder of his left.

That was when Asaph emptied his gun of the last shot, shattering the glass door and puncturing the heart of flesh inside. Oil splattered outward, and the clockwork man's gears shuddered to a halt. He froze like any clock that could no longer run.

There he stood. Transfixed in time. The gap clear to see where he had torn his left arm free. The blue marble eyes focused not on the man who had shot him, but on the good doctor lying forgotten in the dust without arms of his own. His creator. His father.

The man of the special cloth stared as if he himself had been turned to rusted iron.

 

O is for Offspring