[color=00aeef][quote]"Do you need the restroom key, sir?"[/quote][/color]

The voice wasn’t loud, but Brayden turned to the sound, thinking the question was directed at him. Catching sight of the voice’s owner, the veterinarian’s jaw dropped. Dressed in a top hat and a suit that Charles Dickens, or some 19th-century nobleman, might wear, the man had ashen skin and yellow, bloodshot eyes. Thinking this person was some antique store ghost, or maybe a mascot or some strange live performance, Brayden watched, waiting to see what would happen next.

With a hooked nose and bony fingers, the ghost of a man was focused on a younger man who could not have been more different. Well-dressed and confident, the younger person was the type Brayden often saw walking around the city, taking selfies in strange places and making sure every food they ate was recorded and posted online. For a second, he laughed, thinking about the social media influencer who had come into his clinic and wanted to post a TikTok video of Brayden and him saving a cat… reminding people that every cat has nine lives… something like that.

Before the younger man could reply to the ghost, a crash exploded from across the dark and dusty store, and the strange man began to shuffle off, muttering under his breath. [quote][color=00aeef]“Oh, oh dear! Are you alright? Oh, now you know why there was a sign to ‘ask for assistance’; we’ve learned something today…”[/color][/quote]

Interrupted by the events that had just unfolded, Brayden looked away from the man and noticed the others in the store. There was a girl, late teens, early twenties, with a skateboard rolling at her feet, a smile on her face. She was walking by the tall, ornate stand-up mirror off to the side, and when Brayden saw it begin to glow, he couldn’t help but think that this, like the man, was just one more antique store gimmick. Off to the right and standing by another shelf stood another shopper: a pretty woman with black hair and big, bright eyes. She had looked at the strange man too, but now her focus was back on the old music box resting in her hands.

Turning back to the tall shelf in front of him, Brayden began picking carefully through the implements one by one. Antique scalpels, bone saws, clamps, these were the things of old veterinary kits, outdated and worn but still very useful, dangerous in the wrong hands. Looking at the shelf above, there were stranger and more bizarre objects: glass jars with preserved specimens, organs, small animals things that didn’t quite match any known anatomy he had studied.

Curious about almost every item on the shelves, Brayden looked up for the strange character and called out, [quote][color=00aeef]“Excuse me. Can someone help?”[/color][/quote]

Seeing the man focused on the cleanup on the other side of the store, Brayden began walking toward him, a dozen or more questions already in his head.