The Third Customer
This story was made using the solo RPG Caveat Emptor, by Exeunt Press.
Ohog grimaced when Helisäus Chytraeus opened the door to the curiosity shop. They had been hoping for a challenge, or at least something interesting. Instead, Helisäus was easily one of the most cliched and boring mortals he had ever seen. Slow of wit, large on ambition, and small in dedication. It was the curse of all mortals, that their dreams always reached so much further than their abilities, or their drive.
Some devils said Pride was the greatest sin, but Sloth certainly made temptation easier.
“Welcome to my little shop of curios! If you need help finding anything, I’d be more than happy to —”
“I’m looking for something interesting,” the man sniffed, beginning a circuit of the store. “You have anything interesting here?”
“But of course,” Ohog forced another smile. “Everything in here is interesting in some way or another. Each item has its own marvelous tale…why, that harp you are holding was made out of —”
“I don’t want something curious,” Helisäus sniffed, setting the harp back on the floor, “I want something interesting.”
Ohog paused. For all that was an open book about mortals, there were still the intangibles, the little foibles that you could only learn by talking to them. Helisäus, for example, may have been dim of wit, but he certainly wasn’t small of confidence. “Perhaps you could explain a bit more? What do you mean by interesting?”
“I mean it can hold your attention,” Helisäus muttered, irritation already starting to leak through his teeth.
Dim of wit often came with clumsy of tongue, and that didn’t make things easy. Ohog suppressed a sigh and stepped out from behind the counter. “Well, of course. I have a mirror that can hold the attention of any who —” they stopped as they remembered they had given that mirror, un-enchanted, to their last customer, “but I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps if you told me what you want to do with this ‘interesting item,’ I might be able to help you better?”
“I’m going to start a show,” Helisäus grumbled, tapping at the raven’s birdcage, causing it to croak in frustration. “Make some money.”
“Ah,” Ohog could see his plan, now. “Like the circus that came through town the other day? Come and see the strange delights of Helisäus Chytraeus’s wandering carnival. A withered corpse of a long-dead nymph, a three-headed cow, a saint’s finger, and the mandrake root that screams when it’s pulled? Ah, yes, that is certainly a path to fame, fortune, and power…”
Helisäus paused, as Ohog knew he would. Tapping the raw nerves of desire always caught human’s attention. “Whaddya mean a path?”
“Well,” Ohog leaned against the counter, “I am but a humble shopkeep, but —”
“Oh,” Helisäus muttered. “Never mind.”
“But,” Ohog spoke just a bit louder, “As a curator of curios I know that people tend to get bored of the strange and interesting rather quickly. Why, you’d have to spend half your time crawling through curiosity shops and dens of the mysterious, looking for fresh and freakish items to display. It certainly takes up enough of my time, and I don’t get that many customers!” Disappointingly few, in fact. They brushed terrifying images of Mephistopheles’s displeasure out of their mind.
“Yeah,” Helisäus furrowed his brow. “Yeah, but there’s money in carnivals.”
“And fame,” Ohog nodded, “and…well, if you get enough money you might be able to buy power, I suppose, but…well, and there’s not a lot of fame in circuses. Sure, people will talk about you for a time, but then they’ll forget once the next circus rolls into town. You’d be running everywhere all the time, making sure your name stays on their lips…that’s a lot of work.”
“Yeah,” the man’s fingers started tapping on his leg. “Yeah, that’s true…but there is money and fame —”
“You know,” Ohog took the next step, leading his prey by the nose, “there are easier ways of becoming famous. Getting money and power, too. Ways that don’t take so much effort.”
“Yeah?” Helisäus followed Ohog to the other end of the shop like a curious puppy. “Like what?”
“Well…” Ohog grabbed a wooden mask from the top shelf, “like this for example.”
Helisäus snatched the mask from Ohog’s fingers and turned it over and over. “It’s a mask.”
“Well spotted,” Ohog indulged in a small amount of ire. “This mask is quite special, however. It was made in the depths of the Black Forest, carved from a hangman’s tree which had held no less than thirty innocent souls. Cured with the smoke of a fire made with black rooster feathers, this mask will allow you to adopt the identity of anyone in the world! Why bother working to make your fortune, when you could simply take someone elses?”
“Hmm…” Helisäus thought for a moment. “That is easier…”
“So much easier!” Ohog gently took the mask back, waving it about in the man’s gaze like an alluring will-o-the-wisp. “Become the pope and watch people fawn over you! Become the king and see how they obey! Become a priest and see how they give you alms and tithes, as much as you’d like, whenever you want!”
“Yeah…” Helisäus thought for a moment more, his brow furrowed tightly. “But…that’s any mask, right?”
Ohog balked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Only,” Helisäus tapped the wooden mask in Ohog’s grasp, “I can put on any mask and say I’m the pope, right? No one would see my face, so how would they know its not me?” A moment of realization crossed his face. “How would they know I was the pope? They’d ask me to take off the mask, and then they’d see it was me.”
“Well, no, hold on,” Ohog held up the mask. “Did you hear how this mask was made? Strange magics infuse the wood of this —”
“Nah,” Helisäus shook his head, pushing the mask back to Ohog’s chest. “Magic ain’t that interesting. Tried it once, and it’s hard to get it right. No thanks. I don’t think there’s anything I want here. Goodbye.”
Ohog watched as Helisäus turned about and left the shop, shaking his head and muttering as he left. The mask sagged in his hands, and he carefully replaced it on the shelf. Was he a saint? How had he understood the exact nature of the curse? The mask would have magically allowed him to assume another person’s identity, but only while it was worn, and it would not hide itself. People would have begged him to remove the mask, or been suspicious of its presence, and he would have spent years of his life trying to figure out how to get it right…Ohog had been proud of that curse.
More importantly, that was another customer out in Wittenberg who hadn’t purchased anything. It was easy to assume secrecy when there was a purchase; few people would talk about a magical shop and its cursed items if they had purchased one themselves, but people who didn’t buy anything, well, they had the tendency to talk. A few people were probably okay — rumors abounded about even the most holy of bakeries — but the more confirmation those rumors had…
Ohog shook their head. They needed to focus. There were still a lot of customers out there, and they wouldn’t curse themselves.
Well, they would, but Ohog needed to keep his numbers up. His quota still loomed large overhead…