Story Orgy Presents: Creature Feature: Mum's the Word #storyorgy #mummies #creaturefeature #malexmale

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Mum's the Word
Chapter Eight

Sept 21: "I would like to make an exchange, please."

“Perfect?” Izzy looked adorable staring at him as though he’d lost his mind.

“Yeah. For the first time we know exactly where the professor is not going to be. We can come back here tonight and continue the search for the collection.” Excitement bubbled up inside him, and Owen had a hard time not bouncing up and down like a kid on a trampoline.

“Uh… isn’t that what we’re going to do now?” Izzy shrugged. His confused frown melted into a heart-breaking smile as he seemed to catch Owen’s excitement.

“Yesh… but… Come on. Don’t you want to?”

“Sneak in after the professor thinks we’re gone? Sure… we can play Night at the Museum if you want, but how are we going to get back in after he locks the doors?” Izzy pointed out logically.

“I got this covered.” Owen headed down the hall to B wing. “I just need to get some tape when we go upstairs for lunch.” Izzy pattered after him, and Owen remembered that they were supposed to stick together.

“Tape?” Breathing heavily from his quick sprint to catch up, Izzy side bumped Owen as he turned the corner into B corridor.

“Yeah. I just need a little duct tape and we can get in here easy. I saw it on a television show when I was a kid. Used to do it at home. I lost my key and my mom swore she’d bust me if I lost it again, because the landlord made her pay a three hundred dollar deposit to replace the locks. So, of course--”

“You lost it again? After that? Man--”

“Yeah. And I couldn’t tell my mom because I knew she didn’t have the money to pay for another lock change. We ate nothing but eggs and ramen for a month to pay for that first lock change, and so… I MacGyvered it.”

“MacGyvered it? With tape?”

“Yeah. It worked too, until my mom found my key in the laundry, and I got busted anyway, but that’s not gonna happen here.”

“No? Okay.” They stood in corridor B, counting the doors. At the far end of the hall was a lumpy, shadowed collection of boxes and a tall metal filing cabinet. “Start at the end and work our way forward?” Izzy suggested, leaning into Owen a little.

Owen accepted that weight, welcomed it. “You think there might be something of interest in those big boxes? Surely if there were valuable Egyptian artifacts they’d be locked in a storage room securely somewhere?” He glanced at the junk at the end of the hall again. That box might be tall enough to hold something interesting…

“Well,” he acceded, “at least it will be a quick check.” Not like all those tiny shoe boxes and file folders in the previous rooms.

“Right.”

They’d just reached the end of the hall and those big boxes when Izzy grabbed his hand again.

“Sh.”

Owen paused, one hand on the flap of a box. “What is it?” He asked, looking at Izzy curiously.

“Did you hear that?” Izzy ducked close to him, glanced back over his shoulder. “I thought… It was a scratchy sound.”

Listening carefully, Owen shook his head. “No. I don’t hear anything. Maybe it was the professor moving something upstairs?” He turned back to the box, unable to suppress the excitement. This box… it might contain treasure… It was surely too big to contain more letters or financial documents. “Do you think a mummy would fit in this box?” He measured its height with a critical gaze. Mummies were short… right?

“Doubtful,” Izzy commented, pulling open one of the doors to the metal cupboard. “Wasn’t even locked. Probably a sure sign that there’s nothing good in here.” His voice grew muffled.

Curious, Owen glanced over at his friend. Izzy had brushed his hair back behind one ear, and bent forward into the depths of the cabinet. “Anything?”

“Uh…” Straightening so swiftly that he banged his elbow on the b=metal door, Izzy retreated from the cabinet into the shadows. “I’d like to make an exchange.”

“Huh?” Owen glanced back and forth between Izzy and the cupboard. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… Here. You take this. I’ll get the box.” Izzy’s pale face looked even paler in the dim hall light, and Owen grew concerned.

“Izzy…”

“Here…” Izzy pushed him toward the steel cabinet and reached for the flap of the box. “Go on.”

Having been pushed toward the cabinet, Owen stared at his friend, bewildered. “Izzy…”

A shower of dust flew into the air as Izzy jerked the box flaps apart. The tape ripped off with a dry, scratchy noise that sent a shiver down Owen’s spine. “Just… Check out the cabinet, please Owen.”

Shrugging, Owen turned back to the open cabinet. It was dark inside… and just as dusty as the boxes around it. Being closed hadn’t protected the contents from time. He wasn't sure what he expected to see after Izzy’s weird reaction, but it didn’t look like anything was out of order to him. Sighing, he reached for the first thing his fingers touched and pulled out a heavy block shaped object.

“Ugh.” Izzy had made short work of the big box, and sat with its contents around him on the floor.

“What is it?” Owen asked without giving his friend more than a cursory glance before turning his own mystery item over in his hands. It was… definitely strange. A block of some sort of heavy plastic, maybe glass… and inside it a … “Izzy, what does this look like to you?”

“It looked like a big fuckin’ spider, why do you think I switched places with you?”

Startled, Owen glanced back at the cabinet. Sure enough, on the bottom shelf amid a dusty tangle of web, was a big spider, black and multi-legged, but nothing to get hysterical over. “That? That’s just a garden variety daddy long legs. Eats other insects and minds its own business.”

“This isn’t a garden, and fuck that. It’s big and creepy and … What the hell is that?”

“A daddy long legs, doofus. I just told you.”

“No… that.” Izzy pointed at the thing in Owen’s hands.

“Oh… yeah I was wondering myself.” He held the thing out into the light, revealing a bit more detail.

“Is that… a man’s hand?” Izzy sounded appalled.

Owen studied the thing. “Yeah. It looks like one, but it can’t be real. Maybe it's from a movie set or something. Remember that book we read freshman year? The Monkey’s Paw? Artifacts like this were pretty common a hundred years ago.”

Izzy swallowed hard, his eyes widened. “Uh… Owen?” His voice had dropped to a whisper.

Owen tipped the object over. The skin was leathery, the bones cracked ivory. It might be a real human hand, or the best replication that could be made. “Huh?”

“Owen!” Izzy hissed.

“It would be awesome if there were provenance papers in here that could tell us more about this. Think about what a fabulous exhibit a human hand would make… Visitors would love the creep factor.”

“Owen!”

“What?” He focussed his attention on Izzy, and the things lying on the floor. “Did you find something great in that box?” Owen knelt, holding the plastic encased hand in one hand and bracing himself against the floor with the other. “It just looks like clothes to me, Izzy.” A filmy white heap of something that could be a wedding dress, some pointy toed shoes that looked fairly lethal, and a suit of black woolly fabric that looked like it had seen better days.

“Behind you.” Izzy shook, eyes wide pools of shock.

Heart hammering in instant terrified response to that expression, Owen spun around so fast he threw himself off balance and ended up falling awkwardly on his elbow. The block in his hand hit the floor and shattered.

A thin sliver of light, running floor to ceiling, brightened a crack in what had seemed to be a solid wall. Then vanished, as though a door had been closed securely.

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Hank Edwards

Havan Fellows 

EM WOODS