“Well it’s quality innit? You can see just by lookin.”
The stallholder wasn’t wrong, the little silver snuff box was a high quality piece, but it was also ugly as sin. Deliberately so, if Jerry was any judge, whoever made the box had either actively disliked the person they were making it for, or the person who commissioned it hated the person they were giving it to. There was no way this hadn’t been a custom order.
“I don’t suppose you managed to get anything on where it came from?”
That earned Jerry a sly grin. “Why d’you think I’m charging so much. The story comes with the box and if you don’t think it’s worth every penny once you know it, well, I won’t quibble if you want to return the two.”
Now that was a vote of confidence, and Jerry had done business with this stallholder – Morgs – in the past. He was a canny trader but an honest one. Jerry was bored enough to take the dare.
“You have a deal.” Jerry pulled out his card, waving it over Morgs’ phone until it pinged.
Morgs wrapped the snuff box and handed it to him, along with a card. On it was printed an address, and a time. “You show up there, any day, at 10am, and you’ll get the story.”
“Is this some kind of alternate theatre thing?”
“Nope, it’s just you need to hear the story from the source. Don’t hit the same otherwise.”
Curiouser and curiouser as Alice used to say. It was a good thing Jerry had a day free next week.
The DNA of Stories 