I haven’t really got much, I’ve been busy on a Top Secret project that’s not yet ready for public consumption! But in the meantime, I do have an unrelated, unfinished morsel to share. Will it get finished? Who knows! But there’s been little activity among the Penfolk of late, so I thought it’d be an excuse to get something up here!
Enjoy!
-Anthony
Lost & Found
“I think I just stepped on something.”
Even for a pawn shop the room was cluttered. Without any lights, the silhouettes of other people’s junk were forbidding and edgy.
“Is it squishy?”
“Yes.”
There wasn’t the overbearing smell of dust and cleaner that Lesley usually associated with pawnshops: working as a songwriter in Stanton City had meant she’d visited her fair share by now. She was surprised to find she hadn’t yet visited this one in particular, and was wondering not only why she had never noticed it before, but also why she was now visiting when it had apparently already closed for the night.
“Did it squeak?”
Lesley hesitated. “No?”
“You should be alright then,” replied Jonas as the lights flickered and buzzed into life. The room was a labyrinth of bookshelves and display cases stacked from floor to ceiling with the strangest assortment of second-hand bits, bobs, odds, ends and trinkets Lesley had ever laid eyes on.
She quickly looked down at her shoes to see what manner of squelch she’d stepped in, but there was nothing underfoot to be seen.
“So you said you’d lost something,” said Jonas walking behind a counter at the other end of the shop.
“Right, but I don’t think I’m going to find it here,” said Lesley carefully. She was on the lookout for any scurrying as she navigated clumsily through the displays. Fishing rods and bookends seemed to conspire to reach out to her, knocking against her stray elbow and catching on her shirt as she brushed past.
“You’d be surprised what lost things find their way here,” replied Jonas, pulling a ledger out of the antiquated cash till on the counter.
“Right, but I think you might have misheard me back there,” she said, ducking to avoid a low-hanging children’s mobile. It spun in colourful arcs as she shuffled past.
“That was a nice club. First time I’d been actually. You play there often?”
“Second Wednesday of each month,” replied Lesley. She threw her hands out, catching a statue that had been ready to topple off the shelf. There was no place for her to put it back, so she placed it carefully on the floor. “I think I should probably go before I break something.“
“A song, right?”
Lesley stopped as she almost made it to the relative safety of the serving counter. “Uh, yeah. That’s what I said. But look, I don’t think you understand what I mean. I didn’t lose the manuscript; I hadn’t even got far enough to write it down. I’ve just temporarily forgotten how the melody went, it was just something to talk about-“
“It was picked up yesterday,” said Jonas, reading the entry above his finger in the journal. “Kilmy sold it, must have thought it was unclaimed stock. Undisclosed customer I’m afraid.”
Lesley blinked. “What?”
“Your song. It was taken yesterday. I can call Kilmy now, he might be able to identify the guy who bought it.”
“I… don’t understand what you’re talking about. I think I should go,” she said, backing into a glass display case showcasing a set of elaborately gaudy china plates.
“Wait a minute, we can help. We can get your song back.”
“Look, it’s fine,” said Lesley stumbling over a gold bag. A wave of second-hand goods began to shuffle in her wake. “It was nice meeting you, bye!”
The door closed behind her, the hanging bells ringing merrily at her departure. The entire store seemed to breath out in disappointment and settle back into its shelves and cases.
Squeak.
“Yeah, I probably should have explained that first,” replied Jonas.
Squeak.
“Thanks.”
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