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He was a shopkeeper who specialized
in "unique" wares that would always provide what a prospective
customer desired. Necklaces that would grant a beautiful singing voice to
whoever wears one. Pens that always wrote incredible stories, powders that gave
an unrivaled physique and so on. He rarely charged for his products, his
payment was the look on his customer's face when they were destroyed by their
own hubris.
He always laughed when would be
divas and rockstars returned after the necklace made them deaf. He mocked the
authors and poets who panicked after the pen began to bring their stories to
life. However, he especially enjoyed the misfortune of the athletes who took
the powder. They always became so mentally handicapped that they could barely
feed themselves, let alone compete in a sport. He may have been a shopkeeper,
but his wares were not meant to help others. Instead, others were to use his
wares to entertain him.
It was a routine day for him, as he
picked through the home of one of his unfortunate "customers." His
was to retrieve an item he had given them. It was a simple item, an owl statue
that granted "the wisdom of old age." Of course, the quickest way to
gain such wisdom was to become older. This poor soul had managed to age
themselves to dust. However, the shopkeeper didn't care for his former
customer's fate. He only wanted the statue back so he could pawn it off to the
next fool.
He moved quickly through the home,
he didn't want to be caught breaking and entering by some nosy neighbor. However,
when he finally located the owl statue in the customer's study, he stumbled
upon something even greater.
"Marvelous," the
shopkeeper muttered to himself as he observed a shelf full of magical items. Not
only his owl statue but several other books, statues, gemstones and more that
radiated mystical energy. He rubbed his hands as purveyed several potential new
additions for his shop. He searched until his eyes passed over one item in
particular. Stored in a dusty, mason jar was a human left hand. It was somewhat
shriveled, but it looked perfectly preserved. Even more bizarre, there was no
embalming fluid or similar preservative. The item was no more than a severed
hand in an otherwise empty jar.
"Could it be?" The
shopkeeper's eyes lit up. He snatched the jar off the shelf, the hand rattled
around inside. He felt a strange hint of magic emanating from the hand, it was
like nothing he had laid hands on before. The shopkeeper grinned and quickly
left the building. The owl statue and the rest of the items were forgotten
completely. He practically ran towards his shop, his eyes never taken off the
hand.
The shopkeeper reached his shop
around nightfall and quickly locked the door behind himself as he entered. He
dashed through the front of his store and leaped into the backroom. The
ecstatic man placed the jar on a table and chucked his keys to the side, while
he moved towards his bookshelf.
"Let's see," the
shopkeeper slid his hand along the many tomes stored in the shelf.
"Artifacts...ancient items...curses...ah, here we are The Enchanted
Corpses of the World." He pulled out a heavy book, bound in animal
skin. The shopkeeper flipped through the pages until he found one with a sketch
of a familiar hand. He compared the sketch to the hand inside the mason jar, it
was a complete match. "If I am correct, which I usually am, then I might
have found one of the keys to immortality," the shopkeeper announced gleefully.
"All it will cost is a small sacrifice on my part."
"Now then, it is called the
Eternal Corpse, and as for its powers," he continued to read the page.
"Eternal youth, immunity to flame, enhanced strength, good luck and so
much more. That fool had no idea what he possessed, if he did, then he'd still
be alive right now. While I may not possess the complete corpse, even a single
finger from the corpse could add a century to my life span." The
shopkeeper chuckled to himself, his mind spun with new possibilities.
"Let's waste no time, immortality awaits."
He quickly retrieved a large knife
with a razor sharp edge, the blade stained with small specs of blood. Then the
shopkeeper popped open the jar and placed the hand to the side before he set up
a wooden cutting board. He chugged a strange liquid that numbed his entire
body. The shopkeeper placed his left hand along the board, the knife held in
his right. He leveled the knife, measured his target and brought the knife down
with a quick stroke.
Despite his precautions, the pain
was still tremendous, his vision blurred as the color red filled his vision.
The shopkeeper steeled himself and grabbed the hand he had set aside. 'It
requires no special procedure or tools,' he recounted in his thoughts. 'The
piece of the corpse will simply latch onto me and slowly grant me its power.'
The shopkeeper pulled the hand towards himself and placed it where his own left
hand once was. Just as he had read the hand latched into his arm. He could barely
feel it dig into his wrist through the numbness and pain.
"Yes, yes, I can feel it,"
the shopkeeper exclaimed as he felt the warm sensation of true power flow into
his body. However, right as he felt the rush of this fantastic sensation,
another less pleasant feeling began to overtake it, rejection. The hand ejected
itself from his arm and flopped onto the table. All it left behind was a round
stump of flesh on the shopkeeper's wrist.
"No, what do you mean no?"
The shopkeeper yelled at the severed hand. There was no reply, but he continued
regardless, "of course I deserve this power, I sacrificed my own hand for
it!" Despite his rant, he received no response. He continued to scream at
the inanimate hand while he cradled the end of his arm.
~--~
The shopkeeper retreated to his room
for the night, he did even bother to return the hand to its mason jar. He
slumped into his bed and tried to fall asleep, but a phantom pain still nagged
at his sense. The shopkeeper downed another bottle of the strange liquid and
shut out the world as he drifted into a restless sleep. With his sense clouded
he failed to hear a racket that had started in his shop.
Late the next day, long past noon,
the shopkeeper fumbled out of his bed and dragged himself down into his shop.
His foggy mind saw nothing out of the ordinary at first, as he poured himself a
glass of water to begin his day. But, when he finished his drink, and his
senses returned, he dropped his glass which shattered on the floor.
His shop was a mess and alive with
activity, but not with anyone or anything human. The many magical items he
tormented his customers with where strewn about the place. Several of them
bounced or floated through the air as though they were possessed. The
shopkeeper ran for the backroom where he had left the hand unattended. Thankfully,
the backroom was no different than he had left it. The hand was still on the
table right where it had landed after it "rejected" him.
"You cursed hand, what have you
done to my shop," he accused the severed hand, "is this your idea of
punishment?" The hand stood inanimate to all his question. "Is this a
joke to you? We'll see who's laughing in a moment," he threatened as he
retrieved his knife, "take this you infernal corpse!" The shopkeeper
stabbed the hand, the knife went right through it and marked the table. He
yanked the knife free, satisfied with his assault. However, the hole in the
hand closed shut as quickly as he pulled the knife out. "Impossible,"
the shopkeeper mumbled.
He again tried to strike down the
hand, but even after he slashed it in two the hand would knit itself back
together. He tried to rip it into pieces, smash it with a hammer, tear it apart
in his garbage disposal and even burn it with matches. Yet, the hand always
came out unscathed in the end.
"Shut up, shut up and
burn," the shopkeeper screamed as he chucked the hands into his lit
fireplace. Despite the flames, the hand was again unscathed. In fact, it didn't
even burn; instead, the flames grew in intensity and size. "What no,
no," the shopkeeper panicked and reached for something to pull the hand
out of the fireplace. As he scrambled towards the fireplace the flames
continued to grow, even as he grabbed a fireplace poker to yank out the hand.
Just as the flame grew larger than
the fireplace, he managed to pull out the hand. The poker partially melted as
he flung the hand across the room right into the bookshelf. The shelf was
knocked over, and several books flopped onto the floor. His eyes briefly
glanced at one of the books, a familiar tome that he had read yesterday. He recalled
how the book described the hand's connection to flame.
"It only spoke of immunity to
flame, it never said anything about this," he cursed the book. As if on
cue, the bookshelf ignited, along with other flammable parts of the backroom.
The flames had yet to die down, and sparks from the fire had filled the room.
"You cursed hand," the shopkeeper roared as he stabbed the hand with
melted poker. The fire continued to spread, and despite his anger at the hand,
the shopkeeper left it behind. He sprinted out of the room, right into the main
shop.
It was then he remembered why he was
angry at the hand in the first place. The shop was still a mess, and the
magical items still floated and bounced around the area. The shopkeeper
attempted to run through the shop, but he tripped and stumbled over the dozens
of items that littered the floor. Even if he tried to get his bearings one of
the floating items would smack into his forehead. He fumbled his way through
the shop but made no real progress. Meanwhile, the fire consumed the backroom
and began to leak into the shop.
He continued to stumble through the
shop as the fire started to envelop it. He sweated from the heat as the flames
began to sap the oxygen from the air. In a moment of desperation with the
flames right on his tail, the shopkeeper leaped towards the door. He landed
flat on his face, but he still managed to make it to the front of the store.
With great relief he stood up and reached for the door, but as he turned the
knob his heart sank. The door was locked, and he didn't have the keys. He
turned towards the backroom and remembered exactly where the keys were. Short
on options, the shopkeeper jumped for one of the windows and struggled to open
it. The fire was all around him, and his mind grew foggy from lack of air as he
fought to pry open the window.
"This isn't how it was supposed
to end," the shopkeeper croaked out, "I deserved so much better than
this." He continued to curse his fate as his sweaty hands slipped from the
window.
~--~
The flames consumed the shop, and it
burned to the ground. Very little of the structure remained by the time the
fire department arrived. The shopkeeper's body was never found, the man was
without family or a will, few mourned his death. Eventually, his remaining
possessions were auctioned off.
However, there wasn't much left
after the fire. There was the property itself, some inventory that was stored
in a nearby shed and a single item that survived the fire. It wasn't much, most
didn't want anything to do with it, but a few curious souls bid on it anyway.
It was perfectly preserved severed left hand in a mason jar.
~~~~
I've had this story idea lying around for a year now. I had originally created it to submit to a short story magazine, but that particular magazine never got off the ground. Thus the story languished in a folder with the rest of my stories ideas from early last year. Then I recently remembered it existed and finally decided to write it out. The original idea for this story was an anthology where the Eternal Corpse and its pieces appeared throughout history and caused trouble. Your typical Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, etc. stories with an ironic punishment at the end. I still want to do that, but for now I'll leave it at this one story.
Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy
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