12 March 2012
Alex fell to his knees before the shade that he had just seen dispatch three men. "What are you?," he whispered, "A devil, or an angel?"
The floating cowled figure regarded him with its silvery, bottomless eyes, cocked its head slightly, and telepathically spoke inside Alex's head. "A little too much of both, I fear." The figure gestured at the mummified fox body that had fallen to the floor during the confrontation, a motion which caused it to float back into the ebony box. "In life, I was that fox whose mortal remains you see before you. Now I inhabit the sarcophagus of eternity!," the voice said telepathically.
"So you're a spirit?," asked Alex, "You're a deceased spirit?"
"There are different states of existence ," replied the cowled figure, "but we who are no longer alive rather resent being called 'dead' by you walking hunks of meat," he continued. "The fact that I'm no longer what you term 'alive' doesn't mean that I'm no longer in the game, but only that I'm now playing in a different field," the fox entity explained with a dismissive wave of his paw. "The fact is, we who have 'passed on' as you quaintly put it, are refined and amplified versions of yourselves, and we rather feel sorry for you who are still in the flesh."
Alex struggled to wrap his mind around the information that he was receiving. "If you're a spirit, are you a good or a bad one?," he asked.
The fox-thing lifted his arms in a kind of shrug. "What is evil but good that has been driven mad by its own hunger and thirst?," it questioned. "But to answer your question, I am a servitor spirit...I am bound to you by assignment to do your bidding, within certain limitations," he explained. "The older, infinitely wiser proprietor of the Curiosity Shop apparently felt that you might benefit from my company for a time."
"So what benefits might those be besides killing people?," questioned Alex with a glance at the three bodies littering the subway car.
"I have such things to show you!," replied the fox spirit with a sweeping movement of his foreleg. In an instant Alex and the spirit were teleported to the surface of some alien planet with a purple surface where three moons filled the sky.
Overwhelmed, Alex begged to be taken back, and in the twinkling of an eye found himself back in the dingy and bloodied subway car again. When he caught his breath he asked of the spirit, "So what am I to do with you?"
"Take me home, of course," answered the entity telepathically, "and I hope that you have cookies!," he added.
(end of third installment)
The Curiosity Shop III • Opuss № I