what you found and what it cost

The sign over the store entrance says “Pain – All Kinds.” Inside, shelves line three walls of the small room. Smaller displays stand in the middle area. A tall, bald man stands behind a counter to one side. The shelves are filled with small black boxes, each with a brass latch. The boxes are of lacquered wood and hurt to touch.

“What’s in them?” you ask the man, who may not be a man. He – or she, or they – is completely hairless, with wide, flat eyes and hands that puff slightly at the fingertips, like a frog.

“Pain,” he answers, without rancor.

“What, everything?”

“All the pain in the world.”

“Ah.” You brush the lid of the nearest box, gingerly. It is cold and smooth and it hurts. There is a silence. You’re trying to remember why you came in here. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. “How much do you charge?”

“I do not set the prices.” He half-raises one hand in an abortive gesture. “That one is yours.”

You glance at the box, your hand resting on the shelf beside it. You restrain the impulse to touch again. “I don’t think I want it.”

“You have not heard the terms.” A bone-dry triangular smile. “If you take the box, you can bring him back.”

Your breath catches in your throat, as though the air inside it had turned to a shaft of ebony.

The croaking voice continues. “All that he was, and all that he meant to you. Though he will not remember you, will never have known you and never will, nor anything you have done for him. He will be alive again, as though he was never gone. An amnesty, of sorts, for your mistakes, your failures.” Your fingers convulse. “But you cannot touch him. Only to see, only to watch, only to know.” He pauses, and his smile is gone, or perhaps never was. “That is the cost of that box.”

For a moment, you can almost see him, like looking out into a sunlit day from inside, behind the curtains. He is laughing. He is not looking at you.

“Have I been here before?” you ask. “How much pain can you buy?”

There is no answer. The space behind the counter is empty. The shop is empty, shelves fallen and layered in dust and spiderwebs, the window’s cobblestone glass panes too dirty to let in the light. You are gripping a shiny, black wooden box full of pain, and it is a block of ice, heavy and difficult to hold. There is movement outside, the sound of leaden footsteps, wheels, a combustion engine. Shadows pass over the glass, dingy gray against the wintry glow. Something squawks, shrill and hate-filled.

The latch is under your fingers. It is warm rather than icy, but warm like plunging wind-chilled hands into hot water, a comfort that holds the already burgeoning seeds of pain within it. In a moment, it will begin.

The box is not yet open.

But there is nothing else you can do.