Page 37 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
There were more signs of life on the top floor. The first room had two chairs surrounded by wooden boxes and trunks. The second room looked something like a kitchen, with an old electric cooker and the smell of rotting food. The window shutters here were open to the Cairo night and flies buzzed as they picked over the remains of discarded meals.
Owen found his target through the third doorway along the corridor, in a room that was illuminated by a blade of moonlight slicing in through the open shutters. A figure was lying on a mattress on bare floorboards, surrounded by discarded and empty vodka bottles. The man’s face was all angles and holes in the moonlight, the face of a corpse beneath anuntidy mop of grey hair. He was gazing out the window, like he was dreaming or dead, but some change in the atmosphere, or some sense, alerted him to Owen’s presence, and the man turned his head on his pillow, wide eyes staring. Owen expected a scream or a shout of anger, but instead the corpse’s mouth spread into a rictus grin, and a thin cackle trickled out between his lips.
“Who are you, then?” he asked, between giggles.
Owen stepped into the room and ran his eyes around the dark space. There was a door on the left, a sour smell revealing that it was a toilet, and an old, cracked mirror leaning against the wall opposite the bed, reflecting the diagonal streak of moonlight. Owen felt the warm night air of Cairo drifting in from the open shutters, but it did nothing for the lingering smell of sweat and urine and stale alcohol.
“Oh, I see,” the man said, his laugh drying up as he drew some conclusion. “Come to off me, is it? Scared I might reveal what I know?”
Owen took the opportunity to study the man’s face and decided he didn’t recognise the target. But the man had been handsome at one time, before whatever addiction now held him in its grip. Owen detested the man, despite knowing nothing about him. He was a living example of weakness, of indiscipline. Just like his own father had been, this man was an addict.
“I suppose one has become a liability,” the man reflected, turning his face back to the window. “Only to be expected. They don’t like me taking money from the Iranians, do they? Well, I wouldn’t have to if they paid me what I was due.”
Owen approached the bed, floorboards creaking beneath his weight, considering whether he could simply lift the man and toss him out the window to the cobbles below. But it was entirely possible that such a fall might not kill the man. Better to be sure. He contemplated smothering the man instead. He stepped closer to the bed, wondering about the thin pillow beneath his head.
“Wait, wait, wait!” the man pleaded, moving quickly to throw a hand up in front of him, his eyes suddenly bulging with panic. Owen hesitated, surprised by the speed of the man’s movement, the sudden power of his fear. “I’ll make you a deal,” the man gasped, words spillingout of him. “Let me live... and I’ll give you the most valuable thing in the world.”
“The most valuable thing in the world?” Owen asked quietly, playing along, indulging the man at the end of his life.
The man pushed himself into a sitting position, reaching a hand towards Owen, grabbing the fabric of his trousers like a beggar pleading for scraps.
“Magic,” the man said, his tone hushed and his eyes wide and wild. “Magic is real. And I can give you a magical item.”
Owen stared down at his victim, unimpressed.
The man lifted a chain that hung around his neck, pulling a small silver flask from beneath his ragged shirt. “This!” he said, whispering hoarsely. “This is it, it’s magic!”
Owen stared at the flask—a shot flask, a tiny silver vessel on a chain with volume enough for no more than one or two mouthfuls of liquid.
“Watch!” the man begged. “Just wait, please.” With shaking, frantic hands, he unscrewed the lid on the flask, the chain clanking lightly against the silver, and then he upturned the vessel, letting the contents spill out onto the mattress. The fluid was clear and made a light pattering sound as it fell between his thighs. Owen watched, waiting for the flow to reduce to a trickle, to stop. But the liquid kept coming, a steady clear stream, showing no signs of running dry.
After thirty seconds Owen felt himself frown. The man on the bed smiled, and now his eyes seemed calculating to Owen, less terrified than moments earlier. “See,” he said, and there was something of a triumphantI told you soin his tone. “Magic.”
Owen stared at the steady stream of liquid, his mind falling unusually quiet. What he was witnessing wasn’t possible. It had to be a trick of some kind.
“No matter how much you drink, it never runs out,” the man explained. “But when you drink... oh, when you drink...” His eyes closed briefly, like a man in a moment of ecstasy. “All of your senses are opened. You can feel things you would never otherwise feel. You can see things you can’t otherwise see. With this flask, you can do amazing things. Youcan see truth and lies... you can be powerful. And you can have it, my friend... all you have to do is let me live.”
Owen watched as the liquid continued to tumble from the tiny flask. It simply made no sense. It wasimpossible.
He stooped down and snatched the flask. The man gave it up easily, scuttling backwards on the mattress until he hit the wall. Owen inspected the item, looking for the trick. Because it had to be a trick, didn’t it? The flask was heavier than he would have expected, and felt strange in his hand, somehow solid and dense andunsettlingto look upon in a way he couldn’t quite grasp. He lifted the flask to his nose and sniffed the contents but there was no scent. He stepped away from the filthy mattress, into the moonlight, and upturned the flask once more, pouring liquid onto the dusty floorboards. He watched silently as a yawning chasm of astonishment opened in his mind.
How was this possible? How could a flask be endlessly full of liquid?
“Where did you get it?” Owen asked the man, so rocked by what he was experiencing that he forgot to whisper.
“It’s been in my family for years,” the man answered. Owen glanced over to the mattress and saw that the man’s eyes were fixed on the stream of liquid. “Bit of a secret. I’m the only one left now.”
The man met Owen’s gaze, and a smile stretched across his face, revealing uneven, stained teeth. “You should drink it,” he said. It was a dare, a challenge. “It’s magic.”
“Poison?” Owen suggested. “You think I’m stupid enough to drink it?”
The man sighed, closing his eyes as if defeated. “Yes, that’s right, you stupid man. It’s a magic flask of poison. That’s what I ruined my life over.”
Owen bristled inwardly. In his scorn, Owen saw some remnant of who this man had once been, the authority and power he had once held.
“Kill me if you want,” the man muttered. “I genuinely don’t fucking care anymore.”
Owen was unsettled—by the flask and its impossible liquid, by this man on his piss-stained mattress thinking he was better than him. So he took a sip of the liquid, tossing his head back and swallowinga mouthful. It was cool on his lips and silky like oil as it passed over his tongue.
