Fatal Memories

Chapter 12: Bravado

Not Edited

 Chapter 12: Bravado

Gwen Point of View

May 18, 2014

            “Why did you want to head downtown?” Alex asks when he turns his car onto smooth pavement. I turn my head towards the passenger window and look at the tall, brown building that was the City Hall. “Is there something you need or—.”
           

            I lift up my left hand that was resting in my lap, with a slight flick of my wrist in his direction so he would be quiet.  “Just turn on Ridge Avenue, I want to see if the store is still there.”

       Alex glance my way but shift his attention back to the rode, he slows the car when he pass the May City Museum and a block of small stores. “What store--.” He begins to question me but stops me when I point out my window. “What is this?” he asks.

       I ignore him and waits until the car comes to a stop at a small squared-sized, two story store squeezed in-between an empty store lot and a rundown cd store. The store had a set of glass windows covered with black cloth and strange antics hang around the cloth. A large sign posted above the store door seen better days, Magji it was supposed to say but the A and G was blinking on and off. “It is still here,” I whisper and I unfasten my seatbelt and jerk opens the car door quickly when the car came to a stop. Alex calls out to me but I slip from out the car without looking back.

The warm lake smell from the near beach in the downtown area left a faint unsteadily feeling in my stomach but I Ignore the uncomfortable feeling and stride across the sideway and push open the heavy steel door to the Magji store. The thick smell of lavender feels the stuffy storefront. The store was cramp with rows of rows of shelves fill with knickknacks and strange objects. The brown carpet, stained and worn down and I felt the shift in the room: the abnormal coldness, the unbearable silence.

               I barely took a couple of steps into the store when the door slams behind me, as if someone slammed it.  I slowly turn my head and glance at the door, no one was behind me, and Alex didn’t follow me yet into the store. I thought I liked this store twenty-five years ago but now it gave me the creeps. I ignore the store intense atmosphere and I took a couple more steps into the room until I stop at the closed end corner of the store. I turn my attention to a large-rustled covered book lying carelessly open on the wooden counter press up against the end corner of the store. I reach out and grasp the bristle, fragile pages in my fingertips and I halfway close the book to be able to read the title. ‘Alkaline’

       “How are you still intact?” I whisper to myself and I rub my fingers over the gold metal letters imprinted on the book front cover. I turn back to the page the book was open to and my eyes skim over the worn out ink. “The body is a shell--- the soul is the only true source to prove that someone is human but without a soul, you are no longer human but a monster---,” I pause when I realize the words following the sentence was block out by an ink pen.  I skim my eyes over to the next page and the words were block out. I flip a couple pages over and continue to read aloud. “Simple wishes and prays can be granted but first a human must sacrifice their soul in order to gain their wishes. Offering their soul offers the watchers of the Endless time realm to seek the empty-soulless body shell to inhabit it. It’s all a pawn; the watchers only want to come back to life---.” The next page over was scratch out with what seemed to be fingernail markings. I drop the book back on to the corner and I shook my head as the words jumble in my head. I read this book twenty-five years and I remember this book!