MYSTober 2024

31 vignettes based on single-word prompts. One story.

4. Mechanism

"I really think you're going to like what I've constructed, Madame Mayor." Wilson led the Mayor down the metal steps into a bunker below the island. Their footfalls echoed dully off the carved dirt walls as they approached the steel door at the bottom. He turned the large metal wheel to unlock it and pulled it open.

The lab was lined with shelves full of glasses and pitchers of various powders and liquids – remnants from a time long past. They were mostly good for killing time, but not much else. Cleaning the odd thing, perhaps. Far more important were the workbench and tools that had been brought down here for physical experimentation.

He motioned towards a large wooden X with shackles on it, behind a wall of glass. "There it is!" he proudly announced.

The Mayor slowly advanced towards the wall. "What am I looking at?"

"This is how we will contain the monster."

"I'm not sure I understand."

Wilson hurriedly opened the steel door at one end of the enclosure and rushed over to the device. "It has arms and legs like we do, right? The arms go in these slots, and the legs go in these ones, and then it can't go anywhere. We can restrain it for study, figure out exactly what it is."

"I don't care about understanding it, I care about stopping it."

"I assure you, Madeline, once it's in this cage, it's not going anywhere."

"I can see that, and this is all very impressive."

Wilson beamed.

"There's just one problem, though: how do we get it down here? Or does this cage move?"

"That's... the part I haven't figured out yet."

The Mayor rolled her eyes.

"But, I'm close! I swear I'm close! I mean, I think I'm close. I might have an idea."

"The town isn't going to be satisfied by you maybe having an idea. They need a solution. I promised them I'd have one for them, because you told me to trust you. You've skipped to the end without a way to get there."

Wilson sheepishly crept around the frame of the cell's door. "But it is a promising end, yes?"

The Mayor shifted her weight onto one leg. "For what it is, yes, it looks like it could work if we got the monster down here."

"Excellent! I need just a little more time, and then we'll be free."

MYSTober 2024

Table of Contents

4. Mechanism