Maxwell sat with his back against the eastern wall of his living room. In his lap sat pieces of metal and other piecemeal trinkets, scattered and varied, and he attempted to arrange them in a meaningful way. He told himself he was working on something important, but really he was just tinkering. All he did these days was tinker. It kept him pre-occupied, and though his creations amounted to nothing more than monuments to his wasted time, he assured himself they bore more importance than that.
He never quite believed it, but he could hardly fault himself for trying.
Maxwell spoke when no one was around, as it was hard to feel ignored or forgotten that way. He could always hear his voice – his words that, too, bore little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Admittedly, Maxwell held only the most vague of interests in what he had to say. He'd already heard it all before, and knew every word as if it had sprung from his own mind only moments prior.
It wasn't until late into the evening that Maxwell completed his most recent work. It stood four inches from the ground, and held an awkward gaze with two differently colored buttons for eyes. It looked, as near as he could figure it, like a rooster. Only instead of feathers, it was covered in a plumage of silver paperclips. You had to squint in order to see the scotch-tape that held them all together, but even then Maxwell could not have cared less. It wasn't for showing off, any way.
Maxwell sat the rooster on a nearby hutch then backed away and stared at it with great scrutiny, almost expectantly. There, on the hutch, the sculpture sat still as could be. It looked into Maxwell's weary eyes, which themselves were brown and sad. They looked as if they desperately searched for the faintest sign of meaning in everything they saw.
Maxwell slowly melted back onto the floor, his gaze never breaking away from the rooster. He fell asleep in that position.
The next day, Maxwell woke to see the rooster staring down at him. It cocked its head curiously, and blinked several times. Maxwell, for lack of a better idea, mimicked the rooster's behavior. This, of course, caused the small aluminum bird to step in his direction. And so it did, to the very edge of the hutch, looking down at the ground as if to wager with it self whether or not to attempt jumping to the Berber carpet below. The rooster decided against it, and looked up lovingly at Maxwell with its mostly empty eyes.
Maxwell rose to his feet and took the rooster in his hands, coddling it as a mother would her baby. He sat back down in the corner, holding the rooster in his lap. It began to coo, and eventually the cooing formed words.
It told Maxwell everything he wanted to hear; every word of encouragement he felt could make his life seem worthwhile. It told him he was loved, missed and adored. It told him that all of his tinkering was adding up to something monumental. It told him that he was acting rightly, and that he always had, and that people were really drawn to that. Then, finally, it ended the pep talk by embracing his left thumb and index finger.
As the rooster cooed, Maxwell slowly forced his palms together, crushing and bending the little bird until it cooed no longer. He tossed the warped wire carcass across the room, where it landed atop a pile of other broken creations. He knew it was lying to him, and telling him only what he wanted to hear. It was, after all, a mechanical creation capable of performing only what it was designed to. Its words were empty, and they were words Maxwell had never even attempted to say to himself.
If he couldn't even muster the faith to think them himself, what good were the words coming from a rooster made of paperclips, buttons, and tape?
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