Gabriel Jeroschewitz, November 24th, 2025

The Lot 19 Affair

The Auction
The auction hall was not a hall at all, but a repurposed slaughterhouse, tiled in porcelain and echoing with the ghosts of things that once bled here. Mr. Sallow stood at the podium, a man the colour of old parchment, his mouth permanently shaped into a toothless parenthesis. The buyers waited in sugar-colored suits, clutching brass paddles polished by their own sweaty palms.
Lot 19 — the dolls — were wheeled in on a steel cart, side by side, their detachable heads arranged neatly in velvet-lined trays like rare mangoes. The buyers cooed and hissed.

Each buyer got a minute alone with the dolls before bidding. That minute was a theatre of grotesque desire:

• Lady March, who likened herself to a “collector of sensations,” tapped the glass ribs of one doll and murmured that she would fill them with goldfish.
• The Brewer insisted he would pour stout into their clay stomachs and drink “from the source.”
• Mr. Chalk, who smelled like mothballs and thunder, caressed Lot 19’s blue-painted shoulders and claimed the chips in the paint were “music to the touch.”

When bidding began, the room became a slow, obscene pulse — each number called felt like a heartbeat in reverse, taking life instead of giving it. Mr. Sallow watched them feed on the fantasy.
Lot 19 was moved to the back of Mr. Sallow’s estate, an architectural mistake of corridors that looped back into themselves. In the sunroom, they were posed just so: elbows bent, knees spread “for symmetry.” Their clay skin was dusted every morning by a servant named Harp, who never looked them in the eye. Sallow said eye contact was “bad for the art.”

The dolls quickly learned Sallow’s habits. He never touched them with his hands — only with objects. A silver ladle to lift a chin. A feather duster to tickle the hollow between their thighs. He treated desire like calligraphy, never direct, always an ornate flourish. His guests came often, each one encouraged to “interpret” Lot 19 in their own way.

Some painted new mouths on the dolls.
Some sewn pockets into their stomachs.
One man replaced a head entirely with a birdcage, then filled it with finches until the sound drove everyone insane.

They accepted it silently. After all, art does not interpret itself.

The Anatomy That Watches
By the third month of captivity, Lot 19 learned to turn its parts against the buyers. The glass ribs could reflect light like blades. Detachable heads could roll like grenades, their hollow eyes distracting even the most fevered collector. Clay skin, when wetted, could dissolve just enough to smear across a hand, leaving a faintly burning mark.

The first incident was with Mr. Chalk — he reached for one doll’s head and found his fingers caught in a sudden fissure in her neck; the clay closed around him like a trap. He left with two fingers less than he’d come with, muttering about “texture failure.”

The dolls bided their time. They learned that the guests drank heavily — milk cordials, blood wine — until their sight blurred and their movements slowed. They noticed Sallow liked to leave doors unlocked during rainstorms, believing no art would risk getting wet. That would be their opening.
It happened during a downpour that made the gardens look like a drowned city. Sallow had invited his “most loyal buyers” for a private showing. Lightning pooled in the glass ribs of the dolls, making them look like lanterns.

When the buyers approached, Lot 19 turned gentle actions into violence — heads rolled underfoot, toppling men in slippery arcs; paint flakes flew like hornets into eyes; blue clay smeared into mouths until speech became choking.

Lady March fell backward into a fountain; The Brewer was found gagging on a shard of rib; Mr. Chalk tried to flee but slipped on a head laughing in the rain.

The dolls moved fast. They could bend in ways bones couldn’t, slide through corridors like spilled ink. Out of the open garden gate they went, their laughter carrying over the storm like music from somewhere both holy and profane.
The next morning, Sallow’s guests searched the grounds. They found only the trays of heads — empty, damp, smelling faintly of moonlight. Under the skirts of the remaining display mannequins were nests of maggots, writhing like a pale alphabet no one wanted to read.

Rumours spread. Some claimed the dolls had dissolved into rainwater and tasted faintly of salt. Others swore they saw a procession of blue-painted women walking along the riverbank, carrying their heads tucked under their arms like relics.

In truth, Lot 19 swam to a place only they could find — a silver lake under a milk-colored moon. They waited there, bodies pressed together, clay warming in the night. They were still art, but no longer for sale.
One doll — her name lost to auctions — fell in love with another in that lake. It was not the sudden, fiery kind, but a slow binding of seams. They polished each other’s paint, shared their detachable faces like masks, and whispered in the language of unowned things.

What they loved most was the refusal. The deliberate absence of buyers, of voices calling them “wife, whore, mistress, maid, mother.” In their own mythology, they were creatures carved by accident, bred in captivity, freed by rain—lovers in exile.

They danced on the moonlit shore until the wind carried their breath away, becoming stories told by old river women:
“The doll people are gone, but if you stand quiet enough, you’ll feel”

Gabriel Jeroschewitz, December 6^th, 2025, Happy New Year   Dedicated to Robert Burns.

The Fête of the Immortal Sea
as seen by Elric Fen, Shore-Watcher of Glassehaven

I tell yu now of that nite, tho it’s a thing I shudnt keep in my mouth long — it heavs on the mind like deep tide on the ribcage. It wer late in the warm-seazun, the kind yu call the Heartsmonth, when the town does its lantern-show, the Fête of Lumes. Women in silk-colors, men in bright coats, laughter like a spun chain runnin down the quay. We all was lookin landward at the gardens, at the quick lovers dartin from bower to bower, while out-behind us the sea lay quiet — quiet in a way that is its own kind of sound.

I was not partake like the others. I am shore-watcher, so my eyes go sea-side. I dont kno if you felt it before: how the sea can seem asleep in its skin but its deep belly is turnin. Its coil moves miles under, and if yu listen long yu can near feel it in your own chest. That nite, for no reason I cud name, I got the sudden sense that it was lookin back at me.

Yu mustnt think me fancy-talkin. I mean plain: the sea lookt. As if it had found me in the crowd and wanted a word.

Now, Glassehaven has its old yarns — the ones we half-jest about in the taverns but half-hide from children. Fêtes that wer watched from the waves themselves, by things not fish nor bird. Times when ships lay at anchor right off the quay and the music carried out across the water, to be answered by lights out at the black edge, lights that was not lantern nor star. Old folk say the sea got memory longer than any church record, and it keeps the faces of them that stood at its lip, even thousand years gone.

On that nite I swear I heard it call, not in sound but in pull. My feet wanted the wet stones. My hands felt the salt-stick from the air. And my heart — it quickt like a lad in first courtship, only this was no girl’s glance, but something far deep.

The fête went loud then — some manner of fire-thrower and drum-beaters in the garden-square. The lovers all pressed in close to see, petals from the bower-trees falling in their hair. But the sea behind them, it flasht. Not the white of common lightning — no — this was a red fork in the clouds, a spear of it, split in two mid-air and stabbing down into the far horizon.

And between that spear’s flicker and the next breath, I saw the ships — three of them, pale sails in the half-dark — all shudder at once. A quiver ran up the masts and the canvas went slack as if a hand had been laid on their backs.

I thought of old says: When the Immortal watches, mortal timbers feel it.

I started toward the breakwater. The stones there old and black with weed, slipper as eel-skin. A man shudnt walk alone past the last lamplight, not with deep tide on the turn — but my steps was not my choosing.

When I come to the water-edge, it was no longer quiet. Slow roll, yes, but each rise carried in it a sound like far music. Not played on strings nor pipes — more a thrum, a deep tune that yu don’t so much hear as feel low in the gut. It made me think: maybe the sea’s own heart got its rhythms, and now it wanted me to match mine to it.

I looked back — the fête was still bright, still laughing, still throwing its perishable flowers in the garden. But even from there, I could see how small it was against the seaface.

Yu see, the sea don’t care if yu are name-known or name-lost. It don’t care if yu are kissing under boughs or dancing in paint and wine. It’s seen every fête along every shore since man first thought to put a lamp in the dark. It’s seen lovers vow under myrtle trees and orange nights. It’s seen them sink together when the ship goes down, the music stopped mid-note. Their bones rest under miles now, no light there at all.

The red forks came again — higher this time, and stranger. They didn’t strike down but seemed to pause mid-sky, like they was holding. And in their light I saw out past the breakwater — shapes, pale as sails, but taller and narrow. Not ships.

They was lined in a half-ring, far enough that their feet — if they had feet — must be in water too deep for the harbor’s chart. I cudnt count them proper. Their heads was not heads, more curves where the lightning caught and slid off.

I thought — fool that I am — that maybe they was watching the fête same as me. But the longer I stared, the more I knew their gaze was not on the gardens. It was fixed on the quay. On me.

I felt it then, hard in the chest: a mighty power, as if the whole sea had leaned in. Joy, yes — not joy like a mortal’s, but that nameless lift yu get when yu are part of something too big for all your words. It was as if I’d been chosen to stand in that moment between the fête and the Immortal.

The power came with a promise. Not in speech, but in tide: You will not be forgot.

I can’t tell proper how it happen next. There was a change — a cold drawn up through every wave at once. The music from the fête faltered, a drum missed its beat. A smell of iron ran in the wind.

Then — nothing. The garden’s light still shone, the lovers still laughed. But a shadow had moved between us. Not one yu see with eyes, but one yu sense in the bones.

Behind that shadow lay a place I shud not go.

The Immortal waited. The ring of pale shapes held as the red lightning spears froze mid-sky. I felt my breath slow, my pulse match the low-thrum in the tide.

It was asking — no, it was offering. A fête of its own, with no end.

I knew the old tales: the ones who accept are taken. Not drowned like common shipwreck, but brought into the depth where time is not. They say those ones dance there forever, music of eternity in the quiet — no breath, no day, no night, just the endless.

The quayside stones under my hand was slick. The water close enough to take me in one step more. My heart was strong — too strong for any mortal fête.

I thought of the lovers back in the bower, their flowers already fading. I thought of ships that sailed for joy only to sink by morning. And I thought of the Immortal, who has kept its own music longer than the stars.

I stepped forward.

The water rose — not high, not rough — just enough to take my balance. The ring of shapes parted, two and two, making a way. The red lightning swam down into the path, turning the black into a strange warm gold.

I didn’t fall. I went.

I can’t tell yu the rest in mortal words. There’s no sense of hour in that place, only the feel of the sea’s heart opening to you. Vast gardens there too, not bough nor flower but coral risen like towers, weed streaming like silks. Others moved about me — not fish, not men, but tall and curve-headed, their long arms carrying lights no fire ever made.

We danced. We danced without ground underfoot, and the music was the deepthrum and the pulse of the tide.

It was love, if love is being part of a thing that will never end.

I don’t remember leaving. One breath I was there, the next I stood again at the quay, dawn just breaking, the fête gone. Not a petal left on the stones.

But I carry it. The power, the joy without name. I am still shore-watcher here in Glassehaven, but some nights — the warm-seazun nights — the sea will look back at me.

And I know it remembers.

Postscript by Elric Fen:
If yu read this and think to go alone to the breakwater on Heartsmonth, yer a fool. The Immortal gives only one fête to each man. And once yu step forward, there’s no turning back — save if it sends you. But if it does, yu will be never whole again for mortal shores.or sing Auld Lang Syne,