A Midnight Trick

Returning inside before the shop doors locked, I glided across the dark floorboards toward a low shelf. A forgotten miniature jack-in-the-box sat half-shadowed behind an amber apothecary jar, its crank arm dangling slack. Inside the cracked wood casing, a worn spring trembled faintly under the street's distant rumble. I did not retreat. After watching the brass spiral shudder through three long breaths of silence, I leaned the heavy curve of my circular pedestal forward. With a deliberate, soft nudge against the tin release, the striped fabric jester popped upward with a dull, muffled click, freezing upright in the moonlit dust.