Calvin’s Computer
by Gary Clifton
“I knew it!” Calvin sprang to his feet. “This contraption is alive and haunted. But you won’t destroy Calvin Clapsaddle, you pile of misassembled, rejected pinball-machine parts!”
Calvin stumbled backwards, knocking over his chair and smashing his wife Esmarelda’s favorite table lamp. The shattering clamor startled Jaws, his faithful but often timorous white Bichon into a fetal position under the office daybed.
“Arf,” woofed Jaws savagely, tightening his defensive position.
“Holy hairball!” Calvin declared from the linoleum.
It had started innocently enough. Calvin had retired after forty years of driving a Butcher Holler District school bus. Finally, he’d given in to the urging of his grandchildren and the boys at Emma’s Coffee Palace and bought a computer.
“I know you’re lookin’ at me, you hummin’ hunk o’ horse hockey!” Calvin clambered up from the floor, making certain to keep at least two articles of furniture between him and the cursed machine.
The instruction book had been illegible, the key buttons were too small, and the keyboard thingy was fraught with crappy little trap-tricks designed to destroy both Calvin’s sanity and anything he managed to raise on the screen. Sending an email became a blood-pressure busting nightmare. When he tried to summon up porn, he could only raise reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show in Spanish and instructions for a do-it-yourself appendectomy.
Calvin lived nine miles off the paved road. The satellite people came out and installed a trinket they called “line of sight.” That meant the coat hanger they wrapped around his chimney had to visually “see” an apparently very tall antenna several miles away in order to function. After they’d left, Calvin spent an hour on the roof. There was no dad-gummed tall antenna anywhere he could see.
At first, he thought it had to be imagination. The abominable contrivance gurgled and rattled constantly. The first time he called it “junk,” the ominous internal rumblings increased noticeably. He could actually feel the electronic hatred impulses radiating out of that so-called blank screen. There was nothing back there. Or was there?
The dysfunction increased steadily. Calvin slipped down to Wilbur’s Chicken Shack for a quick shot of cholesterol and grease. When he returned, the monster had conjured up strange and impossible to understand images. “HTML” and “This page cannot be displayed,” he instantly saw, were only cleverly coded subliminal urges designed to induce him to throw the whole works out a window. Even worse, the thing might be plotting to eat his brain.
The mental strain was horrendous. “Sorry piece of rat refuse,” he declared and smacked the keyboard thingy. The terrifying result was ten full minutes of threatening growls, burps, and subtle vibration. That was the first time he was certain he heard the contraption softly whisper his name: “Caalllviiin.”
The beast distorted any and all signals. He sent an email to a lady friend, Freida Flack, over in Butcher Holler, then another, then another. No answer was his reward. When he finally mailed her a postcard asking why the happy heaven she hadn’t answered, she wrote back that she’d receive no emails. When he re-sent them, he received a reply from a pervert in some unpronounceable country, requesting a nude photograph of a family pet. And the monster machine continued to utter his name in soft, distant whispers.
Calvin Clapsaddle was by grab not going to be intimidated by no dopy imitation TV. He righted his chair, sat resolutely back in front of the beast, and punched keys. Then, mother of pearl, he saw it: a pair of vampire eyes staring out of the screen directly into his face! Either this infernal contraption had a miniature bug-eyed monster stationed inside or sure as sundown it was controlled by alien spirits. Those whispers were real.
It was then that Calvin shrieked, “It’s alive!”
The outburst frightened Jaws into an advanced mental condition known as “Dog Daze.” Calvin stormed out of the room, found an axe, and fearlessly charged that misfiring electronic misfit. He tripped over a table he had overturned in his initial eruption, fell against the computer desk, and then into darkness. Jaws fainted.
* * *
“Leapin lizards!” The morose sheriff’s deputy studied Calvin’s emaciated body, sprawled in front of the computer. “Reckon he was on the way out back to chop some wood before he fell and brained himself on the edge of that computer? They’s a table overturned there.”
His partner, Daisy, a young lady more of the computer generation, sat at Calvin’s computer. “Lemme see what he was doing here. Maybe might tell us something.” She looked up at her partner. “Computer seems okay, Elrod. Looks to me like the old boy’s heart jes’ gave out. “
“Stuff happens,” Elrod replied philosophically.
Daisy exclaimed, “Looky here at this computer screen, Elrod. With that light coming in the window over there, I can see my eyes reflecting. Sorta like a haint in there lookin’ back out at me.”
“Grr,” Jaws managed from the uncertain safety of his default position under the office daybed.
Copyright © 2019 by Gary Clifton
