Previous Volumes
Volume 2 No. 5
The Midnight Shoppe
by Chelsey R. Knapp
A malachite glare soon faded into the warm flicker of candlelight as the shop materialized.
​
The shopkeeper rushed around inside as Sara burst through the door. “Something’s wrong!”
He dropped everything in his hands. “Nothing at all, you followed through! Can’t say the same for most.”
She moved in closer, staring at her reflection in the shopkeeper’s gleeful black eyes.
“What have you done?”
“What’s the matter?”
Her vision blurred with tears.
“It’s your spell,” he said, “It’s exactly what you wanted.”
“This is not what I wanted!” She cried.
“She betrayed you!”
“I never wanted her dead!”
“You see, you’re doing it right now, I told you. Humans always lie.”
​
She stormed off, the door to exit gradually stretching further and further away from her.
“Don’t you want to claim what you’ve earned?” He asked.
She turned to curse at him and he had already vanished.
​
“Otherwise, it really is all in vain, isn’t it?” His voice echoed. Ceramic statues crashed to the floor as he wailed indecipherable obscenities from the other side of the shop. “Blasted! Here we go!” He hurried back to her and presented an iron writing desk the size of a toy.
She glared back at him, refusing to accept it. “I wanted the scene displayed in the front window.”
“I won’t give away my dream displays,” he said, “Those are mine to keep. They take ages to build. This artifact is how you take it home with you.”
He placed the tiny figure in her palm.
​
​
An unbearable question that had been haunting her finally boiled above the surface. "What happens if you take on debt here?"
He gestured towards the displays. "Then I have the joy of deciding your fate. I'm not terribly kind about it."
When she arrived back home, Nina’s body was gone. Someone had finished the rest of the stew.
The house was silent and empty.
The tiny statue appeared all but useless before she took it up to the attic. It grew warmer to the touch, and started to shimmer in the darkness like a star.
The immense library from the shop started to materialize in the cramped space; the ceiling stretched to an impossible height, lush leaves of ancient knowledge and inspiration painted around her, each piece sacred in design and from a different century altogether. She thought of the way her mother would have commented that the pieces looked gaudy together, and of course, Nina would have agreed.
She entered the dream, selecting a journal before perching on a narrow, unevenly carved chair at an antique walnut desk. Days could have passed without her knowing. The cramped attic was now a vast maze to explore.
She scratched her arm through a wet sleeve, sweating through her clothes.
Everywhere in the space, the heat had suddenly become unbearable. Floating sunspots clouded her eyes as she crawled down the spiraling stairs, steeper than she remembered. A harsh gust of heat caused a fainting spell to take over and she tumbled to the bottom, hitting her knees on jagged stones jutting out from the ground. When she could stand again, what she saw struck her with terror.
Someone had lit the fireplace, trapping her.
Desperate to escape the volcanic air, she ran back up the stairs and waited.
​
When she tried to go back, she found herself standing over a cliff.
Still, everything in the maze behind her remained the perfect height to enjoy.
Midnight came and the shop rose with amber radiating from the windows where the shopkeeper soon appeared, juggling a statue well over twice his size, and posing it before the reflective antique desk.
He hurried over to the mantle and bounced with excitement as he stirred an old wooden spoon into a bubbling cauldron. He turned back to the statue and held back a laugh.
“You’ll have to let me know what it’s missing!”