The Cursed Necklace (M/F) (x 3))

[TamatoaShiny123]

It was Cecelia Jenkins’ day off as chief rope and duct tape strength-tester at her town’s hardware store. Wanting some fresh Fall air, she went out in her most cute outfit: a white tweed jacket over a dark green t-shirt, black tights, brown boots, golden earrings, and a black beret over her short brown bangs. After some time, she found herself in the town’s shopping district, where the old Radio Shack and Circuit City combo store had been replaced by an antique store whose exterior looked like it had been there since lightbulbs were considered a luxury. She walked under the ‘GRAND OPENING’ sign and went inside.

The inside of the shop looked like it was between times: black and white checkered floor tiles, a slightly smoky feel in the air, and various trinkets lining the shelves, including a lockbox with rusted gold edges, a jar of skeleton keys, and a pair of shackles that looked old enough to have been the ones that the Romans had arrested Jesus with.

“Do you like what you see, dear?”

Cecelia nearly jumped out of her skin and turned around to see that an elderly Chinese woman had seemingly materialized next to her. The nametag on her dress, reading ‘Miss Wung,’ made Cecelia realize that this was the shopkeeper. “Um, I’m just browsing,” Cecelia answered.

“Well, let me show you this.” Miss Wung reached into her dress’s long sleeve and pulled out a thin silver necklace with a charm shaped like a tiny knot.

“It’s gorgeous,” Cecelia praised, her eyes widened as big as they’d go without bursting a blood vessel.

“Yes. It will bring you attention,” Miss Wung continued. “Though perhaps not the kind you want.”

Cecelia laughed as she pulled out her wallet. “I haven’t had a date in six months. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Cecelia paid for the necklace and immediately slipped the chain around her neck. The charm felt warm, which she appreciated on a brisk day. As she stepped outside, the sunlight seemed to cast a golden glow around the silver necklace’s chain…

oOo

After the antique store, Cecelia stopped at the nearby Starbucks to grab an espresso drink. As she was ordering, a gust of wind from a customer opening the door caused a napkin from the counter’s napkin holder to blow onto Cecelia’s mouth mid-order. Cecelia and the barista laughed, with Cecelia joking that maybe the universe was giving her a sign to take it easy on the caffeine.

Cecelia then walked to the bank to perform a simple errand: depositing her latest work check. She stood in line at the Maple Street Bank, coffee in one hand and the check in the other, when suddenly, the doors were flung open.

“Everybody down!” a man in a ski mask ordered as he stormed in, carrying a duffel bag and what appeared to be a painted Super Soaker. People screamed as they ducked to the floor. Cecelia was still on her feet, trying to figure out how to get down while not spilling her drink, when the robber’s eyes locked onto her. “You! Come here!”

“Okay, but let me at least put down my coff-MMM!” Cecelia got out before a strip of duct tape was slapped over her lips. Her arms were forced behind her back, and tape was wound around her wrists, then her elbows, and her knees.

“There, the perfect hostage for when the cops try to stop me,” the robber sneered. For emphasis, he slapped Cecelia on the rear, causing some of her coffee to spill on the floor. When the robber turned his body to see if there was anyone else coming into the bank, his foot slipped on the coffee spill. Like Charlie Brown when the football was pulled away from him, he went straight up, then fell flat on his back.

One of the bank tellers poked his head out from under the table, seeing the knocked-out bank robber and Cecelia, her rear end slightly red but otherwise okay. “So…should I get a wet floor sign?” he awkwardly asked.

Cecelia rolled her eyes. She hopped to the teller area and slid her paycheck to the teller. “Cssh thss?” she asked.

oOo

After the police took the robber away and freed Cecelia (the bank teller gave her a grape lollipop as a reward for stopping the robber), she decided to get some more fresh air and walked to the park. As she headed to the duck pond, Cecelia noticed a crowd gathered around a street magician doing some card trick, who looked like a scrawny mix of Chris Angel and Skrillex. She was willing to bet good money his facial piercings were clip-ons. “For my next trick, I’ll need a volunteer,” he announced.

Favoring ducks over gothic magicians, Cecelia went to continue past him. But…

“You there! The lady with the necklace!” he cried. “You’re perfect!”

Cecelia looked up to see the magician and the dozen crowd members looking at her. Before she could decline, the magician took her by the hand and dragged her up to the rickety wooden platform he called a stage. Did he even have a permit to place it down?

The magician reached into a large trunk and pulled out a coil of rope that looked to be hundreds of feet long. He began to tie her knees together, then worked up to her thighs. “Um, is there another trick I could volunteer for?” Cecelia asked as he wrapped more of her body, now beginning to constrict her arms and hands to her sides. “Like, is there a card I could pick from, instead?”

“This is my signature trick,” he explained as he was now up to her waist. “You may look extremely tied up right now, but I will soon make the ropes vanish before your very eyes!”

“I feel extremely tied up right now,” Cecelia grunted as he tied the final knot at her shoulders. “Hey, I’ve already had a rough morning. Could you-MMPH!”

A red silk scarf pulled between her lips and tied behind her cut her off. “She is completely secure!” the magician announced.

Cecelia wriggled furiously as the audience applauded as if turning her into a bondage statue were the trick. She was even more restrained than she had been at the bank. The scarf gag muffled her angry squeaks.

The magician placed a hoop with a pull-up curtain over Cecelia’s head and onto the floor. He pulled up the pink curtain and wiggled it around. “And…presto!” he exclaimed as he dropped the curtain. Nothing happened. The ropes and gag stayed tight.

Cecelia cocked her head. What was supposed to happen there?”

Trying to hide his confusion from the crowd, the magician raised the curtain again and shook it again. “Uh…abracadabra!” He lowered the curtain again. Still, nothing had changed. Frustrated, Cecelia wiggled around, trying to figure out if she was supposed to shake off the ropes herself.

Trying one more time, the magician raised the curtain and violently shook it, as if the vigor of the shaking were the issue. “Ropes-be-gone!” he shouted before slamming the curtain to the floor. The gags and rope remained.

The crowd murmured in confusion. Unless he was playing a long con, something was wrong here. “She’s still stuck!” a four-year-old boy shouted as he pointed his sticky finger at Cecelia, who was getting more aggravated by the second.

“Oh, come on!” the magician whined, dropping all mystic bravado in his voice as he pulled out his phone. “The knots should’ve come undone by now! Did I say the wrong magic word? Gah, where’s that TikTok tutorial I watched?”

Cecelia squirmed in discomfort. At least the crowd was looking away from her, trying not to look at the magician as he was scrolling through his feed to find the right way to do the trick and free his unwitting volunteer.

oOo

It took the magician half an hour to find the correct magical method to free Cecelia. By that time, all of the audience had left either from boredom or discomfort at seeing a grown goth magician trying not to cry over his failure. By the time Cecelia got to the duck pond, they had all flown away. “Maybe they heard about that magician and disappeared before they became his next volunteers,” she muttered.

By the time Cecelia got home in the evening, she was fed up. She had spent a not-insignificant amount of her day off bound and gagged. But at least she was finally home, where nothing like that could happen again. She was so relieved by this fact that she didn’t think twice about the fact that her front door was unlocked, even though she could’ve sworn she had double-locked it on her way out. But in any case, she stepped inside and came to a halt. A burglar in a black ski mask and sweats stood in her living room, her flat-screen TV nestled under his arm.

The two locked eyes for a moment. “Oh, come on!” Cecelia exclaimed as the burglar gently placed the TV down, grabbed her arm, and dragged her into a chair.

“Sorry, Miss,” he said as he put her arms behind the chair and ziptied her wrists and elbows together. “Nothing personal, I promise.”

As the burglar ziptied her ankles together, Cecelia’s mind raced. Three times she had been tied up today. Once was an anomaly, and twice was a coincidence, but thrice was a cosmic act. But what had caused this? Her day had started well enough. She had stopped at that weird antique store and bought the necklace…with a knot-shaped charm…

Wait a minute…

“It’s this necklace…” Cecelia told the robber as he looked at her, with a confused expression on his face. “It’s cursed! It’s turned me into a perpetual damsel-in-distress! I’m like April O’Neil or Daphne from Scooby Doo…but without the sexy red hair!”

She shook her upper body around, wagging the necklace back and forth. “Here, take it! You can take anything else with you, but just get this thing away from me!”

“Uh, no thanks,” the burglar replied as he walked over to the laundry basket filled with clothes she hadn’t gotten to folding yet. “Why would I take something you just admitted was cursed?”

Before Cecelia could argue with that admittedly sound logic, the burglar balled up a pink sock from the basket and jammed it in her mouth, tying it in place with a rolled-up pair of black tights tied over her mouth. “CMM MNN!” Cecelia whined. “PLMMS TMMK THMM NMMK-LMMZ!”

The burglar's hands hovered over the necklace, as if to reconsider her offer…only to snatch Cecelia’s earrings instead. He then took his bag stuffed with Cecelia’s valuables in one hand and her TV in the other arm before bolting through the front door, closing it behind him.

Fortunately, the burglar hadn’t thought to tie Cecelia to the chair, allowing her to roll off of it awkwardly. She slowly squirmed to the kitchen and pulled herself up to reach the drawer where she kept a pair of scissors. She cut herself loose and called the police to file a report, with one of the officers having recognized her from the bank that morning. He lightly joked that she was a magnet for trouble. Instead of laughing, she glared down at the necklace.

oOo

After the police had left, Cecelia marched back to the antique shop and shoved the door open. “You sold me a cursed necklace!” she shouted.

From the counter, Miss Wung looked up from her magazine and smiled. “Did I?”

“Yes!” Cecelia jabbed a finger at the knot charm. “Ever since I put this on, I’ve been a taped-up bank hostage, gagged by a wannabe David Copperfield, and I just got ziptied by a home invader! And even he wouldn’t take the necklace with him!”

Miss Wung innocently tilted their head. “The necklace isn’t cursed. I told you: it’d attract attention, just not the attention you may want.”

“Well, I very much don’t want the attention this thing has brought me,” Cecelia growled. “I want a refund!”

“Very well,” Miss Wung nodded. “Do you have your purchase receipt?”

Cecelia blinked. “R-reciept? There was no receipt. You never gave me one!”

Miss Wung shook her head. “My apologies, dear. But I cannot offer a refund without it. The necklace, and its so-called curse, is still yours.”

“Screw the refund!” Cecelia ripped off the necklace, threw it onto the counter, and stormed out while muttering about the necklace being “a waste of $49.95” and how she was “never going into another antique shop ever again.”

Moments later, a mousy blonde with thick, round glasses and a white sweater opened the door. “Um, excuse me,” she barely said above a whisper, “but I saw your store was still open. I’m trying to get a promotion at my job, and I want something that will…grab my office’s attention, y’know?”

Miss Wung picked up the silver necklace and held it so it caught the shop’s overhead lights, casting a golden glow over the chain. “I think I have just the thing for you, dear…”

[jackroper]

Cute story, and one that you could continue if you wish.

[Bigballgag1]

This was really good, I enjoyed the farcical nature of it as the coincidences all come back to the necklace. Its nicely left open too for the curse to be passed on should you wish.

Nicely done!