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[operator-101001]

Affliction of the Damned

You say you are not a vampire, my love. I must politely disagree.

Do you not hide yourself from the sun? Your fair skin cracks and burns at the exposure, set ablaze by its heat which is so comforting to me. You would be worse for wear from it and so you conceal yourself in the daytime.

Do you not wander at night? You have taken me to rove the streets as you do. When the sun goes down and the crowds’ drunken reveries fade amongst the stars, we take their place, gallivanting beneath the moon and admiring one another in the gentle light of streetlamps.

Have you not taken blood from others in a way so uncommon for mortals? With the way you live, my dear, with your overly charming smile and your precious rose-golden hair, you must drain the love and life from all you have left. For if ever you forsake me, you will have taken my blood, as well.

For you have a fascination with death that I have never seen in another human. And I am sure that––had you the resources––you would joyously take your rest in a coffin. You have an eye for the macabre; a way of seeing the world that I can only hope to one day have the power to comprehend. Your mind works not as one from my days, but one who has seen the rise and falls of entire eras and still chooses to stand among them to watch the world grow in childish fascination.

And are you not a being beyond flesh? It is true that one day your life will end, and what a sad day that will be, my precious, but you will never die. For you have burned yourself into every corner of my mind, and no doubt the minds of countless others whose lives have been graced by your uniqueness. As long as we live, you will continue to exist forever, exacting immortality through the passions of love.

And so I have told you, dearest. You are, in fact, a vampire. It is true that you may not have fangs; you may not revile garlic or shun crucifixes from your gaze, but with every moment you spend by my side, I feel the pull of your being through mine; turning, turning, turning me, until one day, I may be a vampire, too.

[operator-101001]

The Shop Next Door

I’m not sure when exactly I noticed the window. The charming little music shop in my hometown had been hiring during the summer between my first and second years of college. I needed the money and they needed the help; poor old Mr. Johnson just didn't have it in him to work the store all by himself anymore. After all, amps and cellos were cumbersome, and the old man was growing more brittle by the day.

I had been working there for roughly three months––in fact, my first summer was beginning to come to a close when I went fiddling with the shelf behind the register. Our customers were sparse, since demand for used trumpets and crumbling drum sets was low, so I figured I could make myself useful by unboxing and restocking the shelves with some recent shipments of brass polish and different sorts of oil. I was searching for the box cutter, maybe some scissors, groping my way around behind me while something else drew my attention; perhaps a fly, or someone driving a brightly-colored car past the door in the corner of my eye. I fumbled whatever item my hand had found, and in an effort to catch the hefty bottle of cleaner now making a swan dive to the floor, I ended up swiping clean the entire cluttered shelf that always sat inches behind my back.

That was when I saw it. It was a window positioned innocently behind the shelf, and through it, I could see straight into the shop next door. It was a quaint tea shop with oak floors and flaking white paint on the walls, complete with faded blue accents on the wood trim. I watched a patron––a suited man of about forty––walk through the front door, ringing the little brass bell hanging above it and alerting the delightfully cheery woman behind the shelf of his presence. I could even hear the muffled sounds of their speech vibrate through the now unobstructed glass.

I felt almost foolish for having never seen the feature of the building before, but it wasn’t exactly obvious. In fact, it was quite an easy window to miss; it had been sitting behind this shelf located at the back of whoever was running the register for who knows how many years, covered by the mountains of useless things that my boss had accumulated over time. I loved working here, I really did, but Mr. Johnson could be a bit of a hoarder at times. He kept trinkets and notes everywhere, busying up the paltry shop with useless antiques and age-old papers that no longer served any purpose. I organized things whenever I had time, but there weren’t many places to move the hoard to in such a petite building. With a single register and few daily customers, it only took one person to run the music store. I had to admit, it was a nice gig.

More falling trinkets––this time a pile of old keychains––drew me out of my thoughts and back to the entrancing window. I had to crane my neck strangely to see anything on account of the window being put behind a shelf on both sides. It seemed that whoever ran this whimsical shop next door had also half-hidden and forgotten about this adjoining window.

I stood there with my eyes glued to the scene, examining every detail to make sure of what I was seeing. I felt my mouth go a bit dry, a tepid flash of unease flashing rapidly through my stomach and into my trachea. My palms turned clammy. My heart pounded. The discovery didn’t frighten or shock me as much as dement my mind, for it was not the tea shop itself that unsettled me, nor the friendly conversation being had as that nice woman made the customer his tea. It was not the amount of detail, from the polished marble shelf their register sat upon to the neat, hand-written menu hanging over it and the slight give of the floorboards as the customers walked over them.

It was the fact that there was no building next door.

To ascertain that I wasn’t losing my mind or mid-stroke, I marched out of the music store, walking to the side of the storefront where I had seen the window. Just as I’d seen for all the months I had shown up to work, there was nothing; just the broad alley separating my shop from the next building over. I looked at the siding of the music store, a bit relieved yet surprised to find nothing. Staring back at me were nothing but faded bricks without a window in sight. But when I walked back inside and took my seat behind the register, swiveling my chair around to the back, I could still see the impossible tea shop that sat next door.

I decided to ask my boss about it. The next day, I gave him a call.

“Mr. Johnson? I have a question,” I told him, trying to think of how I could possibly begin to phrase it. Thoughts of being accused of insanity were pushed to the very back of my mind by a crazed sort of curiosity. I needed to know. “You know that shelf behind the register, the one where you keep the cleaner and keychains? Is there a window behind that shelf?” He had been bushwhacked when I asked him the question. Then came the suspiciously-hurried answer of no, there was not, nor had there ever been a window there, and was I feeling okay, and just what was it that I thought I saw?

I was upfront. I told him about the tea shop in as much detail as I could. I told Mr. Johnson about the brass bell over the door and the man in the suit who I watched order tea from the bubbly woman behind the counter, and how I carefully examined the outside of the building to make sure I wasn’t crazy. Mr. Johnson was very quiet after that. Our conversation ended with him instructing me to cover up the window and never talk about it again if I wanted to keep my job. That was the only time Mr. Johnson had ever threatened to fire me.

And so, per his request, I replaced the hoard of useless things to its place on the shelf, effectively blocking the window from my view. I became a model employee, taking in instruments to repair, selling guitar strings, trading used equipment and the like; all while the improbable tea shop bustled with life behind me, so active and fresh yet simultaneously absent, unable to truly exist. It was like a ghost of a place entirely dead to time, yet every time I heard the muffled ring of that brass bell, I longed to ask more questions.

It’s been years since then. I have since finished college, and everyone around me was overjoyed by my success. I returned to my hometown, planning to remain with my parents until I could get a good job sorted out. I had put in the work; I expected to be able to land anywhere I wished in my field. In time, that window would fall into the furthest recesses of my mind, written off as some insane fractal of my imagination used to distract me from the boredom on days when no customers at all would walk through the door. However, it seemed that in the end, my career path had been decided for me.

Mr. Johnson passed away last spring. He didn’t have any family, so he left his shop to me. I intend to keep it open as long as I can. After all, it’s good money, the people are nice, and I truly am interested in being surrounded by music. And so, I show up every day and clean the windows; I sweep the floor every evening before I leave; I sell drumsticks and guitar picks to students and old, grizzled musicians alike. And, with no one to answer to, I cleared just a bit of the clutter from the back shelf. Every now and then, when the days are quiet and the shop is empty, I’ll turn my gaze to the shop next door and watch the grinning lady happily serve up tea to her enigmatic customers.