More Rats‽

“More rats‽” you hiss under your breath. Whatever it is, it rattles again. You slowly descend the ladder to the floor. You tiptoe with the ladder in your arms along the aisle past where you were working, listening for the rattling noise all the way.

You hear it again, behind you but much closer this time. You backtrack a few steps. You hold your breath, doing your best to be as quiet as possible, listening very closely. It rattles again. It doesn’t sound too much like the irregular noises squeaks and squawks of rats fighting with each other though. More like a phone buzzing for a moment, and then falling still. Your eyes snapping to the place on the shelf it's coming from. It’s on the top shelf. You set the ladder down quietly and start to climb it, slowly and quietly. The rattling begins again, softly at first, but growing louder as you climb towards it. You climb up to the top shelf. The sound is now a dull buzzing noise, coming from the narrow black maw in between the top of the shelf unit and the ceiling. You get up on your tiptoes and look in the narrow dark space. In the gloom and dust you can just make out a box, seemingly jittering away on its own accord in there.

“Huh.” You say. You have to balance on the ladder on your toes to reach up and into the space for the box. You feel the coarse grains of the wood as you slide the box out, sending a waterfall of gray-brown dust and dirt floating down to the floor. It’s the size of a small shoe box, just a simple unadorned wooden box. It’s still jittering in your hands when you turn it over. It has a length of twine around it holding a cataloging tag, yellow and smudged with age. “Vernius impudica” it reads in very old looking cursive.

“Latin?” You scoff. When you try to gingerly turn it over the paper tag it simply turns to dust between your fingers. You click your tongue. Not the first time that has happened for sure, but still annoying. The box keeps wiggling in your hands. You set the jittering thing down on the top shelf and go to unravel the string.

The string does not so much snap when you pull it so much as it disintegrates into dust at your touch. You lift the lid off the box and your nose wrinkles.

Inside the box, it has that gross musty smell of something that has not been opened in decades, maybe a century or more. Even through the dust mask you smell it. You pick up the box and look inside it. It’s filled with linen cloth, one of which is moving. Perplexed, you hold the box like you would a baby in one arm and flip open the cloth to reveal a little ivory figurine eight maybe nine inches tall, vibrating furiously.

Despite all the motion, you can see that it's nominally a carved figurine of a woman with wide hips, giant tits, a little pot belly and a little slit carved where a vagina would be. How lewd, you think. Despite the lewdness of the thing you compulsively grab it between your thumb and forefinger and it stops moving. For a long moment, the room is quiet except for the buzzing of the lights above you.