The Sale

Dave had never bought anything at a garage sale before, be had gone to them a few times, but had never seen anything he felt like buying. It wasn’t that he was cheap or simply too lazy. It was that most of what he saw at garage sales was simply “junk”. Often what he saw reminded him things he and his family had in their basements and garage that they had bought, thinking they’d use it every day then used it one and stored it away.

It was the middle of summer and Dave was bored out of his mind. At 15 years old he didn’t have very much money, he had tried to get a summer job, but the economy was bad and jobs were very hard to come by. While taking a walk around his neighborhood, looking for something to do he saw a sign advertising a garage sale.

“It will give me something to do, even if for only 10 minutes. I probably won’t buy anything though” he though to himself so decided to 'check it out'.

Most of the stuff for sale was your standard garage sale fare, old board games that hadn’t of been played in years, old computer games and Nintendo games that the families kids hadn’t played in years and were trying to sell to make some extra money. There were also a few pots and pans and some old kitchen gadgets. Dave looked though some of the items, in the hopes that he just might find a video game he hadn’t have played before. Seeing some titles that he hadn’t have played in years, and last played as a kid brought back fun memories, but there wasn’t really anything that he felt like buying.

As he was about to leave, something on one of the tables caught his eye. It was a medium sized statue of a raccoon, it’s was surprisingly detailed and looked real. It had an odd looking stone in it’s chest, which made it seem even more interesting. Dave had always liked animals, he wasn’t an 'animal freak' or anything like that, he had a few pictures in his room and on his computer but nothing major. But something about this statue drew him to it.

Digging into his pocket he was able to find $35.

“There is no way that’s going to cost less then $100" he thought, but inquired anyway. The owner of the house, an older man seemed a bit surprised that it was even there in the first place.

“I might be willing to part with it, if only it hadn’t of had the curse on it”. With a shocked look on his face Dave asked the man what he was talking about. The man told him the story of how he acquired it and of the curse.

“One of my sons bought this from an antique store 5 years ago. Much like you, he seemed drawn to it. He was worried that he could never afford it. The owner of the store let him have it for a very low price, almost as if they were eager to sell it. Only a few days after he had it strange things started to happen.”

At this point he stopped, almost as if he was telling Dave something a secret and just remembered that it was a secret. Releasing that it was too late to stop, the old man continued.

“We always though that this had a curse on it, as weird things started to happen right after be bought it.”

“But you seem okay now” Dave replied.

The man continued,

“Soon after purchasing it, our son went away to college, we lost contact with him. Because of the strange things that happened after buying it, we thought somehow they were related to us losing contact with him. We suspected that it had a curse on it. We called in a priest to try see if he could do anything, if there was some kind of prayer he could say. After some research, we found out about the curse on this statue and preformed a prayer to remove it. It worked perfectly, the next day we heard from Jim (the missing son). It seemed that whenever he tried to call us from college or e-mail us or write to us something went wrong to prevent it from working. He had tried to drive home several times and each time his car would break down. When he asked one of his friends to try to contact us to try to tell us he was okay and about his problems they always were unable to as well.”

Reacting to the story, Dave said

“That a wild story, but it sounds like the prayer worked and that the curse is gone. So I should be fine. Is the statue for sale? And if so how much, I only have $ 35.”

The man was reluctant, but eventually decided to sell it to Dave, figuring that there haven’t been problems since the prayer so it should be safe.

As Dave was walking away from the mans house, he could have sworn he saw a raccoon standing, looking out the window at him, looking worried. But when he looked back it was gone.

As Dave walked away into the distance, the man thought to himself

“I wish I hadn’t of had to lie to him, but I had to get rid of that thing.”

That night Dave put the raccoon statue on his desk by his bed and admired it for a while then went to sleep.

In the middle of the night, Dave was woken up by a strange sound emitting from the statue, he looked towards it, to see the jewel in the middle of it glowing. He got up and walked over to it, trying to figure out what was going on. Just then, the jewel sent out a strange beam of light, which hit Dave. The impact of the beam sent a strange sensation over his entire body, which subsided after a few seconds. Dave examined the statue, and it looked normal, not sure what to do or to think he decided to 'sleep on it' and went back to sleep.

The next day Dave awoke feeling great and refreshed, as if he had sleep better then he had slept in years. He felt great both physically and mentally and was in a very good mood. Looking at the statue, which looked normal and showed no sighs of anything paranormal having ever happened to it, he concluded that what happened must have been a dream or simply his 'imagination playing tricks on him'.

“That story the guy told was probably just a sales pitch”, he though to himself as he began to get undressed to take a shower.

As he walked by the mirror in the bathroom and closed the door, in the corner of his eye something about his reflection didn’t look right. Looking at himself he noticed that the hair on his arms, which at 15 was till fairly thin, was considerably denser and there seemed to be a lot more of it, he could barley see his skin under it. His legs were already fairly hairy, but now they were covered in a pelt of gray-brown hair and his chest hair that was normally extremely light and sparse was a fair bit heavier.

“I’ve heard of puberty causing some changes to seem to appear overnight but this is nuts.” He said to himself out loud. Thinking that these were simply puberty related issues he got into the shower. About halfway through, was he was pouring some shampoo to wash his hair. He was startled by what seemed to be claws growing at the tips of his fingers! A thin coating of fur was also on the top of both hands, turning them around to look at the bottoms he found what looked like pads.

“What the heck is going on?” he said, in an almost panicked voice. As he said this, his voice seemed to change and began to sound higher pitched. His face felt incredibly itchy, as if something was pulling on it. As the fur on his arms and chest grew and expanded, it became much thicker and softer. Finally wanting to look in the mirror to figure our what was happening to his face, Dave got another surprise when reaching for the handle to turn of the water, it seemed to have moved up by at least a foot.

“I’m shirking,” he said to himself, realizing that it was not the objects on the walls that were getting higher but his height that was getting smaller. As he pushed the shower curtain aside, he felt a pulling sensation behind him, his ears also began to feel as if they were being moved up his head somehow. In the few seconds it took him to run to the mirror over the sink, he had continued to shrink enough that he could no longer reach the mirror. The closet doors downstairs had full length mirrors on them, and since he was the only one home (as his parents had left for work) he didn’t have to worry about being caught. Trying to say something, his voice sounded completely different, almost animal like. He felt himself shrink some more and seemed to stop. Almost in a state of panic he got down to the basement. His back and muscles started to feel odd and he found himself feeling uncomfortable running on two legs. The length of his arms and legs and changed so that he could now run on

“all fours” and he did so, somehow it felt much more comfortable and normal. When he finally got to the closest and looked at the mirror to see what was going on, he saw something he never would have though possible. His reflection was that of a raccoon.

“No! This is impossible! It has to be a trick!” he thought to himself. To try to ‘fool’ the trick he started moving various parts of his body. The reflection responded perfectly, it didn’t take him long to realize that it was no trick, and an examination of his body confirmed it. This was not a trick, a dream or hallucination, he really was a raccoon. When he tried to speak, only raccoon sounds would ‘come out’.

“So what do I do know”. He though to himself, again looking in the mirror he this time admired his reflection. As a human his looks were pretty average, he had never really stood out, but as a raccoon he actually very handsome, his fur was a mixture or gray and brown, a mixture that worked perfectly. He seemed to be pretty young, old enough to be on his own, but still young enough to have a long life ahead of him.

He decided that he had to go to the old man’s house and get an explanation from him. Managing to open a basement window and crawl out, he closed it behind him and made the journey to the man’s house. At the size of a raccoon the journey took quite a bit longer, it had taken only 15 minutes to get there as a human, but crossing roads was now much more difficult. He stopped several times along to way, climbing tree’s, fascinated by the smells his new senses allowed to experience for the first time ever. From even just a simple sniff of a tree branch he could tell that squirrels had been there a hour ago and birds regularly perched there. He could also smell that other raccoons has been there before, it felt so strange being able to get this much from just a small ‘whiff’. His hearing had also greatly improved and he could hear people standing a fair distance away talking, he understood what they were saying.

“Good, at least I can still understand English”.

Eventually he arrived at the mans house. He saw him sitting on the porch having a coffee and reading the news paper, walking up to him, he began to protest, oddly enough he seemed to understand not only how to make all the sounds a raccoon can make, but how to make them. Dropping the newspaper, the old man gasped, and then shook his head, looking guilty.

“It’s you isn’t it? The kid that bought that statue yesterday?” Dave knodded his little head to say ‘yes’. The man continued

“Kid, I’m sorry about this. I honestly though the curse was gone, I guess I owe you the full truth. The part of my story about my son buying the statue was true, but the part about him going to college then losing contact was not. Much like you, it turned him into a raccoon, we later found out that the statue did indeed have a curse on it. He really did think he had removed the curse. Since none of us was affected by it after all of these years we had no reason to think other wise. Last night I was checking though the documents we have on it, and found something I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know where you lived so I couldn’t contact you. It seems the reason we were not affected by it is because it only affects the owner of it, since he bought it, he was the owner of it, and since you bought it you are now the owner. I’m afraid that there is no way to reverse the effects of it. But the good news is that, you will actually live just as long as you would have as a human, and your intelligence and mind will not be affected, you will never forget who you are. Don’t worry I can take you home and explain what happened to you to your family.”

Perching on the mans shoulders, Dave directed him, though a series of warbles and trill’s to his home. With each passing minute he was feeling more and more comfortable in this body. When Dave parents got home, the man explained what had happened to him, with Dave able to use a pen and pad to write to prove it really was him. At first they were upset, but when they saw that Dave was in reality happy with what had happened and would choose to stay this way even if a cure was ever found they accepted it.

That night as he curled into a little ball on his bed, something that felt very nice, Dave looked at himself in his bedroom mirror then looked at the statue and smiled, he could have sworn it smiled back at him as he closed his eyes and went to sleep.