The satchel isn’t mine. It belonged to my mother’s sister, or maybe my father’s brother—the family tree is a burning tire fire, anyway. What matters is that the satchel sits beside me now, throbbing gently like a dying heart. It smells like mothballs and wet wood. There’s a faint hum coming from its clasp, a sound you can’t unhear once you notice it. It calls to me, louder than grief. Louder than hunger. So I open it. Because what else is there to do?

The first thing I pull out is **a handful of teeth**. Human teeth, I think, but who am I to say what’s human and what isn’t anymore? They’re warm in my hand, like they’ve just been pulled from someone’s gums. There’s a gold molar among them, and I pocket it because the landlord’s been threatening to change the locks again.

“What the fuck,” I whisper to the satchel, but it doesn’t answer. It just hums.

I reach in again and pull out **a broken umbrella**. The fabric is torn to shreds, but it still smells like rain—fresh rain, the kind that makes the earth bloom in the cracks of the sidewalk. I hold it over my head, instinctively, and for a second I swear I feel droplets pattering down, though the sky above me is cloudless and cruel. I drop the umbrella, but it doesn’t hit the ground. It just vanishes, like it was never there to begin with.

Now I’m sweating. My fingers tremble as I dig deeper, and this time, the satchel offers up **a photograph of myself**. But not me now. Me, five years ago, sitting in a diner with someone whose face is scratched out with what looks like claw marks. I don’t remember this moment, this diner, this ghost beside me. But there’s a smear of ketchup on my chin in the photo, and I touch my face reflexively, like I’ll feel it there still. I drop the photo, too. It lands in the dirt and bursts into flames.

The satchel hums louder. It’s hungry.

Fourth item: **a jar of fireflies**, blinking in and out of existence like a Morse code apology. I hold it up to my face and see that the bugs are dead, suspended mid-flash in some kind of preservative. The light comes from something else, something alive inside them. I unscrew the lid, just a crack, and a smell like honey and gasoline rushes out. My chest tightens. I screw the lid back on and shove the jar into the satchel, but I’m not sure if it’s taking things back or if it’s just letting me borrow them.

There’s one more. The final gift, or curse, or whatever this satchel’s deal is. I’m scared now. Scared of what it wants from me. But my hand dives in like it’s no longer mine, and when I pull it out, I’m holding **a glass of milk.** Just a regular glass of milk. No blood swirling through it, no shards of glass embedded in the rim. It’s cold, and the condensation makes my fingers slip. I drink it, because why not? It tastes exactly like milk should. Comforting, a little sweet, nothing like fireflies or teeth or lost memories. But when I’m done, the glass refills itself. And refills. And refills.

I’m crying now, I think. Or maybe I’m sweating milk. The satchel hums one last time and falls silent. It’s just a bag again, a stupid fucking bag sitting on the ground like it didn’t just unravel my whole world.

I don’t know what to do with it. With any of it. The teeth, the umbrella, the photo, the fireflies, the milk. I sit there for hours, waiting for something to make sense. But nothing ever does, does it?