The Clock Was Ringing

A simple fall

She asked him at the first time they met, after he gave her the purse, what the word meant. He meagerly replied "I dunno, I thought a large word might make it seem more professional than others in the yellow pages. And it just sounds so cool"

It gave her a small laugh when she remembered it.

"Aight Karli here's your stop and remember always trust Ben with yo broken stuff."

"Alright Stacy"

She continued to the store. Weird chimes were heard as she opened the door. As it seems he changed it from its last one. The chimes bonded together to and formed a triangle with 2 long ones reaching below the triangle to disrupt it's seldom peace. The store was larger than before. More shelves all packed with dismembered items that only God know where they came from, or if Ben even remembered where they did. 

The wooden floor was as smooth as marble, surprisingly. Yet it began to show its ugly side as the customers came by. There was an elderly woman speaking with Ben and it seemed the conversation wasn't very pleasant. Karli tried to avoid what they were saying yet a few words furtively found their way to her ear. "You just don't know how to fix it!" "Ma'am I tested it myself and it worked just fine"

The rest was scattered sounds. The conversation grew ever so calmer as she went by the aisles. She looked at the aisles filled just about anything you can and can't think of. From pricy looking antiques to almost broken spoons or shelves. He had it all and could fix about anything. When she passed by an aisle she saw a whole row filled with little wooden dolls. There was the common Russian nesting dolls, some eerie voodoo dolls, terribly disfigured mannequin dolls, and basically any type of doll there was. 

She enjoyed the little wooden statues more than the rest, the detailed and well painted carvings of each should be extolled in national museums and not in a cranky old aisle such as this. There seemed to be another doll hiding behind the others. The shadows of the ones in front of it covered its shape and color in black making it hard to delineate it. 

She reached out her hand from above the statues, shading them all with her palm, she then plucked the round little head of the statue. She carefully raised it up not wanting the ones beside it to fall and cause an unwanted chain reaction leading to her to take a bulge from her savings account. There seemed something familiar to Karli, as if the statue was just like...

"Those are off limits Karli... to anyone." Said Ben, breathing heavily afterwards.

With the help of Karli's reflexes she dropped the stature and kept it in its place yet the other 10 that fell to the ground. She was able to grab a few of them and so did Ben but the other 3 fell with cracks filling the air.

"Dammit Karli! Those where priceless statues from all over the world!" He signed with frustration as he put the ones in his hands on the shelf and examined the broken ones, hoping they could be fixed. Karli put the ones in her hands on the shelf.

"Well you could have put a sign or something to tell people." She said

"I did" Said Ben "Right below the statues"

She glanced at that area and saw a quite large piece of cardboard nailed to the shelf with "Don't touch" crudely written with a black marker.

"Oh...sorry"

Karli felt foolish now. How is she going to pay for a priceless statue, let alone all three?If they are priceless anyway. With my love? He isn't going to buy that.  She only stood there waiting for Ben to say something. He was her first friend when she came to the city, he'll probably go easy on her.

"These took me so long to get..." He continued on mumbling curse words. 

"How long"

"15 years Karli I've went across the world to find these statues, there are very few copies of each, some of these are one of a kind and three of them are broken."

Karli opened her mouth but thought it best to stay quite while Ben sat on the ground, legs spread out like a child, and was fiddling with the statues. Trying to put their severed body parts back to see what little shards of wood are missing. When he still wasn't looking, Karli picked one of the statues from the shelf. It was a somewhat basic statue, it was made of smooth black wood with his legs crossed and his arms outward with the hand joining one another at the finger tips, four finger up and the thumbs down making a circle. It looked like an ancient African god of some sort, but its smooth carved wood didn't seem so ancient. Karli looked at the bottom of the circular sphere, hoping there was made in china sign but there wasn't. She put the statue to the light at all directions and saw some letters on the side of the foot. The letter were very small so she squinted to be able to see them. B with the letter e and n with each on in one of its semi circles.

"These statues are priceless right?"

"Yes Karli they are and three are broken now."

"Then why does it have three letters of your name carved on it."

"What I don't know what you're talking about." He staggered when he said that sentence while he stayed focused on the other statues.

"It says it right here Ben."

She got the statue in his line of view, forcing him to stop working on the statue in his hand. She pointed her index finger on the place the letter were. He grabbed the statue and looked at the letter closely with a surprised look.

"I have no idea how they got there."

"You sure Ben? Because all of your other works have the same initials on them."

He signed.

"Fine your right. They're made by me." He knew she would be too smart to fool, best to tell her the truth now.

"Then why lie to me about it!" Karli was obviously disappointed. Her eye's glaring in disappointment Her first friend here and he just flat out lied to her about some 'priceless' statues.

He got up and reached out his blubbery arm to the end of the shelf. Picking up the same statue Karli picked up. Karli's eyes widened as she observed the statue and its very peculiar features. She grabbed from Ben's hand and held it close to her sight.

"This wooden doll I have has one hell of a history..."

Karli ignored his sentence and so did he when she pulled out her severed statue from her pocket. Ben's eyes widened as he looked at it. They were the both the same in every way. It was only the severed arm that differentiated them from each other. Ben took the one from Karli's hand and held the other next to it.

"The second one..." Ben said as he gazed at the statues as if they were as priceless as he said they are.