Page 38 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
On the mattress, the man smiled again. “Good for you,” he murmured. “Everything changes now.”
Nothing happened, and Owen was about to toss the flask aside and be done with it, but then everything did change, suddenly, like a firework going off on a dark and silent night.
His senses erupted, impossible colours filling his vision and the sounds of the city suddenly like an orchestra in his ears. It was as if the volume and the brightness on a TV set had suddenly been turned up to full. Owen gasped in shock and stumbled backwards a step, arms thrown out to steady himself. When he looked at the man on the mattress he couldfeeleverything the man was thinking and fearing. He couldseethe man’s panic, his desperate desire to hang on to the pitiful remains of his life, but also his tiredness at what he had become, and his sorrow at the life he had lost. Owen could see all of this in vivid colours swirling behind the man, like the wings of an exotic butterfly, iridescent but as thin as tissue. It was beautiful.
“Fuck me,” Owen murmured, and his own voice was visible in the air, curling through it and across the room, as if he couldseethe sound waves disrupting the darkness.
Owen turned on the spot and looked at himself in the tall mirror propped against the wall. He saw his own wings behind him, the complex, shifting textures and tones, like a kaleidoscope, glowing brilliantly in the gloom and sparkling where they touched the moonlight. He saw every colour he had ever known and some he had never seen before.
“You can see the wings, can’t you?” the man whispered. “Everyone has wings. I think it’s your soul. The flask lets you see your soul.Everyone’ssoul.”
Owen watched the many colours swirling like smoke in his wings, his mouth hanging open at the beauty of it all. He saw dense, dark spots—deep reds and blacks and purples—and heknewthat these were all the people he had killed, the marks on his soul from all of the deaths he was responsible for. He knew it in the same way he knew how to seeand how to hear; it was a new sense he now had, a sense that the flask water had opened in him.
“Seeing with opened eyes... it’s addictive,” the man cooed from the bed, and Owen watched him in the mirror. The old man’s wings were much thinner and less vibrant than Owen’s. “When you drink from the flask, the joys of life are amplified. Try eating or drinking or fucking with a drink of this in your belly...” A reedy giggle escaped him again. “You will never know pleasure like it!”
Owen reached backwards, watching in the mirror as he passed a hand through the rainbow that trailed behind him, like dragging a hand through shallow water. “Unbelievable,” he murmured, and he heard the music of his own human voice, saw again the sound waves curl through the air.
Owen passed the chain of the flask over his head, taking possession of the item. He wanted to drink from it again. He wanted to see what life was like with opened eyes, with this new sense.
“Yes!” the man on the bed whispered, and Owen saw pleasure or relief ripple through the man’s wings. “Take it! It’s yours!” He clapped his hands twice like an excited child.
Owen had been told to make it look like an accident, but in that moment, he didn’t care about his instructions. In that moment he wanted to see what would happen, what he wouldexperiencewith his new sense. He marched over to the mattress and grabbed the man by his hair, pulling his head roughly back. There was a burst of confusion in the man’s eyes, and a corresponding ripple of colours across his wings, then startling, terrifying realisation, eyes like car headlights in the darkness as Owen pulled out his flick knife and sliced it across the old man’s throat.
Owen danced back quickly, avoiding much of the resultant spray as life pumped from the wound in viscous, red spurts. The man gurgled, one bony hand on his neck, and slumped down on the mattress, twitching in a puddle of his own blood until he was still.
Owen watched and waited and finally life left the man’s eyes. Almost immediately the wings behind him winked out of existence. A second later there was an explosion of light in the air above the body, abrilliant, vibrant fountain that was more beautiful than anything Owen had ever seen. An awedOh!escaped his lips as he watched, then he felt his own butterfly wings flash and pulse, and when he looked over his shoulder to the mirror he saw them flicker rapidly like the lights of a fairground.
The fountain of colours above the corpse separated and dimmed, as the man’s soul went to where it was going, but some of that fountain, some of that colour, merged with Owen’s wings, another soul, another memory in his collection.
Owen moaned audibly as his whole body shivered with pleasure.
***
When Owen met Waverly Weir at a brasserie in Paris a week later, to debrief, he took a drink from the flask before Weir arrived.
“You look strange,” Weir announced, as he flapped out the napkin to lay it on his lap. Owen inclined his head and studied the man’s wings.
“Do I?” he answered. With his heightened senses he saw Weir better than he had ever seen him before. He saw the lies and cowardice as shades of cold blue and white in Weir’s wings, colours that trembled like a fearful child waiting to be struck. He was a man who couldn’t be trusted, a man who was using Owen while knowing his usefulness would come to an end. Owen could see that plans were forming in Weir’s mind, shown by complex lines of black and grey, like veins running across Weir’s wings. Those lines were shifting and connecting, schemes forming, even as Owen watched.
Weir spoke to him about Egypt, expressing displeasure at the murder that hadn’t been made to look like an accident, and Owen saw the strength of the man’s unhappiness in his wings if not on his face.
“Sorry about that,” Owen said, tilting his head to watch Weir’s wings as the man buttered a bread roll. “I’ll make it up to you next time, I promise. We still have a long, productive partnership ahead of us, plenty of time to make amends.”
Weir smiled. “That’s right,” he said, concentrating on his roll. “Long,productive partnership.” His wings shimmered violet with deception, and Owen knew the partnership was over.
The next time Owen met Weir, in a car park in central London, Weir wasn’t expecting him, and Owen added the man to the wings of colour he carried with him.
Then Owen Maddox moved across an ocean to escape the government that had employed him for so long. For ten years he sold his services and every victim he took was added to the colours he carried with him, painting his butterfly wings. With his senses awakened by the flask, every killing became a work of art, the finest meal, or the most exquisite piece of music.
When he thought about the man in Cairo, which he found he did often, usually when his mind wasn’t occupied with tasks or plans, Owen was able to see why he had ended up the way he had. The flask was addictive. It made every experience as sweet as the most powerful drug. It made it impossible not to always have the flask with him. But he knew that the difference between himself and other people—such as the man in Cairo, or Waverly Weir with his cigarettes, or even Owen’s own father with his alcohol—was willpower and discipline. Owen refused to be weak; he was determined not to end his days alone and delirious in a dirty room. He refused to succumb to temptation, so he restricted his use of the flask to when he was working, when he was despatching someone to their next life, his butterfly wings unfurled at his back. He didn’t need to use the flask constantly, as long as he could savour its contents occasionally.
And that was fine, until the day the flask was stolen from him, by a man who couldn’t die, and Owen could no longer see nor feel his beautiful butterfly wings.
The Society of Unknowable Objects Meets
Magda stood in front of the Clockwork Cabinet admiring the craftmanship of the piece. The grain of the polished wood was beautiful, like the back of an expensive violin, and the fine gold numbering on the drawers winked at her where they reflected the light. Whoever had built the cabinet must have known its purpose; they surely were aware that it was more than just a piece of furniture. This cabinet was intended to contain miracles.
But does it?
