Object No. 99 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Edward Champion, has ended. Original price: $1.50. Final price: $56.]

The resilient ruffians ran away with the geisha’s canes just after she refused to perform a classless act. While it was true that the geisha dramatized the occasional lowbrow feat, befitting an object of her status, even she had her standards. She’d wobble her elliptical hips within a studded hula hoop forged from painful tungsten alloy. She’d gorge on great sticks of fire while her blind part-time assistant hurled jeweled daggers round her anatomical outline. And if wanton clients had serious dinero — particularly that shiny new oval currency with the Prince Albert piercing — she’d even flash a bit of flesh, relishing her total control over the crowd. The bobbled harpies working the onyx alleys could hike up their skirts for a sou, but she knew every sector on her body was insurable and she remained committed to securing the compensation befitting her curvy carapace. It hadn’t been easy to work her way up from the snowbound steppes without a rep, but she stage-managed her prestige through her divine Venetian valet de chambre.

However, she needed her two canes to get around.

Now wobbling atop a safe surface, the geisha ruminated upon the false proposition with unintended consequences. The three men had imparted intent to pay serious cash, approaching her with necktie paradoxes she decided to disregard. The geisha asked what they would like, shifting her harsh all-business larynx into a soothing dulcet tone. One claimed that his nether enormity was so round and imposing that it confounded the sensors scanning allplace from space.

“Don’t speak like that to a lady!” snapped the trio’s ringleader, who slapped the boor with a mesh metal glove and jabbed him in the anatomical vicinity of recent boasts.

“You’ve bifurcated my loins!” cried this sausage-laden braggart.

“That’s overstating things,” said the ringleader. “It is exquisitely rude to speak of your insufficient indignities before one of the finest entertainers that this village has to offer. There are subtler ways to elicit a response.”

The ringleader then whispered his lewd request into the geisha’s ear.

“I will not!” shrieked the geisha.

Talks were aborted, but there was a struggle. The self-proclaimed longjohn purloined his trophy.

The final indignity came with the ringleader’s second sordid offer that involved swapping one art for another. But was it so venal? Which line was straighter? The geisha had initially squawked in commerce-laden consonants. Instead of shedding seven veils, she could pilfer from faux furriers and highwaymen expanding their chicanery to a global stage. She reminded herself that she wasn’t getting any younger and that vocations were adaptable. And the new art presented an atonal atonement, an opportunity to correct the scales. Who needed seven notes when there was a human register?

The ruffians returned for their answer. She assented, and the trio gained a fourth member. The run would last longer than any half-baked phantom of the opulent. The new vocation defied objectification and required no crutch.

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.

Object No. 77 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Nick Asbury, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $11.61. ]

Kenny is a funny clown

Kenny is a funny clown.
He sees the whole world upside-down.
Kenny is my best friend.

The day before Kenny was born, he said
“I bet I can live life standing on me ’ead!”
Kenny is from the North of England.

Kenny sometimes says to me:
“I am the King of Comedy!
Just don’t ask me to do stand-up!”

It’s funnier when Kenny says it.

Kenny’s favourite food
is upside-down cake.
Except he calls it right-way-up cake.

Kenny likes to chat up the ladies.
He says “Hey! I’ve fallen for you baby!”
and the ladies all fall head over heels
and Kenny says “Now you know how it feels!”

Kenny says he has to move on.
“It’s time I stood on my own two feet,
paid my way in this world,
met some new people, maybe a girl!”

Kenny will make someone very happy.
He’s a stand-up guy for an upside-down chappy.
He cheers you up on the days you’re down
and turns any frown upside-down.

Kenny has also asked me to mention
that he is an expert breakdancer.

So long Kenny! See you around.
Keep your feet in the clouds
and your head on the ground.

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.

[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 cannot 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 cannot 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 cannot 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 cannot 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 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.