by Avi Rosen, contributing writer
It was a quiet day at the store, which was lodged between the grocery and a new cafe. The scent inside was a subtle one, a faint aroma of tin and pine. The store itself was quite quiet, receiving only the odd customer every few months. It had been there for many years, longer than anyone could remember. Anyone except for the owner, an older man, almost as dusty as his shop.
Binghap was a rather nondescript man. Of average height, with fuller gray hair and a face marked with the humble weight of joyful years. He had opened his store awhile back, before any others had stood in the neighborhood. In fact, his store had existed before anything else. He’d opened it as a refuge for the most lost of souls, crafting their deepest desires, made them real and hung them on display. The most ancient of fossils would be as a newborn to this shop, the first specks of dust nothing more than a toddler. The sign above the store was a rather unusual one, marked in many different languages. All different languages, actually, every single one that had and ever would, exist. And they all said the same thing: Dreams For Sale.
Many an innocent passerby had wandered into the shop, only to come out bewildered and unremembering of any of the store’s contents. Binghap would stand there bemused, watching their expressions fluctuate as they saw the truth of the shop. But every time that they left, they would turn back, each one of them, in desperate longing, viewing for perhaps the last time, their own swiftly departing dreams.
Not many left with any of his merchandise. Most couldn’t pay the price he exacted. A piece of oneself would have to be left in exchange. Only those truly desperate would depart with one of Binghap’s masterpieces. Not the wealthy with their offerings of gold, nor the poor with their offerings of their work, nor the holy folk with their prayers and beliefs. The only being who had outright bought one of his stock had done so at the opening of the shop. Binghap still remembered that moment, when the mysterious figure, cloaked in light and shadow, had entered. It had bought a small globe, with size greater than its humble appearance. Even creators had to look somewhere for inspiration, he’d thought.
A slight creaking of the door startled him from his thoughts and he watched his newest arrival, a young girl, enter the shop. She looked…hollow. Empty. Binghap noticed the empty collar grasped white-fisted in her hand and the channels that tears of loss and rage had carved into her young face. She walked over to the counter, locking eyes with the old man and placing her empty hand on the counter. There was a ferocity to her eyes, a wildness unchained, that moved Binghap to understanding. But there were rules when working the store, rules he’d established at the beginning of everything, and he had to follow them.
“I cannot trade something for noth..”
“I know.” the girl whispered. She opened her palm. Inside were two beads, one a pearly white, the other the darkest hue of green. She trembled as she slowly let them slide onto the counter. Binghap looked at the girl again and saw her. Something within him stirred. Rules were rules, but the least he could do was bend them a little.
“Two is the same as two, yes?” he offered. The girl nodded, confused by his logic. Binghap went out from the counter.
“Wait here,” he instructed. “I’ll be back soon,”
He went to the back of the store and returned a few moments later holding a box.
“The first dream is this,” he paused, “you may come back once more, for anything you wish. But after that you will be unable to find this store. And as for the second…”
He set the box down before the girl and gestured for her to open it. She cautiously did so, and a furry head emerged and licked her cheek. She looked up at Binghap with tears in her eyes.
“Thank you. Thank you.” she whispered.
The girl left a moment later, her dog following with a wagging tail. The collar had fit perfectly. Binghap closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. Another purchase had been successfully made, and the emptiness in his store would soon be filled again, with newer dreams and brighter days.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Avi Rosen is going into his senior year at Brandeis University. He’s majoring in English and History and enjoys writing mystical fiction as well as improvising on piano. This mystical fiction story is his first submission to Lumos.
