The Shop at the End of the Road

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All events portrayed in this work are pure fantasy, existing only in the mind of the author.

1.

There was a shop on the outskirts of town, one of those magical little places that seemed to sell nothing but half-remembered dreams and broken promises. It sat at the end of a long forgotten cul-de-sac, nestled amongst the elms and maples, idling away its days in a seemingly eternal springtime. Its only customers were small children, fallen teenagers and forlorn lovers, all seeking answers to unspoken questions.

The answers were supplied by a dark-eyed woman who sat behind an ancient cedarwood counter. She greeted her clientele with an indulgent smile, her lips curving in a startling, gloss red crescent, a gilt-edged deck of tarot cards splayed beneath her lacquered fingertips. As young and ageless as a waxworks gypsy, she watched in tacit amusement while her visitors foraged through the racks and shelves at the back of the store. Few could explain precisely what they sought, but each knew the moment they found it, squirreled away amongst the books and bells and Halloween masks.

Sometimes they might search for days, drawn inexorably back to the shop with its country-fair collection of everyday marvels. Opera glasses and china dolls; pocket watches and baseball cards; black satin gloves and the sweet, mocking lies of a beautiful woman. It was a museum of the strange, the exotic and the wonderful, housing a thousand scattered fragments of a thousand scattered lives. Trade was never brisk, but no one who entered the premises ever left empty handed. The Shop at the End of the Road sold everything. The cost was naturally excessive, but then again, happiness never comes cheap.

Happiness comes at a price very few could afford — and which none could ever resist.

2.

Robin Lindale walked in the deep green shade by the side of the road, eyes glinting in the late September sunshine. He strode the verdant lanes with a light, easy step, meeting the world with a gaze that could calm an angry sea. Fair and slight and willow thin, he possessed a naive beauty that drew the eye of everyone who saw him. Many would turn to remark on his lush, autumn features, thinking him a girl hiding beneath a boy’s careless denims. Their unsuspecting whispers often brushed the truth, although no one would have guessed what lay concealed below Robin’s alabaster countenance.

He was on his way to The Shop at the End of the Road, treading a path he’d followed since early childhood. A life-long devotee of the arcane and the inexplicable, Robbie had become the Shop’s sole regular customer. Its dark, aromatic interior had held him entranced from the moment he’d stepped through its leadlight doorway half a decade before. His once-intermittent journeys were now a regular pilgrimage, a ritual he observed with an almost Catholic devotion. Like most children his age, Robbie was a creature of custom and ceremony. The Shop was a great unspoken mystery in a grey pedestrian world, and his life would have been incomplete without this weekly dedication.

He approached the store through a grove of pines clustered around the front entrance. In previous centuries, the Shop had been a small parish church with bluestone walls and mahogany floorboards. Stained-glass windows lent it a surreal quality much in keeping with the owner’s Gothic personality. Robbie had always found this melancholy atmosphere vaguely menacing, like the moaning of the wind through a moonlit graveyard. He trotted up the front steps, inhaling an intoxicating mixture of Indian Rose and pine resin.

He paused just inside the threshold, adjusting his vision to the perpetual night inside. Dim, looming shapes gradually resolved themselves into art deco lampshades and glass-topped display cabinets. Nothing looked familiar; the merchandise altered from day to day like the colors of an April sunset. Robin stood silhouetted in the wide Victorian door frame, savoring the fresh aura of mystery.

Then: a distant, nocturnal voice, drifting through the darkness:

“Hello Robbie.”

The woman behind the counter waited in a pool of indigo shadows, silently reading the inscrutable cards with her long, spiderling fingers. She didn’t need to look up to know who had entered her store. She divined the future the way the blind read braille, and was rarely — if ever — caught off guard. Long accustomed to her enigmatic presence, Robin approached her with the careless trust of a five year-old.

“Hi Felicity,” he replied, using the name she’d told him to use, which wasn’t her name at all. He halted before the counter, glancing absently down at the Tarot cards. Her finger hovered over The Queen, an image which held a special significance for the boy. It always turned face up whenever he entered the store.

“Earlier than usual,” Felicity commented indifferently.

“Yeah, I thought I’d drop in before the place got too crowded,” Robbie replied ingenuously, unaware that such a comment could easily be misconstrued as the grossest sarcasm. Felicity dealt another card, whicker-flicking it into place with a dark, effortless grace.

“Seven of Cups,” she remarked, unsurprised. Mystic numbers and the search for meaning.

“Cool,” Robin nodded as if he understood the first thing about the Tarot, then looked towards the back of the shop. Like everyone who came here, Robbie was searching for something — though he wasn’t sure how to describe what it was at this point. It was kind of silly, kind of embarrassing, now that he stopped to think about it. Maybe if he just went out back and had a look round …

“Felicity, would it be OK if I — ” he began, inclining his head towards the old Lady Chapel. A crumbling, circular alcove packed with skirts, trinkets and hat-boxes, it was sure to house the object of his desires.

“Of course,” the woman agreed in a subtle, knowing tone Robbie was too young to recognize. He was thirteen, and a boy; guile was an artform beyond his understanding. He sauntered into the rear of the store, past a framed poster advertising a French magician named Robert-Houdin (Suspension Chloroform, the legend read). He felt confident that he’d locate his prize out in the Lady Chapel or some other part of The Shop. That was the true enchantment of Felicity’s place; nothing was ever out of reach if you sought hard enough.

3.

It was odd — as a little boy, he’d thought the Shop was a kind of shrine dedicated to lost toys. Week after week he’d foraged through the shelves, discovering things he imagined only existed in his dreams — matchbox cars and Radio Flyers and Ty Cobb baseball cards and Screamin’ Demon motorcycles and Major Matt Masons and about a million other fabulous treasures he’d never seen before but felt he couldn’t live without.

Recently, he’d begun to notice a more adult content lining the shelves; the memories and snapshots of a vanished generation. Crystal perfume atomisers with big, squishy bulbs. Vintage cash registers. Pin-up calendars from the late fifties. Gold-plated Dunhill lighters. Norman Rockwell prints from the Saturday Evening Post. A signed copy of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album in its original sleeve. An endless stream of postwar trivia which never ceased to fire his imagination.

Today, of course, Robin was after something completely different.

He was no longer a child. He was growing up. Baseball gloves, Sandman comics and pressed vinyl had lost their appeal. He’d uncovered a well of fantasy in the depths of his mind; a shadow world swarming with moist, sultry images. They were things he’d spied here a hundred times in the past but had never really noticed until now. Silk scarves. Lace gloves. Glossy black stilettos. Long satin evening gowns that clung to the body like a gleaming second skin. Signature Dior stockings with French heels and seams running up the back.

It was a parade of the sensual, the feminine and the seductive, one which frightened and captivated him in equal degrees. This fascination had built up over the last six months, forming in the centre of his being like a ball of liquid silver. It had haunted his sleep, hounded his waking hours. And the strangest thing was —

Something had happened last week, something which had released all the pent-up heat simmering in the pit of his belly. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but the experience had never been so intense. It had occurred in the space of a few moments, striking him with the force of a biblical revelation, altering his perceptions at the most intrinsic level. And although he didn’t realize it, Robbie had been changing for a long time, ever since the hair had started to sprout beneath his arms. His thoughts had grown increasingly more complex, his desires more abstract. Like all teenagers, Robbie yearned for things he couldn’t name, couldn’t understand, couldn’t escape. Mirages in the desert, shadows he could see but simply couldn’t touch.

Which was all that The Shop had ever sold, ultimately.

4.

He hunted around the Lady Chapel for over an hour, heart pounding with excitement as he glimpsed his prize lying just beyond the next hanger. Invariably, the ‘prize’ turned out to be a delusion, a trick of the dim, stained-glass light and days of unresolved fantasies. Sighing with frustration, Robbie moved on to deceive himself yet again, wading through tier upon tier of glistening silk. The Chapel appeared much bigger than he’d originally thought. He could have wandered through the racks for weeks, inspecting every dress, skirt and blouse by hand. Everything he found seemed to mock his efforts, tormenting him with its blatant, overstated femininity.

He finally emerged from the alcove, shaking his head in bewilderment, his face a mask of distraction. In all the years he’d frequented The Shop, he’d never walked away disappointed. Today, however, his goal had eluded him over and over, fading through his fingers like a will-of-the-wisp. He sauntered back through the store patting the dust off his shoulders, casting baffled glances around the shelves.

“Didn’t find what you wanted?” Felicity asked, her tone more statement than question.

“No, I didn’t. . .” Robbie agreed, confusion etched on his innocent, doll-like features, “I was sure I’d find it back there somewhere. . .”

“Answers are never where you first look for them,” she commented, dealing another hand. The Tarot was laid out in a straight line across the counter, the cards face down and completely mute.

“I wasn’t looking for answers,” the boy replied without thinking, “I was just looking for –“

Felicity’s eyes flashed up, huge and predatory: the eyes of a vengeful barn-owl, the eyes of a hungry jaguar.

“Yes?”

I – well, I wasn’t. . .  Robin stumbled through his response, his complexion darkening several shades. What was he doing, blurting out his story like some little kid with a secret too big to hide? He was practically dancing from foot to foot in consternation. How could he tell her what he really wanted? He doubted he could have told anybody.

“I wasn’t really looking for anything,” he finally explained, knowing how lame that sounded. Hands thrust into bottomless pockets, he lowered his gaze to the floor.

“Really?” Felicity enquired with some amusement. Whicker-flick: two more cards from either side of the deck. Two seconds passed. Four. Then:

“Yeah, OK, I was. But it isn’t here.”

“Isn’t it?” Whicker-flick, whicker flick, the sound of Christmas beetles taking flight.

“No, it’s not,” Robbie frowned unconsciously, “at least, I don’t think it is.”

Another brief lull, punctuated by the soft clip of cards on a wood grain surface. Robin fidgeted uncomfortably, feeling cold tension building up around him like static electricity. He waited out the taut moments in an Alpine sweat, knowing there was more to be said, more to reveal, more to confess.

“All right,” he said helplessly, “It’s here somewhere. I . . . I just didn’t know how to ask for it.”

Felicity nodded, as if expecting no more from him.

“Bring that stool over here,” she said, leaning back from the counter, “it’s time I read your fortune. When was the last time you turned the cards, Robbie?”

“I. . . don’t know. Never, I suppose.” He felt around in his pocket for loose change, wondering how much she was going to charge him. Being thirteen, he was pretty much skint from stem to stern. Maybe coming down here today hadn’t been such a great idea after all. You probably couldn’t buy the meaning of life with four dollars worth of plugged nickels, even in a place like this.

“Don’t worry about that now,” Felicity said, absently reading his mind, “you’ve come here every Saturday for the last five years, so we can afford to settle the accounts later.” Robin nodded, not really understanding what she meant, but feeling absurdly flattered, nonetheless. He watched in dawning fascination while her fingers skittered over the cards, rearranging them into a perfect gypsy fantail. She flipped the last one with a kind of spontaneous expertise, the result of decades of training. It housed the picture of a young man dressed in medieval costume, blond locks hanging down to his shoulders. The Youth.

“A child’s desires are easily satisfied, Robbie. They change by the hour, flowing like treacle over the tongue. Warm and sweet, but empty of all substance. First time you came here, the shelves were lined with toys and baubles. All you saw for three years were gameboys, skateboards and catcher’s mitts.” She paused, grinning at some private joke, then concluded: “Snips and snails and puppy dog tails’ – that’s what Robbie’s dreams are made of.”

Robin blinked several times, sensing an undertone of taunt in the woman’s chirping nursery rhyme. Her hands sparrowed over the cards once more, upturning an armored figure astride an angry black stallion. The Knight of Swords.

“A man’s desires are equally vain. Visions of wealth and conquest; the power to prove his courage. His masculinity. His innate superiority. They still come in here now and then, blustering like feudal lords, demanding respect they’ve never earned. Know what they see? Easy solutions. Pheromone sprays, MK-20s,  platinum visa cards. Shortcuts to happiness, or what they believe is happiness. For some it’s an unlimited supply of Viagra. For others, it’s the keys to a sixty-three Mustang. Anything to bolster their pathetic male egos.

“But that’s not what you’re looking for, is it Robbie?”

He shook his head. Whatever he wanted, it had nothing to do with validating his masculinity. Felicity smiled again, exposing brilliantly white, even teeth.

“No, of course not. Being neither child nor adult, your interests are more intricate. They’re mysterious, esoteric, unresolved. Things you can neither see nor touch, except in the deepest part of the night, when you drift between the waking and sleeping worlds.” Her fingers hovered over another card, centre of the spread. “What were you looking for, Robbie?”

The boy opened his mouth to answer, to spill out his burden of shattered hopes, but fought back the words with all his strength. Years of secrecy and self-denial shackled his tongue. This was a facet of his personality he’d been concealing all his life, one he could barely admit to himself.  How could he discuss this with her, with anybody? He drew back in an agony of self-defeat, unable to even glance in her direction.

“I can’t tell you,” he said in a small, drowning voice.

To be continued in Part 2 next Monday.

Tags: featured, fiction, Transgender

Category: Fiction