Our town doesn’t get many tourists anymore, not since our clockmaker’s crafts were constantly stolen. He makes the finest gadgets anyone has ever seen: automated ice cream vendors, typewriters that take dictation, and of course, self-repairing wristwatches.

Most believe his first invention was our cylindrical railway. The train can curve up and down in addition to left and right, and stops at many landmarks between the center of town and the ranches across the hills. Some think it’s powered by magic or that the clocksmith sold his soul to the devil for knowledge, but the prevailing theory is that he traded his legs.

He gets around just fine in a whirring wheelchair that automatically spins in his desired direction. He loves to explain the details to any who ask, his toothy grin filled with cogs and screws. No one can follow his research, though, so he hasn’t been able to take any apprentices.

Many are worried that, since he’s getting on in years, our town will fall apart when he passes. If he’s not around to fix all the dolls that do the work, or the machines that make our food, what will happen to us?

We’re already running into problems. He can’t keep up with all the clockwork puppets and the townsfolk are getting injured. Once, the wood-fired pizza maker’s temperature sensor broke and it began flinging charred discs hard enough to chip brick walls. Another time the trash collector mistook children for garbage cans. And when the train broke off track, hot shrapnel cleanly severed my own left leg just above the knee.

I woke up with a partial replacement, the clocksmith having received specifications from the marionette we call doctor. I felt his dexterous fingers delicately brush over my fresh scar tissue to connect pieces of my flesh and bone to metallic panels. My eyesight blurred into focus as I watched him hunched over, working on me.

It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t in his wheelchair anymore. His arms were extended towards a rotating tool chest grabbing wrenches, pliers, and soldering irons to bring to where my shin used to be. I soon felt the pressure of a vice grip on my thigh, leverage placed near my foot, and a firm hand on my stomach keeping me in place.

No, wait. His hands were still fetching tools.

I squinted to see the clocksmith’s legs resting on my body – rather, what used to be his legs. Fleshy protrusions rippled along muscled tendrils, each bending in a wave across my wounds. There were dozens of them, maybe even hundreds: fingers of every shape and size, all along his abdomen, flexing to place a gear here or wind a spring there. I shuddered, and soon enough a mechanical nurse placed a mask over my face.

I heard the hiss of gas fill the chamber and quickly began to dream of all the magnificent designs our local genius had created with all of his wonderful hands.