kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"YeOldeCuriosityShoppe.1"

words

I'd just been out for a late night walk, but I was lost and feeling it. Turning an unfamiliar corner, a thoroughly unfamiliar series of lights caught my eye: a lone storefront, some imitation late Victorian, remodeled, lit with two dozen candles from one end of a large glass window to the other. Two cats were painted around the door in an archaic manner, and a well-kept sign quietly proclaimed itself as "Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe." The shop tugged at me, arousing my curiosity indeed. I tried to walk past it, focusing on finding my way home, but the path veered away--_ten minutes' browsing won't make that much of a difference_, I told myself. As I opened the door, another thought hit me: _I could ask for directions_.

Inside, I stopped short; light danced from object to object, flickering with a chaotic life, eerie yet entrancing. Breaking the spell, I stepped forward, and the door shut itself smoothly behind me. The place was well-automated; I guessed an old widower's eccentricity, and, close enough, an old lady wheeled herself out of some assumed back room.

Her voice creaked, slowly becoming words. "Can I help you?" she asked. "Are you... _interested_ in anything?"

The earlier feeling of curiosity dredged itself further out and I looked around the shop. There were some fairly peculiar... doodads, for lack of a better word. "I'm... just browsing, at the moment, thank you."

"Just let me know if you have any... _questions_." She moved herself into the far corner of the shop and watched me, fiddling with something in her lap. I did my best to ignore her. _Just where did she get all this stuff? It doesn't seem normal. None of it seems ordinary at all..._

Time sped past as I picked up thingamajig after whosiwatsit, turning them round and round, prying levers and poking buttons, trying for the life of me to figure them out. Every time I thought I had begun to detect a pattern, a sense of "this does that" with an object that I was holding, another object caught my eye, and I'd hurry over to it, the previous one forgotten. Every so often, as I jumped from object to object, I'd notice her again, notice her fiddling with some device in her lap, and then my eye would be dragged back to the next item.

Finally, I couldn't rouse the slightest interest in another gewgaw. Had I seen them all? I couldn't make sense of a thing, and I no longer cared. The desire to go home reasserted itself. Sleep. Home.

My mind was numb.

The old woman wheeled herself towards me, still holding whatever in her lap. One thought attempted to jab me conscious, but found stolid disregard: _How was she moving when her hands were in her lap?_ I was too tired to wonder.

"Didn't find anything you needed, dearie?" Her voice sounded the slightest bit stronger. Younger?

"I, er--no. Thank you."

"Thank _you_, dearing. I've enjoyed your visit. Haven't I, wuddums?"

The item in her lap looked up at me; it took seeing its face to realize that it was alive. My face, twisted a horrid rictus grin, wrinkled, wormlike.

I couldn't raise the interest for wonder or fear; it was probably just a puppet, some carving she'd done while watching me.

"I'll--er, well, yeah. Thank you."

"Oh, look, wuddums, he's tired. Well, let's just send him on his way, then, shall we? Take a left out the door, go down three blocks, and then take another left. You should know your way from there." She smiled.

"Thank you, ma'am. That's awfully kind of you." The door opened smoothly for me on the way out, and I tipped my hat to her, wishing her a good evening. A left out the door, down three blocks, then another left: there was no urgency--just a calm and steady march home.