100% GENUINE REAL

In the weeks preceding certain dates of great capitalist portent, The Oracle cheerfully inflates the price of everything in their store. Before you ascribe shamanic prowess to The Oracle I mention, know that they simply named themself after The Oracle Shopping Centre where they reside. Both the shop and shopkeeper’s fortunes have greatly improved since the end of the world. Pre-Apocalypse, the cold winds of consumer preference had left them languishing in liquidation. While it may have promised the “ultimate shopping and dining experience”, in truth The Oracle Shopping Centre had no place in the post-modern retail landscape. Even such objective honours as multiple Loo of the Year awards could not compete with the personal profundity of shopping online from one's own toilet at home.

Luckily, in the post-post-modern retail landscape, wherein truth is not so much objective or subjective or elitist or irreverent as whatever tips the balance towards continued existence on the day, The Oracle Shopping Centre has found renewed purpose in being the practical choice for much of South England. Accessible by land through what remains of the M4, and by a waterway running off the River Thames, it sits with an above-average claim to structural integrity under the protection of the regional warlord, who remembers with fondness their days as a youth shoplifting trinkets here after school.

Shoplifting is not so common now. There has been only one putative attempt I recall, involving the customer retroactively dubbed Face-Off, for reasons that will become clear. In The Oracle’s version of events, the unhappy customer had travelled a great and perilous distance with their Companion to partake in some Christmas shopping. Worn down to the last nerve by their hazardous ordeal, Face-Off took extreme personal umbrage at The Oracle's seasonal price gouging. As they surveyed price tags that just two days before had been in the realm of affordable-on-credit, the commercial pilgrim snapped. Spluttering guttural incoherencies, they madly attacked the display case with a sharpened bone spear. The bone shattered against the bulletproof glass casing. In response, The Oracle lurched forward with a machete and hacked off half the would-be burglar's face. The desiccated demi-mask of shrivelled scalp, cheek, and chin now rests neatly in a picture frame beside the checkout till. No one has objected to The Oracle's prices since.

Although The Oracle remembers Face-Off as a failed bandit whose involuntary sacrifice left us an excellent form of theft deterrence, I myself do not think Face-Off acted with felonious intent or even any protest against The Oracle’s profiteering. The look in Face-Off’s eyes—their dim, insensate gaze a billowing slackline of untethered confusion—belied a soul beset not by material greed, but by the uncorrupt, simple sickness of terminal stupidity, otherwise known as love.

***

It was with striking inelegance that Face-Off and their Companion shuffled into my department that day. The Apocalypse had left the human species in such a democratic state of dishabille it was frankly impossible to differentiate the sexes. Long had the spirit relinquished the luxury of grooming, and the flesh had weakened beyond all hope of maintaining such un-essentials as any visually significant markers of female fat or male muscle. We watched with sympathy as the two pitted their emaciated forms against a shopping cart that fought back with an anti-pivoting, stuck rear wheel. The heaving cart was full of the usual essentials for an optimised post-Apocalyptic existence: bear traps and stun guns, kerosene and blowtorches, dog treats and cat toys, and other such daily necessities. After crashing the cart into a plastic Christmas tree, Companion gallantly indicated that they would stay there with the shopping so that Face-Off could go ahead and peruse the jewellery counters with ease.

At the time, I shared a velvet tray with two luxury pieces: C.B, a sleek Cartier bangle of solid eighteen carat rose gold, and G.C, a loud pair of bejewelled Gucci cufflinks. By placing me with such blatantly rarefied neighbours The Oracle intended to suggest that I, an otherwise criminally bland heart-shaped locket, was at least a precious metal. I am not. I am mass-produced stainless steel, cheaply electroplated with half a micron of cadmium-thinned gold. My manufacturers cut costs still further by plating only my exterior; when I am opened my cutlery-class bowels are exposed. In an act of marketing savvy, I was advertised as two-toned rather than half-assed. I don’t even come with a chain—instead, I am strung on a faux-leather thong. The effect of placing me with the opulent C.B and G.C was that I looked straight-up dodgy in their presence. It did not help that The Oracle met all queries regarding my composition with vague, non-committal noises and a sign that read:

ITEMS SOLD AS SEEN

RETURNS NOT ACCEPTED

Still, I could not help but feel hopeful when Face-Off spotted us. Leaning dirt-caked, bony elbows upon our countertop, they hovered gape-mouthed over the glass between us for an unusually long period of time.

It's always the ones who can't afford me that dribble over me the most, said G.C.

Stop judging, said C.B, You don't know they can't afford you.

Can’t you see what they're wearing? G.C replied, Those aren't clothes, they're rags.

They all dress that way now, called S.C, a newly arrived silver charm bracelet. Style is passé. They’re more into things with utility, like weapons and food. My ex traded me in for a crowbar and bag of mixed rodent brains.

That’s terrible, wailed G.C, I'm not supposed to be useful. Celebrities endorsed me! I was aspirational! I mattered! They can’t just leave me here—I’ll become a nothing!

At that, a communal shimmer of horror arose from the jewellery around us, for G.C had voiced the secret fear embedded in all things: that the false death of obsolescence will claim us before the wild, clean peace of entropic ruin. To exist unused, unwanted, unseen; to feel the shame of bearing atoms that infringe worthlessly upon space; to have no purpose, meaning or place—it is better to not be than to be a nothing: a cenotaph abandoned to your negated self.

Pull yourself together, said C.B, This one’s very interested.

Indeed, Face-Off was waving over both The Oracle and Companion. We glinted eagerly at The Oracle as they approached, wishing as ever that they’d groan a little less openly at their customers, or at least refrain from dragging their feet with such dramatic reluctance that the carpet’s pile rose in their wake. Alas, working the purgatorial floors of pre-Apocalypse retail had bestowed The Oracle with a grudge against entitled patrons that now inspired their deliberately awful customer service.

Look expensive, C.B whispered, as The Oracle lifted our tray out of the case.

I’m trying, I said.

We were all very surprised when Face-Off reached for me first. We were even more surprised when Face-Off slipped me around Companion’s neck, adjusting my heart to rest in the hollow of Companion’s bared clavicles. I was stunned. I’d never been tried on. So nervous was I that I hardly noticed when The Oracle turned a chipped countertop mirror towards Companion.

Tilt left, whispered C.B, you look best when the light hits you from the left.

And as Companion regarded their reflection, a small movement tipped me just so, bringing out my shape in a manner so becoming that for a gleaming second we believed there was magic in the world. The ceiling clad itself once more in the dignity of plaster; the windows shed their rictus grins of crooked bars, boards, and shutters; the blood upon the walls reversed their tasteless splatter; the floors de-rubbled; the lights un-shattered; the carpets de-mildewed; the sound system un-crackled; The Oracle Shopping Centre de-Apocalypsed to a time so golden that it was the quintessence of pure imagination.

Face-Off and Companion’s eyes met in the mirror. Slowly, Companion leaned sideways to rest their moist cheek on Face-Off’s shoulder. The motion swung my price tag into a more prominent position, and that was all it took for Companion to shake their head—to banish the enchantment and return the world to its end. How cold Companion’s fingers were as they handed me back to The Oracle, and how wan their complexion as they stiffly walked away.

Face-Off did not follow Companion but gazed into the mirror as if by looking they might recall the moment that had fled. Instead, they saw reflected behind them the tired figure of Companion, hunched over the handlebars of a trolley insolent with reminders of what absurd shambles the world had become. And they saw that the fake Christmas tree was in better shape than them both. And they saw their own visage also trapped in that tragic frame. And the total summation presented them with the most infuriating thing of all: the apocalypse that had put an end to the march of human civilization had not been able to halt the undying human heart, in whose steadfast chambers lived the bold immortal idiot—the hardier-than-a-cockroach sentimental fool. So there they were in the wasteland of a trashed and guttered world, considering the birthday of a Messiah still at large, persisting nonetheless in the desire to partake in the tradition of giving a useless thing to somebody you love. And the worst, worst part was that they did not want to stop this wanting, because then what else was left but the tyranny of existence? And worse than the worst, worst part was that they even existed at all—because was there anything more ridiculous than being a zombie in love? When you and everyone else have been equalized to puppets of rotting flesh; when you look in the mirror and what looks back is gross, animated death; when you don’t know what it is that keeps your cadaver moving, only that you hunger for the soft, the tender, and raw; how amidst such grotesquerie do you find the wherewithal to love?

So, Face-Off punched the mirror to beat the inanity out of themself. And what was left of their punching arm fell off. Further incensed, they seized their fallen arm with their remaining arm and used it to club the mirror again. The Oracle staggered to the defence of their property—you know what happened next.

I do think The Oracle felt a bit guilty for overreacting, because they gurgled apologetically at Face-Off and Companion afterwards, and gave them a complimentary motorcycle helmet to cover things up. Then, being The Oracle, they scrawled up a notice and spun the story into clever PR.

***

Valentine’s Day is three weeks away, and The Oracle is making preparations. He has marked up our prices, as per ritual, and also rearranged some displays. I now sit in a plastic tray with some men's rings and keychains. It is marked with a sign that reads:

100% GENUINE REAL

STAINLESS STEEL

In my old tray, which is only a few feet away, G.C. is engaging in a little recreational prophesying.

In three thousand years, G.C says, when a new civilization reigns, the beings of the future will come across this store. They will come not as customers but as archaeologists, uncovering us by chance—while digging out the foundations of an oligarch’s illegal basement! We will be a sensation, the stuff of myth and legend. We'll be famous! They'll sell us at auction! The fancy kind with champagne!

It is a nice fantasy, and amusing to entertain. But, I do not long for it as the others do. Instead, I dream of Face-Off and Companion and their eyes—the cataract-clouded death-misted worlds of their shining eyes. In their orbit, I too was heavenly; I shone back like the sun. I was everything, I was infinite—I simply could not have been. So, I do not need the coveting of future kings and queens. For a moment I meant the impossible, and that is enough for me.