I’m Damned

by K. J. Watson

A week had passed since Brydale had stolen from the charity shop.

Time to check the recent donations, she decided. That decorative trinket box I nabbed last time sold for a decent price.

She put on her coat and fetched a bag. Outside the flat, she paused to turn her collar up against the wind that blew across the town. Then she headed down the street to the shop.

The manager sat behind the counter, engrossed in sipping a mug of tea.

She won’t bother me, Brydale reflected as she dropped a pair of brand-name sunglasses into her bag. She may have the look of a demonic busybody, but she never budges from her seat.

An eccentric ornament in the window attracted Brydale’s attention. Knowing that such an oddity could sell on the Internet, she sidled up to it. The ornament represented a woman’s head in bone china. Copious hair surrounded an anguished face. To render the object even more peculiar, the potter had added a bilious-green glaze.

“Alluring, wouldn’t you say?”

Brydale started. The manager stood behind her.

She has no right creeping up on me, Brydale thought and gripped her bag.

“Just came in,” the manager continued, gesturing with her mug of tea at the ornament. “Yours for five pounds. It’ll sit well on a mantlepiece.”

In an attempt to display a lack of interest, Brydale scowled. She had no intention of paying a penny for any item.

The manager chuckled. “I’m sure it would suit you.”

Why would the manager suggest that? Brydale wondered. Is she insulting me? Does she know I’ll sell it online?

With her free hand, the manager grasped the ornament. “Here,” she said, placing it beside the sunglasses in the bag. “Forget the fiver. It’s free.”

Perplexed, Brydale had no idea what to say. She hurried from the premises.

“What’s going on?” she asked herself on the way home. “Surely the manager noticed the sunglasses? Why didn’t she challenge me about them? And why give me something without asking for payment?”

In the hallway of her flat, Brydale put down the bag and removed the ornament. “I best sell it straightaway,” she said and looked for a temporary storage place. She opted for the mantlepiece in the living room.

I’ll check online and decide on a price, she determined and turned away. A scraping sound made her hesitate. She glanced back. The hair flowing round the woman’s green, bone-china face had begun to ripple.

Cautiously, Brydale approached the ornament and raised a hand. A strand of the undulating locks curled back and darted its tip into her thumb.

“What the devil?!” Brydale sucked her thumb to ease the pain. Her mouth filled with a bitter taste. Pulling tissues from a pocket, she wrapped her thumb in one and spat saliva into another.

Unbelievable, she thought and glared at the head. It stung me. It must be some sort of abominable novelty.

The ornament’s hair stopped moving. The scraping noise ceased.

“I can’t take you back to the shop and demand a refund,” Brydale muttered. “But I don’t want you in my home any longer, either.”

She shrugged off her coat. With the garment held in front of her, she edged towards the ornament. She felt like a gladiator with a net, stalking an opponent. “I’m going to dump you in the bin,” she declared.

In response, the abundant tresses became animate again and spread like the legs of an insect. Brydale lunged with the coat. The ornament’s improvised limbs propelled it to the other end of the mantlepiece, away from the threat of the enveloping cloth.

In exasperation, Brydale threw the coat to one side. The grief-stricken expression on the ornament’s face softened into a smirk.

“Don’t you dare make fun of me!” Brydale exclaimed.

The eyelids above the ornament’s smug grin opened.

Brydale frowned. “Now what?”

An alarming, sulphurous-coloured light immediately flowed from the sockets.

Impelled by an atavistic instinct for survival, Brydale fled into the hallway and slammed shut the living-room door. She grabbed her bag and donned the sunglasses that lay at the bottom.

Emboldened, Brydale stared at the yellow fluorescence that streamed through the gap at the bottom of the door. Although darkened by the sunglasses, it made her nauseous.

Whatever that is on the mantlepiece, she resolved, I’m going to put it in my bag and throw it under the wheels of a lorry.

She took a deep breath to quell her nausea and went back into the living room. The awful radiance filled every cubic inch. Brydale lurched in the direction of the source, the bag in one hand.

The ornament leapt, intact, to the hearth.

Unable to control her feeling of sickness, Brydale bent over to retch. She struck a foot against a chair and toppled. The sunglasses slid from her nose as she fell in front of the ornament’s blazing eye cavities.

The pernicious light pierced Brydale’s optic nerves and infused her body. She felt her muscles harden, cement-like, into a compact mass.

Panic accompanied her final thought: I’m damned.

* * *

Several weeks later, a housing officer opened the door to the flat. She ushered in the charity shop manager.

“The tenant hasn’t replied to our letters,” the housing officer said. “She’s probably absconded. Have whatever you like for your shop.”

The manager entered the living room. “I don’t think much of the furniture, or that coat and bag on the floor.”

“Fair enough,” the housing officer replied with a sigh.

Brand-name sunglasses and a bone-china ornament rested on the hearth.

“These are saleable,” the manager said, picking them up. “And I’ll take the life-size granite gargoyle lying alongside.”

“It’s ghastly. Why would it be here?”

The manager saw no need to explain. She lifted the gargoyle with supernormal ease and left.