It was at least eighty-seven days since he quit. His old teammates often asked if he'd changed his mind. He never did, he wanted to go back to the sport that he loved since he was a small child, but he could never find the will to play it professionally. No matter how many times he tried to get back into the games, something in his mind took offense, and he often suffered for it. He almost hurt his back; thankfully, he only got a nasty bruise, from his last attempt. He conceded that he might never return to the sport that he once held near and dear, but he was still at a lost. Nothing he took up seemed to be any better. He tried everything he could ever think of and nothing ever seemed to fit him.

His friends tried to help, bless them. Yet, something was always missing. He didn't know what. He tried looking for what he was missing, but always came up empty. It got to the point it drove him almost into insanity. He got out of it, thankfully, but still without an answer to his question.

One day, he decided to take a crack at his latest attempt to finding his place in the world. It was one of those days, he'd gone out and decided to walk around. He'd seen old neighbors, friends from primary school, the likes, but nothing stuck out for them. Until he came across a little shop stowed, away, camouflaged in the red bricks sandwiched between a bakery and the post office, barely a glimpse and no one would see it and think it was just a wall. It been there for what he estimated three months, nobody seemed to know when exactly it opened or who owned it. He had nothing better to do, so he decided to pop in and see for himself what it was.

A shop filled with knickknacks, refurbished electronics, and dated clothing that been repaired and cleaned, no different from what he'd seen prior. Yet, his curiosity drew him to this particular one.

When he met the owner, a woman around his age. She had frizzy dark red auburn hair that went towards her neckline that curled at the ends. Pale skin. Dark eyes that almost look black. She never wore makeup and had a natural beauty mark under left eye. Her face, pretty, from his perspective. Full lips that curved slightly upwards towards the sides, despite her never smiling much. Height, probably around 175cm, but with her using her cane, he wasn't sure. Stout shoulders, thin arms. Looked thin. Normal weight from guessing. Wore long sleeves and trousers, only muted colours, doesn't like showing them bare at all. It's not polite to scale someone's appearance, as Matt's mum taught him, so he put her as someone who looked normal.

She looked at him funny. She kept looking at him, as if she'd seen him before. She claimed she never did.

He asked if she needed any help with the shop. At first, she was reluctant, but he persisted and she finally agreed. For some reason, before this, she kept looking past him, as if she thought someone stood behind him.

So now, Matt works at the Odds & Ends Shop as helper and connoisseur of the antiques and refurbished items.

It'd been hard work sorting through the salvaged items with Ripley, he often fought over some choices she had on them. She was always quick to throw out any purple colored clothing, even if they were in pristine condition.

She never said why she wanted them gone, but she always fought Matt over it. Eventually, he decided to oversee the salvage of clothing himself so Ripley wouldn't see any purple clothing. He always made sure to hide any purple clothing where Ripley couldn't see it and only fetched it when a customer made requests.

The shop was relatively quiet, unless Ripley worked on repairing an electronic, she found at a charity shop. She was always quiet when she worked, so Matt had to entertain his thoughts elsewhere whenever she worked on an electronic.

It'd been weeks since he worked at the shop. He hadn't entertained the thought of leaving like he done at his previous jobs. He seemed content with this one, despite it not paying as well. He didn't know why, just that he felt like he was happier there than anywhere else. In the weeks, he barely knew anything about Ripley, but she seemed to know things about him that he never shared with her prior.

Once he thought about dinner and mentioned he'd go to the grocery store after work, to which Ripley asked if he was getting fish sticks and custard, something of an odd combination he done many times. He never brought it up, didn't give a slight indication. She claimed she just guessed.

He tried to strike up conversations with her about anything that might resonate with something in her life. She always seemed discontent at speaking about herself. She never said much, if at all. Never brought up her family and friends, always quiet about everything else, and always an air of dejectedness around her whenever he asked her questions about herself, she never implicitly said why.

The few times she seemed to animate with joy, was when he brought in something he found at his parents' home and thought it'd make a good item to sell. It was something his dad got for cheap in his younger days in the navy while on a tour in Japan. It never released outside Japan, never saw the light of day unless someone paid heavily for the fees or jumbled together a Frankenstein with parts they found.

A Super "Famicom", perfectly intact, needed some cleaning, minor wear, but overall something that would fetch heavily in the shop. He had some games with it, most of which he couldn't read the titles of or knew what they were, but Ripley seemed to know them all by heart and for once since he's known her, she actually smiled at it all.

He asked her how she knew them all, but she grew quiet and solemn. She thanked him for the haul and gave him a pay increase for it. He seen her play some games here and there, for brief periods he saw her smiling, other times, she had that solemn look on her face.

Matt did try to bring it up, only told that it was nothing. Ripley didn't want to tell him anything and remained quiet.

It was almost two months when he finally found out something about her. He'd been cleaning the shop as Ripley went out to grab lunch when he came across something stowed away in the back, so hidden he barely saw it when he dusted the shelves. It was a box, tucked behind other boxes. He almost didn't think of it until he lightly touched it with his finger and felt a light jolt. It was enough for him to stumble backwards, but enough to draw his curiosity. With some oven mitts, he pried the box out from its hiding spot and carefully opened it.

To his surprise, he found a neatly folded clothing, purple, and bizarrely looked like a cross between old period military uniform and modern. There was a light bulge in the middle and he carefully lifted it up to see another box. He tried to touch it, but felt a nasty jolt again and he ended up putting everything back where he found it.

He didn't know how to bring it up without angering Ripley, but his natural curiosity riffed him relentlessly. He couldn't stand it so much he ended up breaking down and asking her one night after they were closing up the shop.

"Er, Ripley," he cautiously called to her while she rearranged things on the shelf that people didn't put back. She turned her head lightly, "What's it?"

"I was wondering, why you hate the color purple so much?" he brought up. "It's just a color."

"Just isn't it," she muttered under her breath. She stopped and turned around fully to look at him suspiciously. "What're you asking?"

"I'm wondering, why keep something you claim to hate?" Matt brought up the clothing he found. To his relief, Ripley didn't seem angry with him, annoyed, but she wasn't angry. She asked him how he found it and he told her.

"You shouldn't go poking around people's things," she warned him. When asked why she kept it, she only shook her head and replied, "You don't want to know."

"What about the shock-y thing?" Matt asked her. He heard in response, "Don't touch that!"

"What is it?" Matt crossed his arms, disapprovingly. "It's shocked me plenty; I want to know what it is!"

"You don't want to know," Ripley only said. "Don't touch it again."

She wouldn't tell him anything more and warned him to keep away from it. She moved it somewhere else because when he cleaned again he didn't see it. It perturbed him so much he stuck around the shop, he didn't know why.

Two months more and the two were on talking terms. She never laughed at his jokes, but she listened to them all the same. He once brought up his previous woes and wondered if he was doomed to forever deal with a nagging question that buried its way into his mind.

"I don't know, I just don't know why I quit," Matt admitted to her when they were cleaning up the shop. He told her about his days as a footballer, playing on his school's team, but slowly he started questioning it. He didn't hate the sport, he loved it. He just started getting aggravating with himself playing it. It gnawed him daily he ended up quitting over it, to his teammates disappointment.

Ripley asked him, "Why not go into acting?"

"I was told that, but honestly, I don't know why, I didn't think that was it," Matt admitted. "It's gnawing me, Ripley, I don't know why I can't find something I'm happy with."

"You're young, it'll come to you," Ripley encouraged. Matt laughed at this. "I just wish I knew what I'm missing," he frowned.

"If everything was easily found, we wouldn't have anything left," Ripley unconsciously said to him. She only shook her head afterward before telling him that surely he must want to do something with his life.

He thought on that, more and more. Something was missing from his life that he could not find it,

It wasn't until he found himself face to face with something unexpected that set him on the path.

One day, he and Ripley were out when they found something strange. An elective man who had myriad of problems with it and wanted it gone from his property was selling it. He came across it when he bought unpaid storage units and found it at the very back of the one unit he paid hundreds of euros.

The two were baffled at it, but the price was chiefly inexpensive and the cheapest they've ever seen for something like it. Ripley had to ask if there was any problems, legal and else, before they'd consider the offer.

Dirty, coated in decades of grime, and for an inexplicable reason would never open, even the man telling them about it, said he wasted euros trying to open it with locksmiths. He couldn't tell them what it was, exactly, he hadn't the foggiest of ideas, only that it was dirty and crusted, whatever it was, probably rotted away from time.

It wasn't something Ripley envisioned for her shop, but Matt convinced her to buy it and if they cleaned it up, they could sell it as a prop.

Ripley paid the price of only one euro and arranged for the item to arrive at the shop.

"I don't know how're we going to sell it," Ripley shook her head. "It's probably not worth much."

"I'm sure we can at least sell it to a theater," Matt suggested. "'Sides, you only paid a euro, not like you wasted a whole lot."

"Imagine the cleaning bill," muttered Ripley.

In a day, on the back of a delivery truck, two men worked to bring down the item and struggled. Apparently, despite its appearance, it was very heavy compared to what they'd normally get.

Ripley had them put it in the back in an enclosure where they could clean it.

Once the deliverymen left, she and Matt looked at the item with quizzical looks. "What's it?" Ripley blinked as she looked at the tall object with four sides. It was taller than Matt, roughly 2 centimeters, and almost twelve inches wide. They had ideas on what it was, but nothing really took.

"Alright, let's clean it," Ripley handed him a sponge and the two spent nearly eight hours scrubbing one side. It was so dirty; Matt had to change the water in the pail several times. Barely, they got to the actual exterior of the item. It was an ugly off-gray colour, and seemed too been burnt wood.

They kept cleaning it until Ripley told Matt to stop for the night. It was late, so he ended up sleeping at the shop, when he woke up, he and Ripley went on to continue their attempts at cleaning the item that after chipping off blackened grime and scrubbing down the crusty exterior, they saw it had windows. Matt, with a chisel and hammer, carefully broke off the grime that coated them and pried them off. The windows a milky white, cloudy, they couldn't see what was inside.

"I hope we don't find a body," Matt frowned. He'd read about people finding things they never expected from hauls like this and he worried they'd come across similar. Ripley comforted him by reminding him that they wouldn't find one here.

While Matt cleaned the windows, Ripley ordered some takeout for them. They'd agreed on some Chinese, Ripley went for the spicier items on the menu while Matt went for mild. They cleaned up until the deliveryman came with the food and the two took a break.

"Wonder what it is," Matt pondered. He thought it'd been a small shed for garden tools. Ripley shrugged. "Hopefully it'll be worth the water bill," she sighed.

After lunch and helping some customers, the two were back at cleaning the mysterious object that vexed them. The veneer needed work, the glass was okay, but when Matt yanked off more grime from the front, he saw a burnt out board under the windows and stopped.

"Huh, there's some engraving," Matt lightly touched the lines on the board. "I think it says "police"."

The two continued until every inch of the item scrubbed clean and to their surprise, it was a police box. Matt tried to open it, but like the elective man who had it before them, he couldn't.

"What do you think?" Ripley asked. Matt shrugged and estimated, "Might be worth a couple of hundred after we repair it. Might be more depending how much we pay for locksmiths."

It was late and Ripley closed the shop while Matt went home.

The next day the two were baffled at the police box in front of them.

"I can't believe it was only a euro," Matt blinked. Ripley blinked, "I can't believe we wasted all that water."

"Wonder what happened to it," Matt wondered about the police box. It looked as been completely burnt, but still structurally sound from the outside, he didn't know if the interior was still good.

Ripley looked it over and shrugged. "Might've been in a warehouse fire," she suggested. "Don't know how anyone would want it, like this."

The day went on as normal, they were busy with customers from all walks who came in and bought Betamax players and whatever else Ripley salvaged and repaired. Matt went and fetched lunch for them while Ripley dealt with customers who wanted to buy some costumes for a play.

When he came, he spent much of his lunch talking with Ripley about whatever came to mind, though he noticed she seemed visibly confused about some of the things he said. He mentioned going on a jog past the Winston Churchill monument near London Bridge, Ripley asked him if he went by Big Ben.

At first, he thought it was just her attempt at a lighthearted joke, but she looked serious. She was confused when he told her otherwise.

Big Ben burnt during the air raid in WWII and after the war; a monument in the likeness of Winston Churchill erected instead and been there ever since.

"You ever saw it?" Matt asked her, which she replied no. He was baffled, how anyone didn't see or heard of the Winston Churchill monument. He asked her how she didn't know about the Winston Churchill monument, but she remained quiet.

It'd been two months since they bought the police box.

Matt went over the wood with a smoother to try flush the wood while Ripley attempted to paint it a vivid red. She bought some paints from the hardware store and though she successfully painted it from the top to bottom, the next day the vivid red became suddenly dull and gray.

"I don't get it," Matt blinked as he studied the police box. "You painted it over twice last night!"

"I don't understand it either," Ripley blinked, just as confused as he was about the whole thing. She thought something might've been wrong with the paints she had and asked Matt to go fetch more from a different store. He returned later that night and both painted the police box a vivid red once again. To their dismay, the next day, the vivid red once more became dull and gray.

"Maybe the wood's no good," Matt frowned. Ripley, unhappy about the amount of money they spent on the police box, replied, "Might have to go, then."

They discussed whether they should cut their loses and junk the police box. They could never open it and with the paints not working, no theater would pay even a quid for it, they had to decide what to do with it.

"It's taking up space, Matt," Ripley reminded him of the limited space in the shop. "Can't keep it 'round if it's not going to sell."

The day continued once more until closing and the two worked to clean and lock up the shop for the night. While readying to leave, Matt remembered he forgotten his mobile in the back and went to retrieve it. When he came back, he was almost out of breath as he waved his hands as he described something strange he encountered.

"Went to get me phone, yeah," Matt began as he told Ripley. "I thought I left a light on in the corner and went to turn it off. I swear, I saw a light coming from inside the police box!"

Baffled, Ripley walked with him into the back and looked at the police box closely. No matter how closely she looked, into the milky windows, she couldn't see any light inside.

"I don't see anything, Matt," she said.

Matt peeked into the windows and pointed, "I swear, it was a faint light!"

"You must've imagined it," Ripley suggested. Matt seemed unhappy with her answer but with no proof, he left it as that. He left for the night and returned once again to the shop to work.

Shockingly, all the paint they covered the police box in disappeared completely. All corners and edges now a grayish color with no trace of either red paints. It baffled the two and it was something that confounded them for the rest of the day.

Matt decided at the end of his shift, he'd sleep in the back near the police box, and try to catch the light again. Ripley disapproved of this, saying, "It's not worth losing sleep over."

"I swear I saw a light," Matt insisted and he pointed towards the police box. "How else do you explain the paint?"

"Absorbing wood…?" Ripley shrugged as she watched Matt walk around the back room. "You'll hurt yourself walking around in here at night."

"I'll be fine, don't worry!" Matt tried to wave her concerns away. She brought up liabilities and didn't want to come into the back room to find he'd hurt himself and destroyed merchandise, but Matt insisted he'd be fine.

Ripley let him go about it while she finished up and went upstairs to her flat.

Matt sat around the back room, glancing up at the police box periodically, he didn't see the light he did earlier and frowned. Hours passed and he spent most of it on his mobile, checking his inboxes and talking to his friends and family. He never told them what he was doing, only that he was staying later than usual at the shop.

Eyelids increasingly becoming heavy, he ended up dozing off. He tried to stay awake, but he ended up falling asleep. He remembered opening his eyes a little when he thought he heard a noise and saw the back room lit up.

"Forgot something, Ripley?" Matt mumbled as he rubbed his heavy eyes. He stopped when he didn't hear her usual response or her cane. He blinked and stared at the police box. The windows bright enough to light up the back room in a hazy white, Matt held his hand over his forehead and stared at the police box.

He sprung up and nearly tripped over his legs as he rushed up to Ripley's flat and nearly gave her a fright as he banged on her door. She nearly swatted him with her cane, but he convinced her to come down to the back room and see for herself.

Like a kid rushing to the Christmas tree, Matt ran downstairs and into the back room, to his displeasure and Ripley's annoyance, the light was gone and the room was dark. "You were probably having a lucid dream, Matt," Ripley suggested him. He pointed at the police box as he insisted, "I swear, it lit up the entire room!"

"Matt, I think you should go home, get some rest," Ripley encouraged him despite his protests. He cleaned everything up and grabbed his things before he left the shop and went home. He wasn't too happy about it, he was certain of what he saw, and determined to gather evidence of the police box having some sort of light source inside.

Next day, Matt worked with Ripley to sort through a collection of salvaged Blu-Rays that been forgotten in someone's closet. These weren't particularly rare, but the format lost traction sometime in the mid 00s and the victor, HD-DVDs took over as the premiere format for movie and television releases. Sometimes they had customers who wanted oddball technology that never went anywhere and the Blu-Rays were one of those things.

Time to time, Matt would slip away and check on the police box. He didn't see any light in it, but he didn't give up on the idea that something about the police box was strange. Every time he slipped in to check, it remained dark and quiet, and he ended up forgetting about it while working with Ripley to test some VHS tapes they found.

"Are you positive you weren't just having a dream?" Ripley motioned with her hand. Matt shook his head, "I swear, I saw it with my own two eyes!"

Baffled, Ripley asked if he had any footage or picture of the phenomenal, but Matt grew quiet. He didn't get a picture or a 30 second video clip, he was too excited about the phenomenal he didn't think to get his camera app on his phone open before he ran out to grab her. Matt was embarrassed about it, to say the least.

"I just don't get it, I swear I saw a light in the police box," Matt scratched his head.

"If we could open it, I'm sure you'd get your answer," Ripley shrugged. "Can't do that with a locksmith, apparently, unless you want to sweep up the broken glass and hope for the best."

Ripley found a hammer and handed it to Matt. They stood in front of the police box and Matt readied the hammer while Ripley stood back away from it. Taking a deep breath, Matt slammed the hammer against the window, to his and Ripley's surprise, the glass didn't shatter. It didn't even crack, not even a light dusting of powdered glass came off it. The glass remained untouched by the hammer. Matt tried it again, this time with more oomph, and once again, the glass didn't shatter.

"I don't understand," Matt blinked as he stood in front of the police box, holding the hammer to his side as he tilted his head in confusion. Ripley tried it herself and even she couldn't put a dint in the glass, confusing her as well. "Paint won't keep, glass won't break, what is this thing?" Ripley summed their experiences with the police box.

The strange light and the disappearing paint wasn't the only thing that occurred in the shop. It was summer, now, and it was much warmer than the forecast anticipated and the area became humid. Like most buildings, the shop didn't have an AC and Matt brought a fan to work to keep them cool while they waited out the heat.

Of all places in the shop, the only place where it was icy cold, was the back room. Likened to an icebox, Matt found himself hiding in the back room periodically to cool down. He noticed it getting colder as he went near the police box. If he touched it, it was like he touched a glacier, so cold it almost felt like he touched dry ice. It hurt touching it for a few seconds and he had to pry his hand away from the veneer.

Oddly, the police box had no reason being this cold, the exterior was wood and aside from the glass windows and the lock, nothing on the police box suggested it was a heat sink.

He brought it up as he closed up the shop with Ripley. She had no idea ether and they were both equally confounded at the icy cold police box. "Maybe there's something under the wood?" Matt blinked as he helped lock up the cabinets. Ripley shrugged, "I don't know, Matt."

The back room remained freezing cold throughout the week, to the point whenever they accidentally left water bottles in the back, when they retrieved them, all frozen solid. Concerned, Ripley set to arrange someone to come out to the shop and inspect the back room at the end of the week after the two closed the shop for the day.

She worked out the cost to junk the police box. Nobody would buy it in the condition it was in and it took up too much space in the back. Within a couple of weeks, she can arrange someone from the junkyard to come and pick it up. Until then, they had to deal with the police box for a little longer.

Matt was still certain something was off about the police box, Ripley tried to tell him he might've been imagining things, and he contended that he had to figure it out before Ripley called the junkyard.

"Something's off about it, Rip, I can't shake the feeling," Matt shook his head. "The back room was never that cold, even in winter."

"Maybe the freezer from the bakery is leaking into the back room?" Ripley suggested as she looked at Matt who paced around the shop. He stopped periodically as he rubbed his eyes, shaking his head.

Frowning, Ripley devised a plan that would give Matt the closure he needed. She took one of the many video cameras they had, planted it on a box pointing at the police box, and used the timers to switch the camera into night vision mode when the lights turn off.

The day ended, Matt left for home and Ripley returned to the flat above the shop. The night was quiet; Ripley never went down into the back room to check the video camera. Everything made where it was until the following morning where Ripley and Matt went into the back room and checked the footage from the night before.

For the first few hours, the police box did nothing. The night vision turned on and no light emitted from the windows on the police box. Ripley fast forward until around 3 AM when she noticed a glint on one of the windows. At first she brushed it off as a reflection but slowly the glint grew bigger and bigger until all the windows lit up. It was so bright the light turned off the night vision on the video camera. It had a white glow and the light shined bright until a half an hour later when slowly the light dimmed until it became nothing more than a glint again, before finally disappearing.

It was enough for Matt to jump for joy as he had proof. It concerned Ripley who stared at the footage in awe. She had no idea what to say.

Matt asked her, "What do you think it is?"

Shrugging, Ripley responded, "I don't know, I wish we can get inside and see."

It gave Matt the idea of grabbing a crowbar they kept around the shop and took it to the door of the police box. He dug the teeth into the crevice and with his strength tried to force it open, but to no avail. Trying it again, he ended up snapping the crowbar in half, it bowed and bent until it broke, sent him to the floor and nearly left a bruise on his bum. The paints that Ripley left on the shelves clattered and dropped to the floor from the incident and red paint splattered Matt. Globs of paint coated his T-shirt and trousers and some got in his hair.

Ripley sent him upstairs to shower off the paint while she took care of his clothes and cleaned up the pools of paint that slowly froze to the ground. It took work but she managed to clean it up and throw his clothes in the wash. In half an hour, Matt walked downstairs with a haircut and an odd wardrobe. He needed some clothes to wear just until he got home and made do with what Ripley had.

He ended up taking a tweed jacket he'd found in a bag while using a bowtie to tighten the collar of a shirt he grabbed. It was an odd look, but Matt opted to work with it, and he crossed his arms as he tried to figure out what happened.

"No crowbar, no locksmith, what the hell is this thing made of?" Matt rubbed his eyes. "I don't understand."

"I don't know and I don't care, it's given us enough troubles as it is. We've wasted time with it and I think we should cut our loses and let someone else deal with it. It's not worth you getting hurt over it," Ripley pointed out to him. Matt wasn't too happy about it, but she was right, despite the efforts to prove that light came on inside the police box, nothing they did opened it and it was getting worrisome having it around.

Sighing, Matt relented and agreed. It was for the best and he didn't know what else would happen and he didn't want to risk something hurting him again or Ripley.

The day finished and the shop closed the next day. Ripley gave Matt the day off while she sorted through inventory.

A festival was going on and Matt decided to spend his day off there.