You don't believe anything it says.

“Pffft.” You scoffed, examining the small red vial in your hand. “Sure it does.”

This clearly had to be a joke. Or a prank, at the very least. You had just split up with your ex about a week ago, so it could be likely that this was a way for her to get back at you. But something to this caliber? That would be too much work. And for what? A harmless prank at your own home that she wouldn’t even see?

You took another brief look at the letter before you walk over to your desk, where you had set down your backpack from earlier. Setting the vial down, you took out your gauntlet gloves, beanie, and laptop and set them across the desk. You took the vial in your hands once more, carefully popping the lid off. Although you didn’t believe anything that letter had claimed for a second, you couldn’t help but feel a little on edge as you held the vial carefully.

With your left hand, you took your left leather glove and set it right in front of you. You carefully tip the vial over, slowly. A bit of the red powder sprinkled out and fell upon the glove, which immediately started wriggling upon the first contact with it.

Your eyes widen and you lunge backward, seeing certain movements coming from the leather. It started with a twitch, then turned to the leather — or fingers curling slightly until making a fist. The glove stretched its fingers while you stood back looking at it in awe, almost forgetting that you needed to command it or it would act “unpredictably.”

Your fascination quickly turned to fear once more as you blurted something random, stammering.

“P-Pick up the other glove!” You yell, pointing at it with your free hand.

After a few more seconds of the glove moving on its own, it paused. Your breaths become heavier, fearing that the glove may be ignoring the order until you see it turn to the right and crawl over to its mate, clenching and raising it in the air for you to see. You immediately smiled and sighed in relief, now focusing on the open vial you had in your hand. This powder, whatever it was, worked. It needed to be used properly.

You slowly walked over to the desk and grabbed the lid to the vial that rested near the animated glove. You felt uneasy being in its presence, but based on the fact that it listened to your command gave you some relief. It didn’t relieve you enough to start using the powder religiously, though.

You set the closed vial back in the box, and taped it off. There was no way you were gonna have this stuff just lying around your house, waiting to be knocked over or broken. You shoved it in the bottom of your closet, placing a pile of books you hadn’t read in years on top of it. You dusted off your hands and returned to your desk in the living room.

The glove still held its mate, in the exact same position had seen it in before. It was still relatively uncanny to see, but reassuring to know it was still doing what it was told to do.

“Uh, you can set it down now.” You say, looking down at your desk.

The black leather glove did as instructed, and used its fingers to turn itself towards you.

You knelt down to look at the glove at eye level, your eyes close to the edge of the desk where it rested. Although it had fulfilled its task of picking up the other glove, you can tell that it was bored, evident by its slowly tapping fingers on the wood beneath it.

You couldn’t really think of anything to say, as it felt weird that you were talking to an inanimate — or animate object. It still felt incredibly surreal, and each second that passed only further validated this wasn’t some kind of strange dream.

“So, you can hear me?” You ask, even though you thought you knew the answer from earlier.

The glove stopped tapping its fingers and turned on its side, flashing a thumbs-up before resting on its palm again. You smile, still fascinated with how the fuck this was even happening.

“What else can you do?”

The glove did something you never thought you would see in a million years; You retracted backward from your knelt position and were now on your ass, looking at the glove floating in the air, hovering above the desk where it was just lying.

“Whoa…” you say, watching it defy gravity. “Can you grab things while you’re floating too?”

The glove, seemingly after processing what you said, reached down straight to the desk and picked up your beanie. It tossed it over to you, and you slightly flinched as it fell in your lap, surprised at the glove’s boldness.

“Okay,” you say, grabbing the beanie and looking back up at the glove. “Let’s see what else you can do.”

Over the next two hours, you instructed the glove to do various tasks around your house. It successfully vacuumed the floor, dusted the cabinets, cleaned the windows, and typed out the rest of your economics essay. You couldn’t help but appreciate the glove and its hard work, and when night came around, you noticed the glove was bored once more without any tasks to do. Seeing this, you allowed the glove to do whatever it wanted, so long as it wasn’t dangerous or damaging anything in the house. The glove eventually floated off to the basement, where you heard your old Atari game system boot up.

However, the other glove that the animated one had grabbed earlier had a bit of manacite still on it, and while the quantity was extremely low, it didn’t stop it from wiggling its fingers a few hours later across the house from you. The extremely low amount of manacite didn’t make it any less alive, but rather had it take much longer than usual to animate.

And it was animating without any commands.