Razmatazz

“I hate myself.”

The girl lays in her bed, huddled tightly together into a ball. Her cold, whisper thin hands fidget with a single coin that was laying there together with herself. The drab curtains, drawn tightly shut over the windows, obscure the bright morning daylight, causing the room to be lost in a nigh-complete darkness; save for the blinking of a single red LED in the distant corner, next to a dead, dried out basil-plant on the shelf. The air in the room is stale, but cold. It's winter and her heater is off. But she isn’t lying beneath the old, unwashed shamrock patterned blankets, she's lying on top of them. It's uncomfortably cold in here, in just her pajamas, the pajamas that she has been wearing for the last sixteen hours, give or take a day or two. That's okay though. She can’t explain why in coherent thoughts, but she wants it to be uncomfortable. Somehow, the minor self-inflicted suffering makes her feel.

Just feel. Not feel something better. Not something worse. Just something. Anything.

She closes her eyes, laying there for a time; numb, but not as numb as she had hoped to be. Until eventually, the all encompassing weight of sleep presses her conscious mind out and away into an ocean of nothingness, out to somewhere where even the feelings of the cold are lost in the depths, as the two of them sink down together and part ways.

There is a trickle of water in her dream. She fidgets. The sound makes her feel like she needs to use the bathroom. The girl opens her eyes.

Everything is white.

Her room is gone. Her bed is gone. There is only herself, standing in a giant, empty, blank space. But the water… Where is that sound coming from? She turns around and sees it, the source of the noise, a fountain. A simple fountain, like you’d see in any old park, stone-wrought and ornate, but covered in the kinds of esoteric decorations that one might find ‘neat’, but nothing more than that. It's a fountain like any other really. She walks towards it. However, as she moves, she notices that her body doesn't feel quite right. It's light and floaty, just like running in a dream.

- In a dream? She looks down at her hands. Oh. It’s just a dream.

Her body is gone. There is simply a vague, colorless blob in a roughly human shape, there where she herself should be. The only thing distinct left about herself, is the single coin that is still held between her 'fingers'. She looks at it and then back towards the fountain.

Well… It seems like the obvious thing to do, right?

With a flick of her thumb, the coin flies through the air, flying just a bit too high and hitting the upper part of the fountain, before splashing down to sleep with all the rest of the coins, down below the surface of the oddly dark water, shimmering with a jubilant shine from unseen source of light.

Instantly, the white room vanishes and then so does she.

A woman’s voice rings out in her mind, clear like a spring brook. “Hey, you there. Did you drop this diamond ring in my fountain?” asks the voice.

“…Huh?“

The girl floats there and sees the image of a luxurious, diamond-studded ring in her mind’s eye, a pale, bony hand holding it out towards her. It must be worth a fortune, she thinks. More money than she has ever seen before. “Here, you can have it back,” offers the voice and extends the hand out further towards her, its witchy fingers spread open wide.

She floats there and looks at it. Her heart beats a little faster and she feels the phantom sensation of her own hand rising up to take it, even if she doesn’t have a body anymore. But then, she stops.

The dreamy sensation of her arm moving has made her think a strange thought. The thought, that this feeling, this floaty feeling of moving in a dream, that it is the same as being underwater. This darkness… It isn’t a void or some light-less dreamscape. It's underwater. She shivers. The cold of her bedroom, which had sank down together with herself, reaching her here, now, as it finally arrives down in the depths that she had fallen into. Its familiar bite brings clarity to her mind, it returns her personal-truth to her senses.

This ring is too nice for her to have. She doesn’t deserve it. “No, it’s not mine,” says the girl and slowly lowers her hand.

The water stirs. The voice cries out, pleased. “Ahh! It’s been a while since I had someone honest here!” In contrast with its own excitement, just a second later, it yawns, somewhat sleepily. “Let me reward you for your honesty, is there anything that you want?” asks the voice, drifting lazily around her shapeless body in a circle.

Anything? What does that mean? Anything? Like, literally anything? Well, what does it matter… It's just a dream. A strange dream, that's going to make her have to run to the bathroom straight after she wakes up in a minute, but a dream nonetheless. The girl floats there silently for a while.

“- Can I have my coin back?” she asks.

“No,” says the voice, very clearly, now less sleepy, as if provoked. “You can wish for anything but that. No refunds.”

“Oh…” she says, feeling her body-less self turn upside down, as she floats idly in the murk. “…Can you make me happy?”

“No. I can’t do that either,” says the voice of the water, fairly matter of factly.

“Huh? You said I could wish for anything and now there are two things you’re telling me I can’t wish for.”

The voice sighs. “Listen, happiness isn’t something I can make, you have to make it yourself. You have to work for it. Nothing from the outside can fix that fact of the universe. I’d say take a nap, but… hmm… of course my first donation in this long would end up being a tricky one… Uh…” the entity thinks.

It's strange, hearing an omnipresent spiritual being say ‘hmm’ and ‘uh’. The girl feels a heavy resignation inside of herself. Not even her dreams can be exciting anymore. She just wants to go back to that dark place between wakefulness and sleep, to that emptiness, where she simply isn’t there anymore. That's a dark wish, sure, now that she thinks more about it. But it's her true wish. That would be nice. She would like that, actually, a lot. The girl opens her mouth to speak.

“Can yo-“

“Ah! I got it!” interrupts the voice. “You want your money back and you want to be happy, huh? Well, have I got a deal for you! Are you ready?”

The girl floats, not even agitated at being interrupted. She's used to it, people usually never let her finish her sentences. Most of them didn't even bother listening to her to begin with. “I… Uh… I guess?”

“You want to earn happiness, right?” asks the voice.

“Yeah…” she responds, with some uncertainty.

“Then it’s settled. Good luck!”

“Huh, wai-”

There is a loud 'click' in the water, as if someone had snapped their fingers. Everything vanishes in an instant once again, as her soul is hurtled into the darkness; spiraling towards some place far off and away from her old life. The drone of rushing water roars all around her, intermingling with a tiny jingle which never seems to leave her ears; the sound of a fistful of clinking coins.

Razmatazz

! IMPORTANT !

I am a super slow paced writer, I like to lay HEAVY worldbuilding. If you're impatient, please reconsider moving forward from here. It will take at least until chapter -

Spoiler

30 when the store is founded. Chapter 36 when it opens <3

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DIS is also available on [Amazon], if you would rather read on your Kindle! (No Kindle-Unlimited because I don't want to make the story an amazon-exclusive)

 

ALSO AVAILABLE ON AUDIBLE!

Narrated by Andrea Emmes, the voice of Beneath the dragon-eye moons!

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Trivia - The spirit of the fountain

Spoiler

The 'Spirit of the fountain' is based off of Aesop's fable "Mercury and the Woodman" where a lumberjack drops his axe into the water and his honesty is tested by the god Mercury (Hermes).

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