A New Shop
You’ve walked past the same row of shops almost every day for the three years you’ve been living in this part of town, so you know it very well. Which is why it comes as a surprise to notice a small shop you hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t that one of the other shops had closed down and changed hands to a new owner. You’d definitely remember that. No, this was different. A narrow looking little place squeezed in between the key cutter and the bakery, with a sign coloured in vibrant swirls of purple and pink.
You stop to look at the odd looking little place. The street is fairly busy, and several people hurry past without looking twice at it, despite its outlandish appearance. The shop sign doesn’t have any writing on it. Just a strange looking symbol, like an eye with five lines radiating from underneath it. You try to look in the window, but the inside is completely dark. Eerily dark, as if the window glass was just black obsidian. Unnerved, you decide to step away and carry on walking. Soon enough, the strange little place has faded from your memory.
The next day, you find yourself passing the same way. You notice the strange little shop again. A few people walk past it, but still no one seems to pay it any attention. Its window seems brighter now, and you realise you can see inside. Perhaps it simply hadn’t been open yesterday. Looking in, the shop’s interior looks rather spacious. A number of colourful jars and bottles line wooden shelves. Many of them have writing on them, in uneven black ink. You squint, but you can’t quite make out what any of it says.
But the most peculiar thing is the window display. Behind the glass are several large mushrooms, the largest being easily over a metre tall. Their caps are vibrantly coloured in purple and pink, just like the sign above the door. You smile at that. Whoever designed the display had a nice eye for detail. They’re quite carefully detailed too. In fact, whichever artist created these managed to make them look almost like real mushrooms. Your curiosity piqued, you try to walk into the shop to take a closer look. Turning the handle, you push. Nothing. It seems like the door is locked. Maybe this shop isn’t open yet after all. You make a note to come back some other time, to see what it is that this strange little shop is actually selling.
The following day, the government announces a lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus. No one knows how long it might last. You won’t be walking along your usual route today. Better to simply hurry to the supermarket so you can pick up a few essentials you need, before they’re all sold out. You remember what happened the last time, when panic buyers emptied the shelves, and you don’t want to run out of rice again. The store is busy, but you manage to pick up everything you need. As you walk home, you find yourself wondering about the strange little shop. They chose an unfortunate time to open. You hope they’ll manage ok while there are no customers.
For the next two weeks, you stay at home and try to keep yourself entertained with movies and internet video calls. It isn’t too bad really, provided you can keep finding yourself things to do. You find yourself troubled though, by strange dreams. Dreams with swirling purple and pink colours. They aren’t nightmares exactly, because you don’t find them scary. But they do leave you feeling slightly unsettled when you wake up. And they all seem to end the same way. A gigantic eye, floating in front of you. It opens, and light streams out, spiralling around you like tendrils. No, not tendrils. More like a web of fine, shimmering filaments. You have no idea what it could mean.
Eventually, your supplies start to dwindle. You should make another trip to the supermarket for groceries.
It’s a nice day outside as you step out. Clear air, clear skies, and the sound of birdsong. You decide to take the long way to the store, seeing as you’ve been staying at home for so long. So you walk down the street with the row of shops. Th shop with the purple and pink swirling sign is there. You frown as you look at it. You remember it being narrower than that. The window is now much wider, filled with many more of the mushrooms you’d seen before. Somehow though, the shops to either side of it don’t seem any narrower. The pavement tiles outside it are starting to crack and split apart. Small, bulbous looking things are protruding out from between them. Bulbous things with purple and pink swirling patterns. Mushrooms!
Hesitantly, you step closer to the shop. Those shelves you saw before don’t seem to be made from wood. They’re warped. Rounded. More organic looking. Like the bracket fungus you’ve seen growing from the side of trees. And those jars. Are they jars? You were mistaken before. That isn’t uneven writing on them, and it doesn’t look like black ink. Those look like... faces? You squint and step closer to the window to try and get a better view. Then one of the turns, looks at you, and smiles.
You step back with a start. You look up and down the street, but it’s completely deserted. There’s no one here but you. With a click, the shop door swings silently open, inviting you to step inside.