Significant Objects X Litquake: No. 4 of 5.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Katie Williams, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $17.12. Proceeds of this auction have been donated to Root Division, host of the first-ever Significant Objects live event, in connection with Litquake in San Francisco.]

During our break between lessons, the girls gather round and ask what I did to deserve it.

“’Deserve’?” I repeat. “What does ‘deserve’ have to do with it?”

They blink at me, their eyelids making chiming noises with each lower and lift.  Their mouths pucker into ohs so perfectly round that I have the impulse to stick something in them—a tarnished coin, the end of a bendy straw, or the tip of my finger.

Then, Thecla steps forward with a firm smile. She is so good. The bubbles blown by all the children in all the yards float up here and drift around her head, a crown of soap and breath. That’s how good Thecla is.

“But you must have done something,” Thecla says. “And only weeks away from your fourth year — from your time in the kiln.”

The others all nod, loosing identical puffs of cinnamon from their curls.

“No.” I shake my head, and it is not cinnamon, but sand that whips from my hair, spraying my classmates who flinch and rub their eyes. “I didn’t do anything. I’m pretty sure.”

The girls exchange puzzled looks. For some, the strength of their confusion is so great that they flutter a few inches up off the ground, until, realizing how rude this is to do in front of me, they sink back down, shamefaced.

“Maybe you talked back,” Esme suggests.

“I didn’t,” I say.

“Well then, you slept in?”

“Didn’t write in cursive?”

“Ate two desserts?”

“Told someone about your nightmares?”

I shake my head emphatically, making more and more sand, a dust devil that whips around us in a lopsided circle.

“I don’t understand,” Thecla says. “When you behave, you’re rewarded. And when you’re bad, you’re punished. Everyone knows that.”

I shrug. I don’t know that.

My classmates reach back and grasp their own wings, pulling them forward to wrap around their bodies like cloaks or to fondle like hanks of long hair. They are frustrated with me. Lessons will start again any moment now.

“I know!” Josephine shouts, and the canaries that nest in her dress pockets poke their heads out and chirrup a tinny song of triumph. “Maybe you didn’t do something bad, so much as think something bad!”

“I bet you’re right, Jo,” Thecla announces, and the canaries re-launch their tune. “You must have thought something very bad to deserve this,” she says to me with little tsks at the backs of her words. “Probably about one of us.”

Esme tilts her head. “It wasn’t about me, was it?”

“A shame,” Thecla murmurs. “Customers will think you’re broken now. You’ll be left on the sale shelf for sure. At least you’ve learned your lesson about thinking bad thoughts.”

“But….” I say, looking from one of them to the next. “How do I know if a thought is a bad thought?”

“See! That sounds like a bad thought right there!” Thecla says. “I knew there was a reason for this.”

The teacher calls, and, relieved, the girls hurry back to class, Thecla’s bubbles gleaming smartly.

I linger and pat a hand over my back. My fingers stroke the sleek and waxy feathers of my right wing, but then fumble at the left—a jagged, tufted stub. I ask myself the question that I’d hoped one of them might ask me: Did it hurt when he’d snapped it off? It’d made a loud noise, that’s for sure. But I wouldn’t say hurt. No, I’d say it felt more strange than painful, like something was being lifted away, something I’d only thought I’d needed.

———

COME TO OUR EVENT: October 9th, from 6-7 p.m.: An Evening of Remarkable Stories about Unremarkable Things featuring Rob Baedeker, Chris Colin, Miranda Mellis, Beth Lisick, and Katie Wiliams. PLUS: the first-ever Object Slam. Map to Venue. Confirm your attendance on Facebook!

Object No. 1 of 5: Epistolary Week

[The auction for his Significant Object, with story by Irina Reyn, has ended. Original price: $0 (found/donated object). Final price: $30. This is part of a series of five epistolary stories guest-curated by Ben Greenman. Proceeds from this auction will go to One Story.]

To: You

From: Saskia (the Monkey)

Subject: Help Visitor From Future – Earn Riches in Afterlife

My Dear Human:

Under normal circumstances, I would never be asking you for money. We monkeys consider this an act of coarseness, a vile human quality. But extreme circumstances have forced my hand, and now I must appeal to whatever spirit of charity nestles in your so-called soul.

I’m not sure how much you know about time travel. I will assume next to nothing and not confuse you with time dilation and the twin paradox. In any case, during routine maintenance of the temporal deflector console, I found myself transported from the future and landing in a place you call New York City. You may wonder what the future holds for humanity. The short explanation is: you will all be dead. A peaceful, civilized society is ruled by monkeys. If it’s any solace, please know that evolution has done its proper work.

Finding oneself trapped in the past is inconvenient, not to mention prohibitively expensive. I had read about your attachment to currency, but it is far more deep-seated than anything our historians have imagined. Even your Ritz Hotel, fabled for its hospitality, refused to provide a few weeks’ respite for a guest lacking a valid credit card. Outrageous. In our society, we would be lining your bed with the finest Frette sheets, greeting you with the most lavish of spreads, (well not you; if we discovered an actual living human, we would probably execute you).

I’ve done a modest inventory of the items needed to repair the time machine and blow this Casa de Morons:

Two weeks at the Ritz (Royal suite): $30,000

Transport (BMW or comparable automobile): $80,000

Tools and sundries: $1,450

Quantum mechanic: app. $250/hour

Cocktails: $3,000/week

In the past days, I’ve reached out to a dozen aid organizations (human only, they insist), to no avail. Is your race as ignoble as we’ve always assumed? Thankfully, you have the power to change humanity’s legacy. I could return to my community and say, “You know what, guys? That Mr. So-and-so (you) is not like the other inferior life forms. Let us inscribe his name in the Who’s Who Scroll of Humans or at least name a drink in his honor.”

Checks or money orders are equally accepted at PO Box 222, Soho Station, NY, NY. If you would like to directly deposit money through PayPal, please find the link below. I think $5,000 would be a reasonable, if modest sum.
Let this holy monkey in my image be a token of friendship. When you wind it, know that somewhere in the far future, I will be raising a (Your Name Here) blood orange mojito. I promise you this: you will not be forgotten.

Gratefully,

Saskia

The winning bidder will receive this story, from author Irina Reyn.

No. 44 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Trinie Dalton, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $9.50. This is part four of a five-story teamup with the literary magazine The Believer. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]

It dumped snowed one evening, so I got out my velvet swatch, antler-handled magnifying glass, and ice crystal identification guide to take to the riverbank at sunset. This was obviously the most glamorous diamond dust flurry of the season, here in my mountain town. It felt even more like a magical grand finale because I had, warm against my chest beneath my puffy coat, a beaded medicine bag filled with my crystal collection. I’ve been collecting crystal points for years — Herkimers from New York, double-terminated selenites from Arizona, amethysts from Texas, pre-obsidian Apaches tears from California, smoky quartz from Arkansas — and had meditated on capturing, in solid form, the elusive snowflake.

Every snow-lover’s dream is to freeze ice crystals in time. While photography is okay and sketching snowflakes is underwhelming, I strove for the impossible: to preserve the individually frozen stars as glassine crystals alongside their quartz brethren. Capturing them on velvet is only step one. As the white, fluffy storm came, I stood on the frigid riverbank, watching an egret hunt trout while perfectly shaped snowflakes mounted and perched on the maroon velvet’s soft, toothy surface. I hunched over and spied a few cloud-borne flowers through my magnifier, the bird flew off, and my stomach growled. My big plan, to spray the crystals with Freon until they transformed into glass slivers, failed miserably when I got too cold and went in to heat up an old, crumby bagel. Anyway, I had no Freon.

Darkness fell upon our backyard stream, and my stale bagel dinner didn’t cheer me up either. The butter I had to moisten the bread with was misshapen and garlic-infested because it surfed like a fatty goldfish, in its dirty little wax wrapper, throughout the fridge. The butter looked pathetic like a once mighty mountain mined and dredged for gold. The velvet spent the night outside.

Morning sun melted the snow bank blocking my front door, so I could get outside to gather the abandoned props. Down by the river, in my rubber boots and down apparel, I located the velvet and noticed a star-decorated object resting on it as if ready for an antique magazine photo shoot. Picking it up with gloves in case this was an ice sculpture that would meld painfully with my fingertips, I was pleased to discover that although this object resembled a dish from the days when people ate fancy dinners off chiseled Lalique crystalware, this was the real cold deal. The photo you see before you displays the first and last ice crystal-forged object. I kept it in my freezer all winter, accommodated with a brand new butter stick. I ate many fresh-flavored bagels thanks to it. However, for Spring, I feel obligated to share this wondrous work of nature with you. Snowflakes decorate it like petroglyphs. Buy it before it melts.

Object No. 43 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Miranda Mellis, has ended. Original price: $2.99. Final price: $22.50. This is part three of a five-story teamup with the literary magazine The Believer. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]

Once you went on a school field trip and were shown the constellations in the false night of a planetarium. You looked hard trying to see… something more meaningful than the connect-the-dot resemblances to hybrid animals that had so captivated the ancestors. Finally, space was more interesting as an idea. Space suggested alternate worlds, different ways of life even. Perhaps there were aliens not ruled by the rhythms of school and production, living in the hooky state of mind, an abdication practiced by children and teenagers in search of the meaning, or the meaninglessness of time. Being on a field trip was not exactly hooky, but it had the expansive flavor of freedom. The class met only to disperse in a herd, loose enough to move across the city, tight enough for collective purpose.

The tour of the stars at an end, you filed back outside with the others into the blinding afternoon light to eat lunch in a courtyard with gnarled, leafless trees and a penny-filled fountain. Your friend Cassandra ate next to you across from her mother who stood casually but watchfully by. Cassandra’s straightened hair was coiffed in the usual respect-arousing topknot. A flame-shaped bang swooped across her forehead tapering down by her temple. At times Cassandra’s mother and father tried to convert you to the ways of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but you were a committed atheist. Once you told them that your mother was a communist, they let you be. Cassandra didn’t mind at all that you did not share the same cosmology. You never tried to convince her that God was a made-up parent figure for adults, and she had no interest in converting you. Moving closer to her, you opened your lunch box and then closed it immediately before she could see the contents.

Although you understood by now that bad desires were implanted in you by advertisements — messengers all bearing the same message — and that your desire for a tiny pencil-hugging koala bear and a miniature license plate with your name on it let alone a television, were forms of false consciousness, you were still full of normative desire. Yet you had developed a broad appreciation for objects not marketed to you. Comrades gave you carpentry tools and unusual rocks on your birthday, and you were not ungrateful. You knew that history was written by the victors, that reality was mutable. But was it too much to expect real food in your lunch box? Why the plastic sandwich, the rubber carrot and the brass apple on this happiest of days, when everyone had permission to leave school for more stimulating environments? Nothing in your experience had prepared you for this blind-siding prank on the part of those you were now considering running away from, when you realized that you had mistakenly picked up the toddler’s toy pail by the door in your fervor to make the bus. Relieved of anger and blame, you were more than content to be simply hungry.

Object No. 42 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Justin Taylor, has ended. Original price: $1.49. Final price: $81. This is part two of a five-story teamup with the literary magazine The Believer. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]

So I bought the metal flowers as a present for Felice, not for any particular reason or occasion — the lack of occasion being itself the point. There were two of them, each with a base of about a square inch and two distinct blossoms. The petals on one of them — the one which, unaccountably, I kept thinking of as the right-hand one — had their tips painted green. Anyway, I ended up not even having the chance to show them to her (obviously, given what happened) and so there I was at the far end of a subway car, sulking and digging around in my bag for my headphones so I could drown out the woman at the other end of the car who was singing, presumably for donations, though she wasn’t standing in the aisle, but sitting down, so maybe she was just a passenger — and nuts. The song had no chorus, refrain, or even verses, really; it was more like she was just singing the thoughts off the top of her head. And all she ever thought about, apparently, was how good God was to the wretched of the earth. “And the glory,” she sang. “And the glory and the glory and the — oh yes, it sure is.” She drew a breath and held it for a beat, then unleashed: “Glory yes, Lord, oh you know it —” and so it went. I finally found the headphones but the cord was tangled up in the flowers (well, just the one of them, the unpainted or “left-hand” one). The cord, white and wrapped around the flowers-stem like a vine, looked like some dangerous invasive species. I set to work disengaging the flowers from the cord, and as I achieved this feat the train happened to pass out of the ground and up onto elevated tracks, washing the whole car in briefly blinding light. Surprised, I let go of the flowers, which, free of the cord now, fell to the car-floor but did not slide away. They landed upright on their little base and, ridiculously, held their position. Metal flowers growing out of the ground of a subway car floor. It made sense. I plucked my flowers back up and inspected them. Then I was on my feet. What exactly was I doing? I had no idea. I re-bagged my headphones, got the other set of flowers out, shouldered the bag itself, and walked down the length of the car and stood before the singer. I handed the unpainted flowers to her, a gesture I hoped meant great show, kudos, cheers. She took them from me as if they were utterly expected, and perhaps they were. She stood up and I had to step back, fast, to get out of her way. She put the big blossom up close to her lips, and, taking the flowers for a microphone, began her encore. I stood beside her and we sang.

No. 22 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Stephen O'Connor, has ended. Original price: free. Final price: $24.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now.]

Nobody could remember back before everything was Astroland, but some people pretended. Hop-a-Long was one—so-called because of his gigantic tinsel-furred ears, his rabbit-eye-red eyes, but not because he hopped. He didn’t hop. He rocked from foot to foot as he walked, like a chair coming down the hall by itself. “Back then everything was real,” he said. “It was boring. Fishtails weren’t worked by levers and springs. A world without a sense of humor.” Hop-a-Long the stinky. Hop-a-Long with the bubble-gum-wad nose. With the almost-topple-every-step walk.

“Blat!” said Flippy-Foot.

“How?” said Injun Joe.

“I don’t know,” said Hop-a-Long. “It was brainless existence. People had to make excuses to live.”

It was sunshiny as usual in Astroland. It was a world of dazzlement and the frozen laugh, and of gigantic eyes with the pupils all the way to the right. A worm of gleam rested on every edge. And, you know that purple fog that sometimes coats shiny red things in the bright, bright, bright? It was that too.

“Life then was just who-cares forever. You looked out on all that stuff all mixed up with all this other stuff and you said, What’s the point? Who’s making any money here?”

In Astroland even the clouds were mechanical: electric motors and whirring cogs on the inside, cotton on the outside, and tiny, tiny propellers. Tuesdays and Thursdays were cloud-washing days, so then it was all sun, sun, sun. The purpose of the clouds was to create sunbeams. Just as the purpose of the sunbeams was to create worms of gleam. Just as dazzlement was the purpose of the worms of gleam. And dazzlement was a variety of fun. There was never any rain. Well, there was rain, but it was confetti. Everything had a purpose.

Flippy-Foot opened his mouth and out came squiggle lightning. Flippy-Foot had painted-on scales: dark green on his back and sides, yellow-green on his belly. He had red plastic eyes that the squiggle lightning flashed inside.

Hop-a-Long tapped him on the head with a fingernail: click.

“How?” said Injun Joe.

“Love,” said Hop-a-Long. “Back before Astroland everything was love. The world was wasted by it. Do you know what love is? Love is a beard pretending to be cotton candy. You break-up everything and say it’s new-improved, better-than-ever—that’s what love is. It’s me down in the sewer hole dreaming about all the razzle-dazzle on the outside, but really there’s just this steamroller waiting up there to squash me flat. Crunch! Ka-RACK! Pow! Shardtown to the horizon!”

“Blat!” said Flippy-Foot.

Object No. 7 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Lance Gould, has ended Original price: $1.50. Final price: $14.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to Girls Write Now. ]

Carpenter usually took a bathroom break at 11:15. Today, the skinny bastard was still going through e-mail at 11:47. He hadn’t gotten out of his chair since he first parked himself in it at 9:03.

“God DAMN it — what the hell is he doing?” Kohler muttered into the phone.

“His insides must be bursting,” Goldberg replied.

Carpenter rose and stretched. He took three somnolent steps toward the restrooms. Kohler and Goldberg exchanged arched eyebrows, and signaled to Velasquez, who had also been eyeing the suspender-wearing pigeon. Then Carpenter’s phone rang. The middle manager ambled back to his desk, answered it, smiled, and settled in for what seemed like it could be a lengthy exchange.

“JESUS,” yelled Velasquez, so loudly that all business in the office briefly came to an abrupt halt. Goldberg rebuked him with a murderous stare, and Velasquez shrunk back behind his laminated steel desk. Kohler picked up the phone and called Goldberg. “Maybe I could be a piano page turner or somethin’.”

“What’s that?”

“A piano page turner. You know, a dude who all they do is turn the page at a recital or whatever.”

“But you don’t know jack all about classical music.”

“I know how to turn a page.”

“There’s so much more to — ah, forget it.”

Carpenter stood up, stretched again, and this time nearly sprinted to the restroom. Velasquez, too obviously, raced toward Carpenter’s desk. Kohler winced, but he and Goldberg also hurried over to Carpenter’s corner cubicle.

Velasquez got there first. The red-metal gumball machine with shatterproof polycarbonate globe was filled with peanut M&Ms. Velasquez spun the handle furiously — five, six, seven times, gluttonously filling his palms with the colored candy. The accountant’s sweaty hands started bleeding red, yellow, and green.

“That’s enough, Alejandro,” scolded Kohler. “What’s your problem, dude?” He shoved Velasquez out of the way. Velasquez stumbled, knocking the pink, green, and yellow cornhusk doll off the desk. It was a gift from the Trinidadian mailroom guy, and had faced out into the office as if standing sentinel against pilfery.

“Watch it!” hissed Goldberg. “You’re making a mockery of the whole operation.”

Velasquez stared at the doll on the floor.

“Bitch’s hands looked like they held explosive pompoms,” he said, laughing and gobbling M&Ms.

Kohler picked the doll up off the floor, staining it with his candy-soiled fingers. He placed it back next to the gumball machine, facing inward.

Wilson, observing the whole affair from nearby, shook his head. He opened his mouth to say something, but Velasquez shoved a finger in his face.

“Shut it, fat man,” warned Velasquez, scrambling back to his cube.

Kohler and Goldberg took the cue and also shot back to their cubes, sitting down just as Carpenter turned the corner. They had emptied the ¾-full machine. Carpenter reached his desk, went to turn the handle of the gumball machine, and came up empty. He frowned. He looked at his cornhusk doll, now sullied, and quickly glanced around the office. The three perps were studiously on pretend phone-calls.

Carpenter looked at Wilson, tsked, and said, “If you want candy, Peter, all you have to do is ask.”

Object No. 50 of 50 — Significant Objects v2. PHOTO: Adrian Kinloch

[The auction for this object, with story by Tom McCarthy, has ended. Original price: $1.00. Final price: $68.00. Part of a special collaboration with Underwater New York, this object's story shipped rolled into a vintage bottle found on the beach of Dead Horse Bay, Brooklyn. Proceeds from this auction go to 826 National.]

1. Pollution of coastal waters can have / the black sun of melancholy / signature of all things I am here to / test for indicator organisms such as / Love or Phoebus, Lusignan or Biron / based on weekly or fortnightly water sampling

2. The beach zone is modeled as / the grotto where the siren / (see Fig. 1) / wind-generated surface advection and / have lingered in / with parameter estimation / limit of the diaphane / with uniform pollution concentration

3. Wild sea money / dc and dt: decay and mixing / language tide and wind have silted / to a build-up of pollutants during / the night of the tombs, you who consoled me / (see Fig. 2)

4. The coastline is roughly aligned with / the sighs of the Saint and the cries of / prevailing wind positions at this / lolled on bladderwrack / in the chambers of / pollution forecasting, modeled by / the grid where vine and rose enmesh

5. Two brief field surveys, carried out to / walk upon the beach / accumulated rainfall and runoff pollution which / snotgreen, bluesilver, rust / where U is wind and T is days / have modulated on the lyre of / drainage flow-rates for / the mermaids singing, each to / the ‘first-flush effect’, as visible in Fig. 3 / forehead is still red from the Queen’s kiss

PHOTO: Nura Qureshi

Object No. 19 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Greg Rowland, has ended. Original price: $3.00. Final price: $32.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

I am a mycologist. I study fungi. (I do not study “toadstools” or “fairy rings.” These are objects of fantasy, not science. Ask me about “toadstools” or “fairy rings” and I will most surely spit in your eye.)

It is my great misfortune to encounter non-mycologists from time to time. It may seem astonishing, but there are people who cannot separate agaricaceae from coprinaceae, much less entolomataceae from strophariaceae. But I can, because I am a mycologist.

I have mixed emotions when I meet people who cannot distinguish between entolomataceae and strophariaceae. Mostly I feel pity, mixed with a burning feeling of nausea that settles around my upper trachea. Sometimes I feel pure hatred. I reserve the stronger emotions for those who deliberately flaunt a lack of mycological knowledge as some kind of “badge of honour.” Please be assured that, if I were to meet you, and you deliberately flaunted your lack of mycological knowledge in my presence, then I would most definitely spit in your eye.

Beyond that, here are the two worst things you can say to a mycologist:

“Is there ‘mush-room’ in your field for advancement?”

“You must be a real ‘fun-gi’ to be with.”

It is the fun-gi “joke” that fills the mycology community with dread and foreboding. It is repeated to us every time we venture outside of the mycology community. (Sometimes up to twice a month.) It is enough to make a mycologist spit. It is certainly enough to make a mycologist produce a unique form of body-anger-fungus — which has, ironically, provided a research paper dividend for two less than honorable members of our field. (You know who you are.)

A human female, who carried no malign fungal infections, gave me this Mushroom Shaker. She was attracted to mycologists, and had never knowingly uttered The Joke (op cit.). She was a dilettante mycologist at best, yet her shiny shoes and gadfly, fungal-free demeanor blinded me.

Some might see this as a thoughtful gift for a mycologist. They would be wrong. This “gift” is merely an extension of the ritual degradation of our science by the non-mycology community (see above, passim.) This is why its companion piece is now in several pieces in a landfill, having been battered into fragments by a specialized hard-fungal chipping utensil.

This object is a non-mycologically accurate three-dimensional evocation of a non-existent mushroom. Do not use it as a reference device. Or for any purpose whatsoever. Don’t even look at it for more than 0.75 seconds.

In closing, I contend that this Mushroom Shaker embodies a strong risk of mycological disinformation. Just like the woman who gave it to me.

Object No. 14 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Joe Wenderoth, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $24.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

Up for your consideration is this Antique Icelandic Menstruating Judgment Bird. Early Icelandic Judges used these birds to determine the outcome of all serious arguments. It was also used domestically—with considerably less ceremony—to resolve smaller household arguments. It works like this: in an outdoor space, bricks are stacked—two stacks; between the two stacks, a yarn is pulled tight and secured beneath the top brick on both sides. Next, a Birdman (a native Icelandic priest) tries to balance the Menstruating Judgment Bird on the yarn. If the Bird remains balanced for the next 10 seconds (in the Birdman’s head), the Bird has become ripe for Pronouncing Judgment. After ten seconds (in the Birdman’s head), which way the Bird falls decides the argument. All of the Judgment Bird’s verdicts are understood to be completely just. The Birdman is responsible for watching the Bird so long as it is ripe for Pronouncing Judgment. Should a Birdman fail to believably witness the Pronounced Judgment, he is expected to weep for the rest of his life. In domestic situations, those in disagreement must find someone to stand Birdman for them. These pseudo-Birdmen are not held to the same standards as actual ordained Birdmen. If a pseudo-Birdman does not see which way the Bird fell, he has certainly brought some degree of shame down upon his family, and he is replaced on grounds of ineptitude, but he is only expected to weep for a week or so. This is a great item. Scientists have suggested that the peculiarity of the contemporary Icelandic countenance quite probably stems from this practice, and the arbitrary boundaries of power it insists upon without explanation. No one has yet advanced a plausible reason for the bird’s Menstruating quality, except maybe it’s a mature female who is not pregnant.

Object No. 100 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jonathan Lethem, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $76.]

Listen, friend, forget about the bartender, you could wait all day in this dive, we might as well be invisible over here, I kid you not. Here, let me pour you a drink. No, really, I insist, it’s on me. I brought my own. Just swab out the dust and fingerprints with my shirttails, good as new. Love the way it claps down on the bar, gets your glands salivating, doesn’t it?

No, after you, I insist. My pleasure.

See that freaky little bird? That’s the state bird, my friend. The Missouri Hunt-and-Pecker. Never heard of ’em? Well, then I guess you’ve never been to Missouri, have you? Maybe passed through, didn’t get out of the car. Or changed planes in the airport, or went up in the Arch once, just to say you’d done it. But that’s not Missouri to me. St. Louis is the gateway, sure, but you want to know Missouri you need to drive a few hours into the corn, you want to visit St. Joseph, up through Maryville — skirt the Iowa border, though Iowa’s a sore point from where I sit. You need to get lost in Missouri or you never really were there in the first place. Even then you won’t be likely to meet the Hunt-and-Pecker unless you circulate a manuscript or two.

Manuscript, you heard me right. See, very few know it, because we keep it to ourselves, but Missouri is sick and silly with apprentice fictioneers, the whole state’s like one vast harrowed and furrowed MFA workshop. Why do you think the license plates call it The Show-Don’t-Tell State?

Yeah, sure, Iowa. We’re not promiscuous like them. Rather sit on a manuscript for a hundred years than publish before we’re ready. And when you really contemplate the motto’s implications… show, don’t tell… well, get me here, we’ve taken it to heart. By the time a roving Missouri critique outfit has detasseled your kernels, you better believe me you’ll have second thoughts about advancing into the marketplace. More likely cancel your subscription to Poets & Writers, renew your vows to craft. Scene, setting, voice. Look at that fugging bartender, he’d serve a wood duck in a halter-top before he so much as glanced at us.

You like that? Here’s another. Go ahead, you know you want to.

Or shut up entirely, always an option. That’s the ultimate endpoint, you know. Don’t write a word, just be a writer. We’re more than a little stoical out here on the plain, son. Write more? Write less. I strive to write less every day, some day I’ll get there. Not-telling isn’t as easy as it appears.

Lookit ’im there, cool as a flippin’ cucumber, straddling the state like nobody’s business. Crazy little red-tailed devil knows more than he’s saying too, can’t you tell? Love the way he flushes amber, then goes all transparent again. Strive to be like a windowpane, not a mirror, that’s how he makes his way through the world.

All right, I’m out of here. Here you go, you bastard! Keep the change! See, I always leave that sonuvabitch a tip — one red cent. Honest Abe, another fellow from the heartland who knew exactly when to shut up. Keep it real, friend.

Object No. 93 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Kate Bernheimer, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $104.50.]

A long time ago, I was very poor and often traded my body for cigarettes, Chelada, or food (in order of preference). I had two children — both daughters — and together we lived in a motel on the coast. It was a knotty-pine kitchenette cabin, and came furnished with a teapot, a few chipped flowered plates, some utensils, and bedding. The cabin overlooked a paved parking lot and beyond it, the beach. If a man came to visit, I sent my youngest girl out to find driftwood and starfish and shells. (Her sister was in kindergarten, so always gone in the morning.) There was no market for these trinkets among tourists; but they were precious to my little girls, truly their only possessions. We washed them and kept them along the edge of the porch rail and inside, on the white windowsills, which otherwise were very empty, apart from a pink horse my youngest had found in the woods. That pink horse! How she loved it. Once when she had gone a very long way to gather her treasures — all the way under a natural tunnel inside the cliffs, which led to a narrow beach that would trap you and kill you if you were stuck there during high tide — an old woman with pink hair approached her and sang her a song. My daughter told me about this old woman, but I didn’t believe her. Later that week, my girl brought home a sea urchin, closed. She said that when the sea urchin opened, the old woman would return and that she had promised then to bring us good luck. I got an empty jar from the cupboard — it had once been full of beach plum jelly but had been long gathering dust. We walked down to the edge of the ocean and filled it with water. Back in the cabin, we placed the closed sea urchin carefully into the water, where it sank and stayed closed. The next morning my littlest girl didn’t wake up and the sea urchin had bloomed. It was on her grave that my other daughter placed the pink horse. Then she too was taken — by the high tide — the very same week. She’d gone into the magic tunnel. Now I do nothing but drink Chelada all day, haunted by pink. Pink urchins, pink cigarettes. Pink horse, pink horse, pink horse on the grave — if ever the pink horse flies into the sky, your daughters will come back to life. The pink-haired old woman sang that to me once when I passed out in the sand. For now, there you stand in the dark of the wood — beautiful, all-powerful, and silent. Pink horse, you are everything, and everything is everlasting in you.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Sung J. Woo, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $52.]

Last summer, my wife and I held a barbeque in our back yard. After the event, I saw a little yellow bird with a black crown and wings on the knickknack shelf above the toilet in the bathroom. I’d never seen this figurine before. The bird, its head turned ninety degrees to the left of its body, gazed at me squarely with unblinking black eyes.

When I asked my wife about where she got the figurine, she had no idea what I was talking about. The figurine suddenly took on the cold heft of an object that existed only to tell us how much it didn’t belong here.

If neither of us had placed it on the shelf, that meant someone from the party had done it. Maybe it was a joke. Or was it a snide criticism of our decorating skills? I found myself getting angry, but then another thought occurred to me: perhaps it was a psychological issue that one of our friends was suffering from, a sort of a reverse-kleptomaniacal syndrome. In which case my anger was misplaced and insensitive. While I was mulling the possibilities, my wife was completing a more practical, forensic study of the bird. She pointed at the tiny lettering near the bottom, near its tail: MB.

In the kitchen, we went through the guest list and found two matches, a man and a woman who shared the same initials. I’d been friends with the female MB since college, and my wife had known the male MB since early childhood, but they’d never been introduced. Neither seemed to be the type to pull a stunt like this, but we emailed them each a photo of the figurine and asked if they knew anything about it.

Within a minute, we received replies. It was an American goldfinch, they agreed; and neither of them had placed it in our bathroom. The enthusiasm of this identification was evident in both emails; both were avid birders, it turned out. They announced their engagement soon after.

When the newly minted couple visited our house a month before the wedding, they stopped by the bathroom to admire the bird that had brought them together. I decided that the perfect way to celebrate their love was to give the bird to them. I found a fancy hexagonal wooden box in the closet and when the evening drew to a close, presented them with the gift.

They looked at the box with absolute shock. In tears, they chided me for taking the bird out of its natural habitat and for putting it in a container that resembled a coffin. Before I had a chance to apologize, they stormed off, and as my wife and I stared at the bird in the box, I had to admit, it did look sort of dead.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Sarah Rainone, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $41.]

As my husband and I were driving back to New York after my mother’s funeral, I spotted a general store on the Rhode Island-Connecticut border, the kind that exist solely for those who forgot to bring something back from Newport or Block Island or Martha’s Vineyard or wherever. Judging from the weathered sign and the rusting trinkets out front, it seemed decades old, and yet I swear I had never seen it in all my travels along this stretch of I-95. Strange.

My husband looked puzzled as I pulled into the gravel driveway. “I have to go in.” He started to open his door but I stopped him. “And I have to go alone.” I was not in the store two minutes when I saw the plate. Let me explain.

After my mother became ill, I traveled to India in search of the secrets of eternal life. While my studies proved inadequate to save her, I learned a bit about yogic chanting, namely that the sweetest chants are the ones sung to Krishna — the mischievous youth who liked butter, enjoyed hanging out with female cowherds, and who just happened to be the human incarnation of the great god Vishnu, tasked with no less a chore than the preservation of the entire universe.

When I returned to the States with my newfound knowledge, my mother said she appreciated it, but I think she was humoring me. She was Irish Catholic and didn’t see the sense in taking off to India when the Holy Spirit was everywhere.

When I saw this plate, I knew there was something about it that was both Indian and Irish, something that transcended the religions that divide nations and men. I bought it immediately and would later discover that much like St. Patrick who had driven the snakes from Ireland, Krishna had tamed the serpent Kaliya who had previously been poisoning the waters of the Yamuna river, killing the cowherds on its banks. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

This plate is about cowherds, about shamrocks, about Ireland, yes, but it is also about liberation, about preservation, about eternal life. And if you purchase it, my only wish is that you do not eat corned beef from it, without first thinking of Krishna.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jennifer Michael Hecht, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $10.50.]

Kathy can remember how she left both of her ex-husbands but she can’t remember how she left Jeffrey. She can remember a phone call that seemed to finalize that she was leaving him with his father but she isn’t sure when that happened or why. Kathy is pretty and rich, but she loathes herself and everyone except Jeffrey. When she is with Jeffrey she loathes herself less, except she gets some sharp stabbing pains of it. She has been with him a lot lately, so has been drinking a lot less.

She is awake alone in the middle of the night. The very nice man she lives with is asleep in their bed at the top of her town house, two flights upstairs. She can turn on lights, make normal noise with a beer bottle against the table. She is drinking a yellow beer with lime in it. The house is warm but not warm enough for no pants and Kathy is wishing pants weren’t two flights away. For the time being she isn’t moving. She’s only had one beer since she got up, but she drank more than a few the night before.

Kathy is smoking a joint in the kitchen and looking at Michael Phelps on a Corn Flakes box. Phelps won eight gold medals swimming in the Olympics and then lost his Corn Flakes endorsement deal because of a photograph of him smoking a bong. Kathy’s boyfriend saw a pre-bong cereal box at the supermarket and snatched it up. He likes things like this. Now the Phelps cereal box has been mounted prominently for many months on a kitchen shelf. Phelps is in the pool up to his neck, holding up one finger and smiling like crazy. She takes a hit and smiles back at him. She replies to his “We’re number one” finger with her own. She rests her lighter on a ceramic figurine of the “Hakuna Matata” guys from The Lion King. Kathy had been to Kenya with her second husband and people there said “Hakuna matata” the way we say, “No problem,” and they pronounce it like a machine gun, fast and hard.

Kathy had grown up with Baloo the bear in Jungle Book as her icon of happiness through low expectations. The bare necessities, the simple bare necessities, the bare necessities of life. As she remembered it, you just eat whatever you find under a log. Kathy is on her second beer. The paper towel wrapped around it is wet from bottle sweat. Drawn-out syllables are playing in her head, “Haah koo na ma tata, what a wonderful phrase. Haah koo na ma ta tahh, it’s no passing craze.”

Kathy picks up the ceramic figurine and closes her hand around it. It is cooler than room temperature; its shape massages her tight palm and fingers. She considers throwing it at Phelps, just to see which way the box would fall but decides it would seem hostile. She chooses instead to duplicate the warthog’s position. Leaving the beer in the kitchen, but bringing the figurine, Kathy walks into the parlor and looks down at the rug. Mutters “Jeffrey’s pillows,” and eases herself down to them. She puts one pillow on her belly, as if it were a meerkat. Closes her eyes.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Matthew De Abaitua, has closed. Original price: $1.99. Final price: $15.50]

My Daddy shouts at me when I go near the piggybank, and he screams when I turn it upside down. So l leave the piggybank alone and tell my baby brother and sister to leave it alone too. The piggybank is the family curse.

One day a week my Daddy is good to me, and he teaches me that words that sound the same can mean different things. Like were and wear. Like sentence and sentence. He listens to me as I read my stories and when I am finished he tells me how talented I am. I like those days. But on working days he is mean and tells me to shut up, before he has even heard what I am going to say. My Daddy’s working days are hard, so hard. You wouldn’t believe how hard they are.

Because of Grandad, our family has to keep the piggybank with us always. Grandad met the devil coming out of his wardrobe and the devil promised him death, death right there and then, and Grandad said no, and so a deal was struck. If the piggybank goes out the back door, death comes in through the front door.

On pay day, one half of all the money that crosses the doorstep goes into the piggybank. Daddy comes back from his job making safe the gas in the iron lungs that rise and fall across our town, rise and fall like the valves of the trumpet he plays on our birthdays. He takes out his pay packet and pinches half of the notes between his fingers and hands the money to Mummy, without looking at it. It is Mummy’s job to place the tribute into the cursed pig.

Daddy gets angry so suddenly, it makes it hard to breathe. I know he doesn’t mean it. I tell him not to be so angry with me and he stops, and he looks sad. I’m a big girl. I know how hard the days of grown-ups can be, so hard you wouldn’t believe.

Saturday is shopping day. Mum and I look around the shops. In the toy shop Frank, my little brother, plays with the train track, and he screams when the time comes for us to leave. None of the clothes fit Mummy right. There is nothing for us to buy. I see the scooter I want, the one with the special wheels. I go to the pig to see if there is money in it but the pig has eaten all the notes and left only coins.

Once I walked into the living room and found the piggybank choking on our money. Greedy piggy. I slapped it on the back and the money rattled back into its belly. When I turned it upside down, the money had gone.

This is the family curse, the same thing every week, the same for my Daddy as it was for Grandad and the same it will be for me, when I am older. Mummy looks for the bad hairs on her head and pulls them out. Daddy rolls moaning in his bed. I take a deep breath. The pig swallows and winks.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Matthew Sharpe, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $14.50.]

This is the statue of the mule that I have sculpted by my hands, but if you are the serious person about the hand-sculpted statues, also serious when you are knowing how to feel the deep meaning in Life, then you will see that is not really the statue of the mule. I will not be able to say what the statue is truly because then I will be embarrassing and you will be embarrassing too if you are the serious person about it. “Not all of the things are to be talked about in the computer.” But the mule is also to show how I am having many nations that I am coming from in my family background.

I, the selling person, am Hans Mifune, Artist. What is the Artist? It is the ancient river running in the new bed. (Also I do not always feel like getting out of the bed! Because my bedroom is small!) I must sell my beautiful artworks for that is sometimes only the way that the other people of the world can see my artworks and also then sometimes I can eat some things that are not the sandwiches with sugar and lard. And even these sandwiches sometimes do not have sugar and bread on them!

I am finishing this selling with saying how the “ashes” in the sculpture is because I have some pain to have so many nations at once as the location where I am coming from in life. The pain is not because of my many birth origins “in and to itself,” it is because of the humans that live “in the world of them.” I live “in the world of us.” I hope that you live “also in the world of us.”

You will have also the penny in the photograph of the mule for the same price that you bid the most to the statue of the mule plus shipping and handling.

[The bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Lydia Millet, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $22.72.]

I went with my friend G to her great aunt’s house a few weeks after the aunt passed away. G had been called in by the family to pick out one or two keepsakes. Because she lived in a cramped studio in Hell’s Kitchen she didn’t want anything, a, and b, according to G’s mother every item of value had been carted away five minutes after the old lady died, by a daughter-in-law no one liked. By the time G was called in to make a selection they’d already held the estate sale, so all that was left were the sale rejects. “Harsh,” said G, but she decided to go anyway because it was June and New York City was hot and humid and stank. The aunt had lived in one of those nice little towns on the Hudson, green with a pleasant breeze, and the train would let us out about three blocks from her house. Also there was a good diner in the town that G, who was a part-time food critic with a specialty in burgers, wanted to try.

So we got in the train one Saturday afternoon and we went to the house. It was a modest fake Tudor place, pretty much empty now except for a few dusty boxes of trinkets. G’s second cousin R was there, who she hadn’t seen since they were fourteen, went to summer camp together, and ended up making out. (She told me that later.) Now he lived in Jersey and had a lot of tattoos. They sat on the stoop smoking and talking while I rummaged around in the boxes, just for something to do. They were mostly ceramics of chickens, cows, and other livestock, the kind of cheerfully painted ones some ladies like to keep in their kitchens. Beats me why they do that. Maybe they want to feel their kitchens are farmhouses. Anyway, no one wanted these things. Some had been thrown into the boxes carelessly and were already chipped.

I’d never met the great aunt but as the sun sank low outside, G and R’s laughter floated in to me, and shadows crept over the bare living room floor I started to feel bad for all those abandoned barnyard animals. I picked through the pigs and roosters with a kind of sadness until finally I found Chili Cat. Ugly as sin, there was no getting around that. No reason at all for the cat to be festooned with red chilis. There was a Mexican motif, I guessed. Maybe Tex-Mex. Chili Cat was supposed to be festive.

G never picked out anything, herself. We went with R to the diner and afterward we sat drinking and looking out at the river. Because she was homely, and all those boxes were full of the homeless, I took Chili Cat home.