I must have walked past that storefront a hundred times, and steadfastly ignored its peeling signs. I don’t know what compelled me to go in. Golem warehouses were pretty tasteless at the best of times. Ever since the Chinese had discovered you didn’t have to actually hand-transcribe the Ancient Scroll of Lak’ptui and could just bang it through a photocopier, the places had been springing up then closing down again just as quickly, like rug stores only worse because they were trafficking in sentient clay and not inanimate lumps of woven fibre.
This place made those look like the goddamn Ritz. The earthy smell hit me like a ton of bricks as I pushed through the dusty door. There was one light in the entire place, and it wasn’t doing a very good job- most of what I could see was from the sunlight streaming through the glass shopfront. I looked idly around for a counter.
That was odd. No counter.
“Hello?” I called out, “Anyone here?”
There was silence for a moment, and then a clanking from the back of the store.
“Hello?”
The clanking resolved into footsteps, and an animate golem rounded the corner, with a storeman’s apron crudely draped over it for modesty. For reasons no animatologist could figure out, golems refused to animate unless they were anatomically correct. Either that, or it was a conspiriacy thought up by clothing manufacturers looking to cut into a new market.
“Could you tell me where the owner is?”
The golem pulled a tablet from its apron and began to print, cuneiform-style, its answer. Very, very slowly.
Present.
Ah, golems. Sentient, sure, but none too bright.
“Where is the owner?”
Again the slow pressing of the wedgelike stylus. Someone really needs to invent a voice system for these, I thought, or maybe just teach them to type.
Present.
That didn’t make sense.
“Do you understand?”
Faster this time:
Yes.
“So who owns this store?”
Present.
This was getting ridiculous. “Look, is there anyone here I can talk to? About possibly buying a golem? No?”
No.
“Right. Popped out for coffee, I expect. Slackers”. My nerves were just about at their limit.
“So when will they be back?”
No.
Nothing this clay man was saying made any sense. Probably badly baked, or a misprinted scroll. Whatever the reason, I’d had it.
“Right.”
I pushed the door open and stepped out of the stale warehouse. And as I walked down the street, I paused and looked back at the peeling signs on the window.
“GOLEMS ARE US. FREE GOLEMS.”
And it hit me like a bolt of lightning, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach, and I started to run. And from then on, I couldn’t even look at a golem, in a supermarket, or sweeping the streets, or making coffee, without going pale and breaking out in cold sweats. Because that wasn’t a sales pitch.
It was a manifesto.
The thought process for this one goes something like:
"Crap, it's Saturday night and I haven't written anything yet. I need one of those crazy half baked ideas"
Eyes roam around room for inspiration, fall on slightly creepy face-pot from year 9 craft.
"Half baked, eh? Like, for example... clay?"
And then I wrote this.
And now I am going to put that thing in a box in the garage. Possibly via an exorcist's. Friggin' creepy.
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