Filling the toolbox

It was a quick drive back to my house, though I couldn’t stop stealing glances at my new purchase. With my mind cleared, I partly understood what I had paid for. The toolbox was “free,” at least currency-wise… though I wasn’t dumb enough to think there wasn’t some price to pay. The money I paid allowed me to see the aura around enchanted items and have a limited understanding of what they do. There had to be some other fee for such a find.

A shiver ran down my spine while I replayed the entire experience in my mind. The magenta-haired shopkeeper with the sharpened teeth looked a whole lot prettier than Leland Gaunt, but the similarity was still striking. Needful Things, by Stephen King, checked a lot of boxes with my experience. One quote from that story rang true in my head. “Everyone loves something for nothing...even if it costs everything.”

The only question I had left was whether or not this toolbox was worth “everything.” “Will the tools It enchants magically fix things or what?” I wondered.

With a deep sigh, I collected my new purchase and opened the front door.

Lillian was waiting for me at the door. She had a scowl on her lightly blushed face—a sight I have grown intimately accustomed to.

“Tom! You weeeere s’posed to be back hours ago!” She drunkenly slurred while shaking a half-empty wine glass in my face.

This was another recent issue. With all of her free time, since she didn’t work, didn’t cook, didn’t help around the house, and didn’t have friends, she took up a hobby. Unfortunately for me, she chose wine tasting. Essentially, she just wanted drink away her misery and claim it as a hobby instead of alcoholism. My attempts to encourage her to “wine taste” more responsibly just caused more fights. It’s a shame she’s not an easygoing drunk. If anything, she just gets more overbearing when drinking.

“Looks like you’ve been getting along fine without me,” I said critically while squeezing past her in the entryway.

“What’s that?” She asked. “Are you sssspending more of my money on junk for your stupid collections?”

I turned and glared at the woman with disdain. The fire and my eyes faded to exhaustion, though. “Lillian, let’s just talk about this later… I don’t want a fight.”

With a harumph, she walked back to the kitchen, probably to pour herself more wine, while I retreated to my garage.

In the garage I had a beautiful wooden lawyer’s cabinet filled with various rare antique tools. It used to be proudly displayed in the living room, but Lillian wanted it gone. I’m not stupid; I understood what was going on. When love well and truly dies it leaves remorse—nothing but disgust and sadness. Anything that reminded her of me was starting to disgust her. I wasn’t at that point yet with her, but I knew it was coming.

I wiped away a single tear from my eye and pushed away thoughts about Lillian though. Enchanting some tools sounded like a great distraction.

Looking over my collection, the first thing that caught my eye was an old hand sander. It looked like an antique wood planer, but instead of a blade, it held sandpaper. The toolbox was tarnished, and I wanted to clean it up a bit. I’d typically reach for compound and polish and my modern dual-action sander. Maybe an “enchanted” hand sander would do the trick, I thought.

I dropped the old tool into the box and closed it up. The purple aura around the box spun wildly and grew for about five short seconds before returning to normal. I reopened the box and inside laid a brand new silver and gold hand sander with the same art deco styling as the box. As my fingers contacted the enchanted item, a short flash of information was seemingly written upon my mind.

“The Rejuvenator: wipe away the sands of time by using repeating linear strokes one year at a time. Smooth out wrinkles and worries of the mind with quick circular strokes.”

The instructions seemed overly cryptic for a simple hand tool, but I decided to try it anyway. The sandpaper seemed to have been replaced with a soft black silk pad. Logically, it wouldn’t be able to do any sanding; however, logically, it shouldn’t be glowing with a purple magical aura either… unless It was killing me with some weird type of Cherenkov radiation.

I “sanded” the front side of the box in quick, repeating linear strokes. At first, I didn’t see anything happening, but suddenly, a hint of shine began peering out from the tarnish, even on areas I hadn’t touched. A few more strokes and the tarnish faded away while the edges of the Art Deco raised areas became crisper and sharper. Even a small gouge in the metal magically disappeared. Eventually, it shined more brightly than the finest silver I’ve ever seen, and no more progress was being made.

“I’ve probably removed all the sands of time, so to speak, and now it’s as it was when it was created!” I thought. I did notice, though, that the interior, the handle, and all other attachments still looked worn. I concluded that it somehow could differentiate between different parts of an object.

“I’m rich!” I shouted with joy. “I can restore any car part with this! Hell, I can restore anything with this!”

I absentmindedly rubbed it against my hand with a couple of strokes. My hand instantly felt just a little bit freer, and my skin just a bit softer

I threw the sander back in the box and rubbed my slightly younger hands together. “Is everything I put in here going to work on people too!?” I excitedly mused.

I grabbed my favorite flathead, Phillips, and Allen screwdrivers, a small hammer, an adjustable wrench, vice grips, a tape measure, and a 3/8” drive socket set and threw them into the box.

“This looks like a pretty good start to a homeowner’s toolset!” I thought as I closed the lid and let the enchantments take hold.

When the purple aura faded back to normal I reopened the box. It was perfectly organized with the tools stacked efficiently in the black velvet box. Each tool sparkled with silver and gold art deco accents, and each tool carried its own purple aura.

I pulled out the socket set first. Weirdly, all the sockets changed to be the same size, and they appeared to have a blank area where the size should be inscribed. The socket wrench itself simply had a selector with - marked on the left, “N” inscribed in the center, and + on the right.

I placed the socket wrench into my palm, and the instructions burned into my mind.

“The Sentiment Wrench: For use with paired Sentiment Sockets. Filters the polarity of response to occurrences. “+” allows only positive response, “-“ only negative, “N” neutral. Removing a paired Sentiment Socket will make future responses follow normal polarity.”

“The Sentiment Sockets: For use with a Sentiment Wrench. Touch a target object with the socket. The socket will thenceforth be paired to the object and be marked accordingly.”

I scratched my head for a moment. These didn’t seem as cryptic as the sander. Not that it mattered. I seemed to understand how to use all of these enchanted items instinctively. The description simply helped put the instinct into words. I didn’t want to waste a socket on this one, because they can only be keyed to a person or object once. Keying one to myself seemed like a terrible idea. The extent of the mental effects wouldn’t be safe to discover with self-testing, I figured. If I set it to “+,” I might not want to change the setting since everything would be so positive. If I set it to “-“ I might be too depressed or not have the will to disable the wrench. With the wrench set to “N,” indifference might be my downfall. No, I knew I’d have to test it on someone else.

I returned the Sentimental Socket set to the toolbox and pulled out the enchanted hammer. The hammer looked similar to what it did before enchanting, but there were some fine silver inlays in the ebony wood handle. With a quick squeeze, I also noted the head was far too soft actually to be useful as a hammer now. It felt more like a stress ball than the former hard steel. With nothing else to do, I closed my eyes and let its description and instinctual instructions flood into my mind.

“Dead Horse Mallet: Promotes increased adhesion, acceptance, and impact. Undo excessive adhesion with the forked end.”

“Another vague one…” I groaned. I imagined myself using it. Feeling it’s weight in my hands as, I swung at the air, and I understood a little more.

If I sprayed a coat of paint onto something and then tapped it with this hammer a few times, the paint would become permanently adhered to the object. Likewise, if I told a targeted person, “You want to kiss me.” With one tap, my statement would become true in their mind; with two, they would actively try to kiss me; with three, the want to kiss me would begin morphing into a constant need. A few more taps and no other thoughts would be possible, just an endless, undeniable urge to kiss me. Using the nail puller side of the hammer would remove the urge.

My chosen example filled me with a bit of anxious excitement, but I did my best to push it away. “Come on, Tom!” I internally berated myself. “These tools are meant for working on things, not people!”

Shaking my head clear, I pulled out the next item, the tape measure. It was much heavier than before and per the status quo, much more aesthetically pleasing.

Feeling the weight of it in my hand I let the aura seep into my mind.

“Scaling Tape: Measure never, cut never. Adjust the size of anything. Use the thumb lock to save a change.”

This item I wasn’t afraid to test on myself. I pulled the tape out. Unlike a standard measuring tape it didn’t retract automatically when I let my hand go. Instead, opposite of a normal tape measure, it retracted with a metallic sound once I “locked” the tape. With a deep breath, I put the tape against my belly. At 30 years old, it had begun to jut out more than I had hoped earlier in life. When the tape matched the dimensions of my stomach, it seemed to click into place a bit more firmly. I compressed the tape a bit, and my stomach shrunk before my eyes.

I couldn’t feel a thing during the change. If I weren’t looking, I wouldn’t have even known—at least until I stood up and felt my improved balance and weight. With my stomach flattened nicely I hit the lock switch and smiled as my new trimmer shape stayed in place.

I could think of a few more places to use the scaling tape, but I still had a few more items to check out before Lillian came to yell at me again.

With a steady hand, I reached in and removed the three screwdrivers from the enchanted box.

The Phillips driver became, “Phillip’s Reactivity Adjuster: adjusts the sensitivity and/or reactivity when turned clockwise or counterclockwise on a target.

The slotted driver became, “Steady State Adjuster: adjusts the normal resting state of of a chosen variable of a target. The user must mentally identify the variable to be adjusted before using.”

Lastly, the Allen key driver became “Allen’s Compulsion Adjuster: adjusts the strength of an urge connecting a person and a targeted item. The user must mentally identify the variable to be adjusted before using.”

The compulsion adjuster was another tricky one but very powerful. As I understood, if I tapped the screwdriver on a bottle of coke and then pointed the screwdriver at a person it would link them to the bottle. Then, I’d just have to think of an action I want them to have the urge to do and “tighten” the urge to make it stronger and stronger. A few quick twists and I could have them sprinting to my side to chug a stranger's drink. “One more quick mental change of the urge and I could have them desperately licking the bottl…” I thought before stopping myself.

With renewed focus, I removed the final two enchanted tools from the box.

The vice grips became, “Will Clamps: while clamped onto a living target this tool will eliminate conscious awareness. While clamped on an object, it will remain in stasis be impossible to harm.”

The adjustable wrench became “Crescent’s Firmness Adjuster: adjusts the firmness or tightness of any targeted item.”

There were still plenty of items I could add to my new toolbox, but I figured I had a good start at least. I didn’t exactly feel comfortable testing myself. The smartest thing to do would be to test it on one of the damaged cars at my shop. With **** self-control, I tamped down my anticipation and closed up the box.

“Let’s be smart and sleep on this,” I said to myself while tapping my fingers nervously on the pewter box. A loud voice in the back of my head kept bringing up the “kissing” example I thought of earlier, though. These tools clearly weren’t limited to just making someone like my wife (hypothetically, of course), want to kiss me. I could restore her to her former youth—maybe even erase some years from her mind until back when she loved me… and still lusted for me.

“Using these… things on Lillian would be… irresponsible,” I affirmed to myself. With resolution, I turned and walked towards the door into the house. But before I could reach the door, it slammed open almost into my face.

With a drunken scowl, my wife Lillian exclaimed, “Why are you sssstill out h-ere!? There’s plenty for you to fix in thissss house, Tom!”

She continued yelling, but I could hear nothing but the thrum of my own quickening pulse. In a haze I grabbed the Will Clamps from the enchanted box, calmly stepped back towards the door, and gently clamped the soft jaws on Lillian’s accusatory finger.

Lillian’s expression, nor the fierceness in her eyes, changed, but aside from shallow breathing, she was silent and still. I waited for guilt and shame to replace my initial surprise at the Will Clamp’s efficacy, but it never came. Only relief and excitement wormed their way into my mind.

Maybe testing these tools out on a car was too shortsighted. I caressed Lillian’s wavy brunette hair and whispered, “Maybe I can do more than fix a few cars. I can make us happy again… happier than ever.”