Object No. 96 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Bruce Holland Rogers, has ended. Original price: 29 cents. Final price: $21.50.]

By my third visit to Dr. Peragua, I had decided on what I was going to steal. There were lots of candidates. His office is full of keepsakes from his travels to meet shamans, whom he says are his professional colleagues. There are a lot of objects small enough to slip into my pocket, but I decided on the dish for paper clips that sits on Peragua’s desk. It was in the shape of an open, upturned umbrella.

By the fifth visit, I had a plan. Dr. Peragua knows that I steal things. He even knows the kinds of things that I steal: small objects of no great material worth. I’m here to talk to him about my stealing. I’m here to get my father off my back.

On week six, I arrived chewing a big wad of gum. Before we started to talk, I stood up and tossed the gum at the wastepaper basket behind Dr. Peragua’s chair, and missed. The gum stuck to the wall above the basket. “Oops,” I said, and Dr. Peragua took a tissue from the table between his chair and mine. He pulled the gum from the wall and dropped it in the basket. Perfect. Each week since, I have come in chewing gum. I spit the gum into a tissue and throw it into the basket.

Before we start today, I take out the gum and toss it, unwrapped. “Oops,” I say. Dr. Peragua frowns, reaches for a tissue, and turns. In three heartbeats, I have crossed to his desk, pocketed the little umbrella , and returned to my chair before Dr. Peragua has finished cleaning the wall. “Sorry,” I say.

“Hm,” says the doctor. He looks around the room as if doing inventory. “You don’t really want to get better, do you?”

He knows that I’m here only because my father said that if I’d see a therapist for ten weeks, at my father’s expense, my father would stop mentioning my habit.

“Taking things makes me feel good,” I say. “And it’s not as if I’m taking things worth a lot of money. Where’s the harm?”

“You harm your relationships. Whether your victims know what you’ve done or not, you know that they can’t trust you. That limits your opportunities for intimacy.”

“I have friends.”

“Well,” he says, “let’s talk about those friendships. You know, everything, even what you see as a one-sided transaction, is a kind of exchange. So let’s talk about what you give and what you get in your friendships.” That’s the start of our session. He asks questions, I answer. At the end of the hour, he glances at his watch and says, “That’s about all we have time for today.” He asks about a further appointment. But today I have fulfilled my half of the bargain with my father.

“Goodbye, Dr. Peragua.”

“Goodbye, then,” he says.

I leave the umbrella and paper clips in my pocket. The walls of my living room are lined with shelves. When my father visits, he always asks me how much of what is on those shelves is really mine.

All of it. And now he can’t ask any longer.

I reach into my pocket. Something jabs my fingertip. A burr. My pocket is full of sharp little burrs. Where are the paper clips? Where is the umbrella? But then I find that the umbrella is there, a little metal figurine with no moving parts. Only now, it is closed.

Object No. 90 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Ben Ehrenreich, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $50.]

I pull a marble from your skull each time we kiss. “Give it back,” you say, each time.

“Darling,” I say. “Baby,” I say. “No.”

I put the marble in my pocket. Later, I will hide it with the others. But not now, because now you’re watching. Now you’re getting mad. I knew you would, and now you’re doing it. You cross your arms. Your features droop. Not just your lips but your eyelids and ears and the cleft ball of your chin. All of it droops. I laugh at you. “Come here, Droopy,” I say, and I try to kiss you, but you pull away.

“Give it back,” you say.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

“Give it back,” you say, again.

“Each marble is a moon,” I say, “but the moon is not a marble. Did you know that?”

“Give it back.”

“I just read an interesting article about a hunchback,” I say. “They put him on display in a museum until he withered and when they did an autopsy they found that his hump was filled with marbles. And they marveled at the marbles. Don’t you think that’s unfair?”

“Give it back,” you say.

“Give it back give it back give it back. Come up with something better. Think a bit. Ask yourself: how would Professor Noam Chomsky respond in a situation like this? Or Beyoncé. What would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad do?”

“Give it back.”

“You are a funny bird,” I say. “But I’m bored of this. I’m going for a walk.” I put my shoes and my jacket on and I go outside, but I don’t really go for a walk. I just stand beside the door and count to 35,000. Then I go back inside. You’re tidying up. I can tell that you’re still angry because you’re tidying up and because your nose is drooping as you do it. “Are you hungry?” I say, but you don’t answer. “Is there still chicken in the fridge?” I say, but you say nothing, so I open the fridge to look. The chicken is gone. How could you eat all that chicken? Did you give it away?

From the other room, you speak. “How was your walk?” you say, placing the remote control beside the other remote controls, arranging them attractively.

“It was lovely,” I say. “I ran into Vladimir Putin in the form of a crow. We’re Facebook friends. He sang the most beautiful song. It was called, ‘Give it back.’” I sing it for you, swinging my hips like a metronome gone mad. “Give it back, give it back, give it back now. Give it back, give it back, give it back now.” And I take your hand and pull you to me because I want to be close to you and I want you to dance with me and to love me as much as I love everything in this world. But your hand is balled tight and your body is stiff and you’re not drooping at all anymore. Instead you’re crying. You’re covering your face. “Oh baby,” I say, “Don’t be sad.” And I unball your hand and squeeze your fingers and run the fingers of my other hand across your cold and teary face. “There’s nothing,” I say, “but nothing, to be sad for.” And I kiss your fingers and your dry lips and with my free hand I reach up and I stroke your hair and I poke about until I feel the bulge and then I dig in with my nails and pull another marble from your skull.

Object No. 76 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Terese Svoboda, has ended. Original price: 75 cents. Final price: $15.50.]

You are fitting it in between the toilet paper and the shaver accessories, on top of the wart remover and the nose hair clippers. You say, tentacles for moon-people — this is where they store them.

Prehensile is prejudice, I say. But I’m not really agreeing.

Or a vehicle for invasion unwarned by Welles? you say. They’re everywhere and they’re transmitting.

Maybe, I say. Or maybe it’s for votives. The slimmer candles. Ancient Mesopotamian gods worshipped by Macy’s the II.

This is not a competition, you say. You kiss me.

Roaches crawl in and out and over an item like this, I say, unpacking it by nightfall with even less in the agreement department, more fatigue.

Roaches R us, you say, shaking the object so I can hear no little dry somethings. Whosoever finds parking for this baby will be blessed. All the bad is purged. Think of the ark-like covenant, the two-by-two or else, a pleasant symmetry where every inhabitant wears a stiff white beard.

I watch you stand it on the porcelain edge overlooking the Niagra-ed sink. No way breakage won’t happen. You darken your look as if that’s a dare. If the camel’s back stood ready, I’ve piled it on. Inspect that motif, I quicktalk, flowers in actual color, veritable domestic bliss.

If you say so, you say. All hygiene goes haywire. At least you aim to miss.

You are sweeping bits into a sweeper-upper-into, some of them floral. The Maltese Falcon, you say, somebody’s got to see inside it.

Noir toothbrush, I say.

Resuming normal speech but avoiding the bathroom — it had eyes, you cry — you find matching flora and defenestrate it all over our bed, making it, as it were, a bed of roses. That’s what I think life is, you say.

We take to it.

[NOTE: The object we are selling is NOT broken. -- eds.]

Object No. 67 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Matthew Klam, has ended. Original price: $1.99. Final price: $15.75. ]

I acquired this object at a flea market in the parking lot of a bilingual high school. Its little hands are smooth flippers. I believe it to be quite valuable, possibly antique, based on dates of patents listed on the ornate bronze panel on the inside door. Chinese in origin. Solid cast iron. Quite heavy. Designed to resemble the lead character of the short lived American cartoon, “Chucky the Chicken.” I never saw that show. There are knockoffs out there, and research indicates that knockoffs are made of brass or cheap plastic, but this one is well built, from original specs.

You may keep it in your car. You may keep it in your home. You may carry it on your person.

Be warned. There is a loud clicking sound coming from the control module.

For a while I kept this in my glove compartment. The original instruction manual mentions that the magnetic field it emits can change traffic lights from red to green. THIS DOES NOT WORK. Also, you will cause a pile up!

If you decide to keep it by your bed (as I did) and begin seeing colorful lights reflected on the walls and windows as you try to sleep, DO NOT WORRY AS THE OBJECT IS OPERATING NORMALLY.

DO NOT touch it or disrupt the cycle as this will cause IRREPAIRABLE HARM and may give you a POWERFUL ELECTRIC SHOCK. KEEP AWAY FROM CHUCKY UNLESS INSTRUCTED BY CHUCKY HIMSELF.

• Phase 1/Initial Phase: Transmission of messages.
• Phase 2/Functional Phase: Chucky cycling normally.
• Phase 3/Unity Phase: Walls bleed beautiful colors.
• Phase 4/Perfected Phase: Controller/controlled.
• Phase 5/Paradise Phase: Identity of Supreme Dictator revealed.

Chucky said to me, “HELLO MY LITTLE FRIEND. I am your GOD. Shift administrative tasks to your REPRESENTATIVE IMMEDIATELY. Prepare for LOVE SYMBOL.

Ha ha. And well we know what that love SYMBOL is now, DO WE NOT?

Certainly this object may have other uses. Keep it as an antique vase or planter, or with slight modification use as liquor locker, gun cabinet, bomb safe, champagne cooler, cocktail pitcher, etcetera. Dental detail alone is worth the price. Cannot verify that all parts are included. Cast iron is in excellent condition, however: do not microwave!!

Do not touch the outer shell with your tongue. Do not form contractions. FOLLOW THE MANUAL. Do not attempt modifications. Try to keep the dust out of his middle. CLEAN the inside WITH YOUR TONGUE if your TONGUE is long ENOUGH. THIS IS NOT HARD TO DO if you stick your tongue out. FARTHER. A LITTLE FARTHER.

N.B.: Cast iron may actually be ceramic. Bronze panel and inside door may be difficult/impossible to locate. Instruction manual not included.

Object No. 66 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Cintra Wilson, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $14.90.]

Dearest Friend in Christ,

As only you know, this is the trophy treasure I have won in great personal championship at ladies intramural sport. I am in daily prayer that in Christian spirit only you will see this appeal, and know of our plan to transfer the ownership of this darling golden statuette of high monetary value into your home. It is as you remember the key to our future plan of my safety rescue and personal fortune.

As we discussed, I wish my best most coveted and rare valuable trophy prize to be safely in your Beloved hands. You may then assure me with your sweet words, Dear Heart, that you have it resting in a mounted place of honor in your diplomatic safe house. I will be afterwards in waiting for your signal to transfer the misallocated foreign aid (US) $344 MILLION I have received in error to threaten my political life daily, into the bank of your politically stable country. Also I am hoping to send, at future times, to our secret beautiful love child out of wedlock, the contested blood-diamond necklace worth (US) $6,900,00.00 belonging to my dearest departed aunt Hortensia Claire Watsson, may she lie in eternal embracing of the Christ.

Since I am the tallest woman in this region of 2 meters height (near seven foot), the situation grows darkest every hour, Dearest, as I am visible to both armies and those who wish our Christian endeavor harm. Make haste! And soon we will be locked in prayer over this beautiful golden basketball remembrance of my victorious athletics together.

I will be in prayer, and hoping to embrace you soonest.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Doug Dorst, has ended. Original price: $3. Final price: $193.50.]

Figurine of St. Vralkomir (glass cover not included)

This is an icon of the fourteenth-century saint Vralkomir of Dnobst, the patron saint of extremely fast dancing. Handcrafted in a snowbound convent by the nimble-footed Sisters of the Vralkomian Order, it was given to my grandmother—then a nine-year-old girl—as she boarded the ship that would take her to America from Dnobst, a narrow pie-wedge of land bounded by the Dnobst River, the Grkgåt Mountains, and the Great Western Fence of Count Pyør the Litigious.

Vralkomir was a competent cobbler, but he was brusque and taciturn, conversing only to the extent he was required to for business. His fellow citizens found him odd, and they would hurry back out into the year-round cold as quickly as they could. Some said his towering jet-black hat, which he’d knitted of his own hair, would trigger vertigo in those who stared up at it for too long. Many were annoyed by his incessant tuneless humming.

In the autumn of 1347, in response to a perceived slight from a Dnobstian maiden, the recently enthroned Tsar Nÿrdrag the Irascible (also known as “The Cowbird Tsar,” a Scandinavian foundling whom the previous Tsar and Tsarina unknowingly raised as their own) issued an edict banning fire in Dnobst. His armies confiscated every piece of flint and all the available kindling. When winter blew in, it was as cruel as Nÿrdrag himself. Icy gusts sent massive musk-elk rolling out of the forest like tumbleweeds. It snowed for weeks on end. Desperate and frostbitten, the townspeople (minus Vralkomir) huddled in the mayor’s house, which at least still had a roof. The temperature kept dropping. Death was coming, and they could do nothing but wait.

From a high window, someone saw Vralkomir leave his shop, glance around the empty village square, then trudge into the forest. He returned hauling a freshly cut tree. In the square, he sawed the wood into discs like the one you see on the icon. Vralkomir then hopped onto one of the discs and began dancing, dancing, dancing to the tuneless music in his head. He danced faster and faster. The villagers watched as he wheeled and spun and tappatapped, his legs and feet a blur in the subarctic gloom. A plume of smoke rose from under his feet, and he kept dancing, and then there was more smoke, and he danced on, and soon the wooden disc was ablaze. Vralkomir leapt to the next disc and set it alight, and the next, and the next, and the Dnobstians came out and gathered round the fires, drinking in the precious warmth, happy to be alive. The bearded man danced all winter, they say, as no one else in the village could duplicate his feat of terpsichorean ignition, and he died of exhaustion in mid-April, a beloved martyr. Some say he had stitched contraband flints into his soles; others claim he lit the fire with dance alone. My grandmother preferred the latter, and so do I.

My grandmother said that on frigid and moonless winter nights, effigies of St. Vralkomir may come to life and begin dancing, throwing sparks from their wooden pedestals. This was why she always kept the icon under a glass cover (which stylishly followed the contours of the saint’s mighty hair-hat). Unfortunately, I am a clumsy person, and I broke the glass last weekend while dusting. My wife now insists that I sell it, calling it “at best, a tacky, dust-collecting tchotchke, and at worst, a tacky, dust-collecting fire hazard.” There is no reasoning with her; she is descended from an unimaginative people who know nothing of heroes.

I hope someone will give St. Vralkomir the home he deserves. The icon is probably not a fire hazard, although for obvious reasons I can make no express guarantee.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Andrew Ervin, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $51.]

Several weeks ago I was biking around the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, or what’s left of it, and shooting photographs of the rebuilding process. I have been hearing the same two descriptions over and over — “It’s like a war zone” and “It’s like a bomb went off” — but the reality is more like something from the Old Testament, something supernatural. Most of the original residents of the neighborhood I visited that day have moved on — into formaldehyde-poisoned FEMA trailers, to Baton Rouge or Lafayette, to Texas or Mississippi. Those who have moved in fill the streets with foreign, burning smells and songs that are strange even by New Orleans standards. The new residents mark the streets with incomprehensible runes. They tell me the loa have never left.

That day, a small but vocal crowd had gathered at an unmarked and all but deserted crossroads. Several women were holding on to a panicky stray goat. Their jewelry glittered in the afternoon sun. I stopped to take some pictures and was told that a young man had attempted to steal a car at gunpoint, but was thwarted by the neighbors and detained. But before the women could determine a suitable punishment, the would-be thief transformed himself into a goat in order to avoid capture. There were witnesses.

“Someone fetch The Judge,” the oldest of the women said.

“Meh!” the goat said. “Meh meh meh!”

A small girl took off on foot and returned fifteen minutes later holding a sack of silvery cloth. She handed it to the old woman, who, with a flourish, reached in and removed this figurine — The Judge. She held the idol over her head and then placed it on the ground next to the goat. The other women released the animal. Everyone stepped back to form a wide circle and await the verdict. The goat’s eyes appeared mournful and even, I must admit, guilty of some crime.

“The Judge will soon decide the fate of the thief,” the old woman said.

“Meh meh meh!” the goat said, then it took off in a trot.

It was a terrible thing to do, I know, but amid the pandemonium I threw the idol into my camera bag and pedaled away.

That night I put The Judge on my bedside table, but was unable to sleep. I felt the idol watching me. Weeks later, I remain sleepless and have grown irritable and feverish. It was The Judge — he was hectoring me but also, I knew, praying for me. Then, this morning, I took a half-slumbering walk to the corner for coffee and, I swear to you, saw a goat drive by in a blue Toyota four-door.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jason Grote, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $16.49.]

I wish to reassure anyone who is considering purchasing me that it is not my look of need, afflicting though it may be, that is responsible for the fate of my last three owners. For reasons that I can only imagine are aesthetic, I tend to be attractive to elderly people, specifically elderly women, and can not be blamed for their mortality. The fate of my third owner, the young man, was some sort of freak event. I assure potential buyers that I am not cursed. At least I am not cursed in that way.

I can not recall the specific turn of events that led to my being placed behind this glass. I have memories of walking around, of freshly mown lawns, of friendly dogs licking my hand, and of attending church services and barbecues. However, this could be a trick of memory: it is possible that I have only seen or heard about these things, and not experienced them at all. The only thing I can truly be sure of is the glass, and the dust on the glass, and what little I can see of the world beyond the glass.

I remember my first owner, and how she would return my longing gaze and sometimes speak to me. I remember how I gradually came to be ignored as part of the sad and massive encrustation of knick-knacks in her home, a home that grew darker over time. I remember her death, which I did not witness directly (it happened in a hospital, I think), but gradually became aware of as her younger relatives (some known to me, others not) gradually emptied her home. The harsh sunlight, something I had not seen or felt in years (maybe decades) seared my eyes. They tossed me in a box, among many others of my kind, and I stared up at an empty blue sky for what seemed like an eternity but could have only been a few hours.

There I was purchased by my second owner, a happy, rotund woman with a chirpy voice who loved me dearly. I stared at her from her desk for many years, and she would occasionally coo at me while she typed on an electric typewriter. I never knew what she was typing, and would imagine the contents of her letters or her novel, the types of poems she would write. Her voice was musical. She was a widow, I think, and she dated a frightening man who would scream at her television.

Her fate is too sad to bear, but suffice it to say that I wound up, along with all of her other belongings, in a Salvation Army — in an ossified part of the store where the occasional board game or ski vest might move, but which mostly enjoyed a dusty, purgatorial paralysis. It was here that I was eventually purchased by my last owner, a nasty, slovenly young man who thought he was funnier than anyone else seemed to. It is not in my nature to hate, and I can not say that I wished for the violent fate which eventually befell him, but I will not miss looking at his thick glasses or weak, bearded chin, or listening to his non-stop, grating voice. He never bothered to dust me off, believing my filthy state to be somehow more authentic or entertaining. But circumstance (and a spurned business associate) intervened and I was not in his possession for long.

And now, dear buyer, I wish to be yours. I know that you are looking at me right now, but I can not see you. I want to be able to see you through my dusty glass. I have so much love to give.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Rebecca Wolff, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $19.50.]

There was this family, and their eight-year-old son developed a tumor on, or in, his jaw. They had it removed, and treated with radiation and chemotherapy, but a short while later it came back. They had it removed again. Their son learned to play the guitar, and the ukulele, and the banjo, and grew tall and lean. He would have been handsome but for the narrowness of his face, the lower part of which on one side had been shaved away. Now he’s thirteen, or fourteen, and the new tumor is large and cannot be further pacified, removed, denied. A small ark has been constructed for the family by terminally ill children with great reserves of unspent joy in the children’s ward of the Hospital of Our Lady of the Rocking Waters.

There was this girl, in Indiana, and in 1992 when she was twelve she got in this car with four older teenage girls and these other girls tortured and murdered her. My neighbor down the street is reading a true-crime paperback about it; she can’t put it down. My neighbor is completely under-educated and has no resources. She works weekends at the hospice and stays home with her daughter during the week while her son is at school with my son. She’s an accidental hipster; it’s just a trick of physiognomy that her tidy shape, clothed in the cheap duds she buys at Target, is the shape of a 1960s London mod. She’s Catholic from Long Island and tells me that she never complained about her ex-husband because the laws of Christianity told her not to. She says “Thank God” after everything.

So then this morning I hit a dog with my car. My two little ones strapped precariously in the back, I screamed “My God” in an agonized way that I remember from previous death experiences and started sobbing immediately. Parked in a driveway and ran out of the car, out of my mind, hyperventilating, back to where the golden lump of sweetness and innocence — never hurt anything — I must never hurt anything yet a moment ago — where it lay. Ark in my pocket. A working ark, hand-beaten of tin, painted in bright jewel tones to reflect the inexhaustible resources of the miraculous. Your faith alone will buoy it on the waters of Armaggedon, or Yahweh’s displeasure, whichever comes first. Miniatures are hard to come by and in great demand for their portability as well as for the exquisitely precise effort of Hopes and Fears required to exact true functionality.

Turned out I knew the dog’s owner slightly, a man who had parked across the busy road and let his dogs run free for some reason. He knew the reason: “It’s my fault,” he said, when I said “My God I’m so sorry.” Then he said: “I think he’s going to be okay: I think his leg is just broken.” The dog looking up at me, not saying. Later I’ll call and find out if the dog lived or if the dog died.

[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 piggy bank, and he screams when I turn it upside down. So l leave the piggy bank alone and tell my baby brother and sister to leave it alone too. The piggy bank 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 piggy bank 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 piggy bank 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 piggy bank. 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 piggy bank 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.