The Clockwork Wife

By Benjamin Parsons

Brett is a genius. A self-taught engineer, he can make any mechanism his heart desires. But his heart most desires the lovely, charming woman who lives next door. How can his cunning win her love? And what lengths will he go to in his determination to secure the perfect wife? Inspired by the Czech folktale of the Golem, this sinister mystery is part of the collection Tales from the Old World.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benjamin Parsons
• Release date: Apr 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215367919

Benjamin Parsons

I am a writer and artist from the Westcountry of England now living in London. I write and illustrate stories about love, hate, ambition, revenge, beauty, and the supernatural.

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The Clockwork Wife

Copyright 2023 Benjamin Parsons. First published in 2016.

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Recently I heard a very sad tale about a young man who died on the eve of his wedding day. He was attacked by a wild animal or possibly some malevolent person who was never traced, no-one knows for sure and died of his injuries that very night. But his demise in itself, though violent and abrupt, was not what struck me as most saddening in the story. The real poignancy was that, even if he had survived, he would never have been married anyway; because it turned out that his betrothed was nothing but a figment of his imagination. Nobody who knew him had ever met the lady, and most doubted that such a person even existed. After his death, no grieving fiancée came forward to declare herself, no forsaken bride was left waiting at an altar or registrar’s desk on his account. No, the wretched fellow apparently invented her, and so perhaps the unfortunate accident that ended his life, though horrible, was in one way a kindness, since it spared him the exposure of his delusion or deceit.

Some say he was mad, and others that he was cunning, intending to play some complicated hoax, the nature of which cannot now be discerned whatever the interpretation, the circumstances of his last days alive are bent to fit it. Brett was nearly thirty years old, and had never referred to any romantic interest in the whole course of his life, until one day he surprised his parents (with whom he still lived, a perpetual student) by announcing that he intended to marry. The slightly bewildered couple congratulated him, but quite understandably asked who the woman was (if it was a woman at all), and how they had met, why he had never mentioned her before, where and when they intended to have the ceremony, and where (with perhaps the most interest) they expected to live as man and wife?

He merely laughed at their astonishment, however, to prolong the intrigue.

‘Believe me, you’ll love her when you meet her,’ he assured them. ‘You won’t be able to help it.’

‘But when will that be?’ his mother pressed.

‘When she’s your daughter-in-law,’ he winked, and that was that.

Brett had always perplexed his poor parents, so in the light of this revelation they could do little more than gape at each other helplessly. He was extremely clever far more than either of them aspired to really cope with and they resigned themselves to await the outcome of this latest whim. But of course, as it transpired, there was no outcome sudden death sealed the mystery forever.

The advocates for the idea of Brett’s insanity argue that this was the last of many idiosyncrasies, which had become increasingly pronounced over time,