The Object Of My Affection 【PLUS ✧】

When he looked up, the shop was silent. The music box sat on the workbench, once again a simple, closed cube of dark wood. No seams. No keyhole. No groove.

The ivory woman began to dance, but her movements were erratic, desperate. She reached out, her tiny hands grasping at the air. Elias realized with a jolt of horror and fascination that she wasn't dancing; she was searching.

Elias didn't try to open it again. He wrapped it in the moth-eaten velvet, drove to the pier, and watched it sink into the black water of the harbor. But that night, as he lay in bed, he felt a familiar hum beneath his pillow. The Object of My Affection

The box began to pull. It wasn't just his thumb; it was his warmth, his breath, the very light in the room being sucked into the dark wood. The ivory woman’s face shifted, her sorrow replaced by a predatory hunger. She grew taller, the ivory turning to pale, translucent skin.

The room went cold. The shadows in the corners of the workshop lengthened, stretching toward the workbench. Elias tried to pull his hand away, but his thumb was stuck in the groove. The hum he’d felt before was now a roar, a psychic static that filled his skull. When he looked up, the shop was silent

“Give it back,” a voice whispered—not in his ears, but in the marrow of his bones.

He reached under the fabric and felt the cold, unyielding wood. The object of his affection had decided it wasn't finished with him yet. Should the story end on this , or No keyhole

For three days, Elias was obsessed. He tried every skeleton key in his collection. He applied heat, then oils. He spoke to it, a habit of lonely men, calling it "my silent friend." On the fourth night, while the rain hammered against the skylight, he noticed a faint indentation on the bottom—not a keyhole, but a thumbprint-sized groove. He pressed his thumb into it.