Fallon's Wonderful Machine Read Free

hoodie still intact. Whites on the floor next to the hamper
in front of her. Not strewn all over the stairs. Ask anyone and
they'd say she tripped at the bottom. Lost her hamper. Imagined the
whole thing, poor dear. Fainted maybe. You're here right? So
nothing happened. Fallon had to admit these imaginary people, a
jumbled amalgam of everyone she knew, with the voice of her mother,
were convincing.
    She felt that something had happened.
Something was wrong. Of course! She was a ghost. That was it. A
ghost that picked up her laundry with non-translucent hands. Put it
into the machine and added the pouch of washing liquid. Poured some
detergent in the drawer. Of course. Didn't ghosts do laundry all
the time? So she wasn't a ghost.
     
    We've all felt this strange malaise. Waking
up from a dream and sorting the true things from the fake things.
Realising there's no way we could have crashed our mothers' cars or
lost our uncles' dogs. Because neither exist. It fades in time. We
start to feel normal again. Get on with our days.
    As Fallon did.
    Sometimes when she walked through the living
room, she felt like the machine had moved. It was on the antique
table like in her dream. There were plenty of moving parts. A crank
spun a large brass wheel. Throwing a lever and turning the same
crank moved many small gears that in turn spun a smaller wheel.
Everything was perfectly balanced. She would turn and twist and
pull and they would stay where they were. But now, again, it looked
like it had moved. Why wouldn't it have! Darragh fiddled with it
all the time. People who came over did too. And she. No one could
resist. Stuck their fingers into mechanisms. Moved a cog or looked
at cams and cam followers while the big wheel spun. So it was
nothing to worry about! Someone had touched it. It hadn't
moved.
    Enough! Let's not pretend we don't know.
Let's not feign amazement when the machine clicks and whirs in the
night. Let's take the following at face value:
    Click. Whir. The following day the
neighbour's dog stopped barking at Fallon. Wagged its tail
instead.
    Click. Click. Fallon discovered she hadn't
spent as much money as she thought. Was quite well off for the the
month actually.
    Click. Whir. Darragh brought his overnight
bag and spent the night. Unannounced, unplanned.
    Click. Click. There was supposed to be a lot
of grass pollen in the air but Fallon didn't sneeze or sniff. Not
once. Her eyes felt fine.
    Let's not even pretend that Fallon had
assembled the machine correctly. There were too many combination.
Too many parts that fit where other parts also fit. How could an
untrained woman create a machine from parts she knew nothing about?
From the blueprint of a dream?
    That wasn't the point.
    Not with this machine. Could it feel, it
would have felt any configuration was sufficient for it to do its
work. But it could not, so it did not. It just worked.
    Click. Fallon found the perfect spatula at a
used market. Whir. Her roses blossomed early. Admired by her
neighbours who still had only closed buds, and by passers-by, who
had none.

Four
     
    Click.
    That night the machine started early. As
soon as Fallon went to bed. It worked through the night. It was
silent. Its parts well oiled. Well cared for. The phrase 'labour or
love' is invoked too often, to describe the most mundane of things.
When it came to this machine, therefore, the phrase was too weak.
Too watered down. So it won't be used. Let's just watch
instead.
    See the levers slide back and forth. See the
switches go on and off. The wheel turns a full circle. One fifth of
a circle back. A gear moves into position and the wheel continues.
Slower now. Another full circle. Are we to see any meaning here?
Are the clicks and whirs, so soft, somehow symbolic of what the
machine is doing? And why is it working so hard tonight?
    Unanswered questions! But watching it is
kind of beautiful, isn't it? Intriguing, or hypnotic maybe? No.
There's a smile here. However slight and small. It's hiding