Tucked away in a shadowed corner of the third block of Main Street sits a tiny tea shop, selling trinkets, and curiousities, skull themed drinkware, and a plethora of junk hidden among aisle after aisle, touting the notion that the shelves never end. Upon entering, you look behind the counter to see an antique china cabinet, eerily lit with incandescent lighting, showcasing each individual oddity sequestered away behind the glass. This, dear Children, holds the most dangerous and powerful of the knick knacks and objects gathered over the years by one Etta Mae Jenkins, shop owner and self-professed kitchen witch.
***********
Anthony Buchanan, a small-time pastor of Fairview Southern Holiness Church slammed the door behind him as he entered the dimly lit store, noting the tinkling as it shut. "Annoying hippies," he muttered, as he read the engraving on the pewter set of bells.
'Gremlin Bell - Wards off mechanical failures and bad luck.'
If the rest of the shop looked the way the entrance did, he might as well back out. Having visited every other weird shop on this street, Anthony, Tony, had decided to stop in here to try a last- ditch effort to find a present for his wife's birthday.
Ex-wife, Tony, well, soon-to-be.
That is, if he could figure out just how to be rid of her. Angi presented a unique problem by marital means. She owned everything - the house, the cabin on the lake, their vehicles.
The prenup they signed before their wedding day built a watertight foundation where if she died, all of her investments, her 401k, Roth IRA, and her savings would be placed into a trust for their two girls, Nance and April. Angi dominated the town’s real estate market, proving to be incredibly trustworthy and reputable as a seller, she never took the easy way out through shady deals or half-truths. Damn that honest woman! Only woman he knew who placed integrity over financial gain.
Still, her portfolio runneth over, and Tony’s patience runneth thin.
“Can I help you find anything?” A small, blonde woman with short hair and a decidedly oversugared southern simp approached him from behind. She watched his reaction with a questioning gaze, as he jumped not knowing exactly where she had emerged from. As he could see, there were no doors behind the sales counter, and she hadn’t came from the sales displays piled high with mismatched plates and teapots.
“An Ambulance for the heart attack you just gave me?” he responded breathlessly, clutching his chest. “No ma’am, I’m looking for a present for my wife for Mother’s Day. She’s also not been sleeping so great lately, and I heard you had herbs?”
He followed her up to the counter slowly, carefully avoiding any of the various trinkets and charms haphazardly lying about on god knows how many tables. ‘Did anyone ever organize? She’s got more junk here than the Salvation Army.’ He mused.
As if she heard his thoughts, Etta Mae ripped around the counter and faced him. “I’m the only employee here, so it’s always a bit messy. Bless.” She gushed, still sounding like a bad rendition of Dolly Parton. “I have several herbs here though that might help. Chamomile, Valerian, Ashwaganda’s really niiiiice.” She leaned in towards him as she emphasized the word nice, holding it out as if that would sway him to purchasing anything but what the Google search had told him.
“Belladonna?” He interrupted, seeing the results in his head from the web page he read an hour or so before he left work. Work computers remained public, and anyone could search for anything from any terminal. No cameras had been installed in the cubicle area, just the hallways and stairwells, so anyone looking for proof that he poisoned Angi would turn up nothing.
“Oh, I do have that mister….” She looked questioningly at him, expectantly waiting for his response.
“Bartlett. Harold Bartlett.” He replied.
“Well, Mr. Bartlett, I do carry belladonna, but I don’t like selling it unless you are experienced with herbs and know what you’re doing. That plant can do trippy things if you aren’t too careful.”
“I need it, and you sell it, so what’s the problem?” he huffed, not caring to hide his disdain for a woman telling him what he could and could not do.
“Well, alright.” She crooned in a soothing manner. “I will sell it to you but you have to sign a form saying you don’t hold the shop or me liable for selling it to you.” She produced a piece of paper from below the till. “It also has a spot for you to check saying you will not use it to get high or harm anyone else. I don’t have to do these things, but I feel it’s important in this day and age to CYA, you know what I’m saying?” She tapped on the spot where the box marked the page.
“Whatever, fine, miss…?” he pulled a pen out of his blazer pocket and began filling out the short form.
“Oh, Etta Mae. Etta Mae Jenkins, and it’s a pleasure to know you.” She curtsied and turned to the shelves behind her, grabbing a small glass bottle corked and tied with a black silk ribbon. The label read in scrawling script Atropa Belladonna – Poisonous. Do not ingest
“Your total comes to $17.17.” she pushed the buttons on an old-style cash register. “Will that be cash or charge?”
“Highway robbery.” He retorted. “Cash. And can you bag it up? I don’t want any of my congregation to see me with this hippy stuff.”
She counted out his change from a twenty and reached below the counter for an indistinct paper bag, fluffed it out and placed the vial in.
He noticed the bag seemed heavy when he picked it up by the twine handles. “Have a nice day, Mr. Bartlett.” Etta crooned as he left the store.
“Right,” he grumbled, and was gone.
At home, Mr. ‘Bartlett’ placed his keys and the bag on the counter, noting the heavy thud. ‘What in the world?’
He reached in the bag and pulled out a book, small, handwritten, and hunter green with a leather-bound outer skin. “Recettes A Retinir….what is this, French?” he rifled through the pages, mumbling aloud “Maybe it was a promo gift, but this looks really old….” The recipes, as he recalled the translation of recettes, were handwritten in a scrawling, thin script. As he fumbled through it, he noticed that several of them were in different styles of writing, and some of them were English. “Weird, but niiiiice.” He whispered to himself. Now, he could cook Angi a suitable French dinner for Mother’s Day and include his own special ingredient. A few minutes of flipping the pages and he had found the recipe he wanted to make.
The hissing noise of the ventilator filled the room as Angi sat holding Tony’s hand. Dried tears traced trails of mascara down her freckled face, and the lines of age and worry sat sentinels to her trauma. The horror of finding Tony passed out on the counter in a trance-like state, various ingredients spilled all over the surface, including tuna steaks, left out for hours, certainly shocked her. The kids sat across from her on a hard loveseat, coloring and humming slightly, every now and then fussing about which color was whose. What would she do without Tony?
The doctors confirmed that nothing seemed to be wrong with her husband, but his CT scans showed he remained comatose, despite days of work and testing, he did not improve. Nothing at home proved to be the culprit. Toxicology tests came back clean. The congregation thought perhaps the devil had attacked Tony, as Frieda Bailey saw him exiting that witch lady’s store the day he collapsed. As the family’s babysitter, it remained her duty to care for the kids even after the horrific discovery, and if Angi needed anything, just holler.
As for Recette A Retinir, Etta Mae firmly replaced the book back into the curio cabinet, shaking her head and sighing. “How did you get out again? That’s the third time this month. I really need to work on my binding. Now go on, git, stay in your place. I don’t need you out there making trouble for me.” She locked the cabinet with a small skeleton key and placed the leather cord holding it around her neck. She gently slid it under her shirt and began shutting off all the lights. She exited, locked the door, and walked up the stairs to the left of the storefront to her apartment above the street. Fate’s Locket closed, until the new day dawned…..
Comments