The Four Magic Items.

“Sir, the subject’s pulse is spiking again.”

“Switch to camera two.”

The assistant punched keys and a window on his desktop opened with a live feed of a room with steel walls and an airlock door. A woman with various wires connected to her was sitting at a rectangular table in the center of the room. She was pressing a golden seashell to her ear.

“She keeps using the shell, sir.”

“What’s her blood pressure?”

“That’s spiking too.”

The supervisor keyed an intercom unit and spoke into it, “Ms. Dodgson, we need to continue the secondary tests on the items. Please put down the shell.”

The subject, Ms. Dodgson, ignored the supervisor. If anything, she held the shell to here head even tighter. The supervisor looked at his notes on the other objects in the test. The first one Ms. Dodgson tested was a golden ring with a heart, a diamond, a club and a spade on it. When she put it on her finger she had vanished; first her feet, then her legs, then all the way up, her smile going last. She was invisible on the normal camera but the infrared said she was still there, the telemetry readings were still sending. The second item tested was a blue liquid. It had made her shrink in size and it went unchecked until she ate a piece of the third item, a small tart. With a little experimentation, she had equalized herself, though it looked like she might have stayed a little tall to stretch herself out. Women.

The fourth and final item was a gold seashell. When she described using it, she said she could hear almost everything no matter how far; the air moving in the duct work, mice moving inside the walls, even the ladies serving tea and turtle soup in the lab’s cafeteria two floors up. Now she just refused to put the shell down.

“Sir, I think she’s yelling at us,” the assistant said.

“Turn on the speaker. Let’s hear what she has to say.”

The assistant punched the keyboard again then turned a small volume dial. They were rewarded with sound to match the subject’s lips on the camera.

“She’s coming! Get me out of here! Please!” Ms. Dodgson yelled.

“Sir, her pulse is really going crazy now.”

With a loud bang, something heavy hit the door to the lab. Both men turned to look at the door. It was an airlock type door, the same as in the subject’s test room. Something was pounding on it, bending it inward. They could hear Ms. Dodgson still screaming at them through the speaker. She was near hysterical now.

They looked back to the monitor and were surprised to see here placing the ring on her finger. She was already steadily disappearing. Only her torso and head were visible now.

When they looked back at their own door, they saw that it was about to give. The seal was no longer flush, the metal rending. They saw gloved hands reach around the edge and a long piece of metal inserted through the gap. The door was soon pulled off the wall.

Through the airlock stepped soldiers in body armor and combat boots and big rifles with bayonets. They wore a red heart insignia on their chest and quickly secured the room as a tall beautiful woman followed them in.

“I want their heads. All of them. Off with their heads!”





© Copyright Jim Sullivan 2007