Curiosities' End

Back at the dressing table after not having had room for a muffin because she had eaten so much corn bread, she once more surveyed her afternoon haul.

Mill was sure that she had put No. 895 in a bag before going to supper. Now it was out of the bag, and seemed a different colour from what she had remembered. And, there seemed to be a sort of cloud of tiny insects around it, barely large enough to see. What were they, and why would they gather around an old golf ball.

The sound of the water running in the bathtub told Mill that she would have to study No. 895 later. Aunt Buck liked for Mill to take her bath early so the ancient hot water heater would have time to recover for her own bath. Picking up the ball for a quick closer look before going off to her bath,

Mill felt a slight tingling, almost like a bite from an ant. Whatever those tiny insects were, they had a big defense. By the time she reached the bathtub, she had a slight rash on her arm. Aunt Buck saw it and wondered if she had found some poison ivy.

‘No,. I watch for poison ivy. I think I just got bitten by a gnat or something.’

‘Well, let’s put some baking soda in your bath  water. That should help.’

And the sting and the  itching did pass very quickly. Aunt Buck wanted Mill to stay in the tub for a while to ‘take away the poison’, but Mill was anxious to get back to her specimens, especially No. 895. Dried off in one of the thin and rough towels that it seemed only Aunt Buck liked, except that Mill liked them because Aunt Buck did, and in her seersucker pajamas, Mill returned to the table by the window. The ‘gnats’ were gone. The golf ball seemed the colour it had been when she had found it. It did match the photo she had on her phone. She wished she had taken another picture when it had seemed a different colour. She made a mental note to document her specimens better in the future. This time she was certain to bag No. 895, and put it in line with her other finds of the day. The corn snake skin, No. 896, was a problem. She needed a long bag to hold it without damaging it. Maybe Aunt Buck had a spaghetti wrapper she could use. She did. Aunt Buck knew that her favourite niece often needed special equipment.

The bed felt especially good that night, with the delicious cool of the sheets enhanced by the warmth that remained from the hot soda bath. Mill was quickly asleep.

She did not sleep for very long, it seemed, before a strange noise woke her, a slight buzzing, like bees or a very large cloud of gnats. At first she thought that there must be more of those gnats, and she wondered if she should have shut the window.

But then she saw No. 895. It was out of the bag, again, and glowing again, brighter this time, and humming slightly. Mill sat paralyzed by wonder as her golf ball lifted off the table and swept out the window, gathered speed, and disappeared.