Monstrous Devices by Damien Love EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author:Damien Love
- Language: English
- Genre:Science Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2.8 MB
- Price: Free
THE GIFT
“THIS ONE IS special,” his grandfather had told him. And it was.
Alex sat at his desk, alone in his bedroom, gazing at the old toy
robot that stood beside his laptop, when he should have been looking
at the screen.
The cursor blinked impatiently at him from his unfinished
composition on the symbolism of the novel they were reading in
English. He had started to write about decaying teeth, then given up.
He didn’t know what decaying teeth were supposed to symbolize,
except maybe decay. He couldn’t stretch that to eight hundred words.
The computer’s clock showed 11:34 p.m. He leaned and pulled
back the curtain. Outside, snow fell from a low and heavy British sky,
gray clouds stained orange by drab suburban streetlights. A thin,
gray-looking fox ran into the small back garden, something white in
its mouth. The animal stopped, dropped whatever it was carrying,
then lifted its head and barked out its harsh and awful cry.
As always, whenever he heard that shriek, Alex felt a chill crawl up
his spine, over his scalp. The loneliest sound in the world.
The fox stood, head cocked. It screeched again. Faintly, Alex heard
another, higher, answering bark. The fox picked up its food and
trotted off. The friendless sound was not so friendless after all.
His computer chimed and his phone vibrated. On each, eight new
messages. From eight different people. All saying the same thing:
YOUR GETTING IT PATHETIC FREAK
He deleted them, looked at his essay, typed some words, deleted
them. He leaned back heavily in his chair.
His eyes settled on the photograph of his father on the wall above
his desk. The only photograph he had ever seen of him. “Never liked
anyone taking his picture,” his mum always said when she looked at
it, in the same sad, apologetic tone.
It showed the two of them, his dad and mum, caught in a redblack party haze. His mum young and happy, with bad hair. His dad
behind, half turned away, blurring in the shadows. A vague, tall man,
black hair pushed back from a high forehead. For the millionth time,
Alex found himself squinting at the picture, trying almost to will it
into focus. For the millionth time, the man refused to become any
clearer.
His gaze returned to the robot. A small, bright army of these
things lined three shelves above his desk, tin and plastic toy robots of
all shapes and sizes, from all corners of the world. Battery-operated
and clockwork, some new, the majority decades old. Many still in
their deliriously illustrated boxes, or standing proudly beside them.
A few he had found himself, in thrift stores and online auctions.
Most, though, the oldest and strangest, the most fantastic, had come
from his grandfather, his father’s father, who had started his
collection, and his fascination.
The old man picked up these toys on his travels around the globe,
and this newest robot—or rather, this oldest, for Alex sensed it was
very old indeed—had just arrived out of the blue a few days earlier:
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