✅ Potty Genius [NaNoWriMo 2022]

Six

¿Does Ellisberg even have hypnotists?

Hey, it might not be a serious shopping town, but Ellisberg has everything you need. Even on the high street, which is the last place you'd expect to find a therapist, right? But there's a place that does trauma counselling, life balance training, and hypnosis to stop smoking, right between Manwear and Burger Lord. It's just a single doorway, between two larger storefronts, and I would have assumed it leads up to a little office or something, upstairs at the back of one of the stores. But no, after looking nervously at the little brass plaque screwed to the door, I pushed it open and found a narrow flight of stairs leading down. I stood there and swallowed, more than a little apprehensive about what I was getting myself into.

I knew that I shouldn't have needed to be scared. There was nothing particularly bad about businesses that operated out of someone's basement; I was sure that I'd heard about a friend of a friend selling something from his Mum's basement until his business took off. But when the light was from a bare bulb hanging halfway down the staircase, and I was looking for a professional therapist, the atmosphere just didn't seem right.

¿Did you go in?

I thought about it for a long time. While I stood there, I could feel the breeze rushing past me, and I wondered for a second if there would be a draught coming through down there to tell the therapist that someone was standing in the doorway. But after a long hesitation, I decided that I would check out the other places first. The map on my phone had told me that there were three places in town listing hypnosis as a service they offered. So I would check out the others, and see if they were lacking that inexplicable creepy vibe.

I let the door swing closed, checked my phone for the next address, and turned in the direction of Fletchling Alley. When I got there, I hesitated again. Not because of the potential creepiness of the hypnotist I was looking for this time, or because the thought of someone doing that to me was kind of terrifying now I knew how powerful it could be.

No, I always hesitated before walking into that particular alleyway. It had arches between larger shops at both ends, with a picture of a bow and arrows engraved in the stone above to indicate the guild which had been here at some point in history. Between the two was a narrow passage barely lit by the sunlight coming in three levels above, and tiny storefronts managed by the kind of family businesses that really cared for their neighbourhood, but couldn't really afford any major renovation. It looked old and worn, and had a specific kind of quaint charm. To a certain kind of person it was a landmark in its own right, a single shopping street that had remained untouched by urban modernisation projects, and seemed like a different world from the flashy displays of all-glass storefronts in the fashionable shopping district that had grown around it.

Fletchling Alley had a bakery, run by a man who it was said woke at five every morning to start preparing the daily bread; a tiny tea room decorated with oak panels two hundred years old; two artisanal cheesemongers who made a big show of their rivalry but were really the best of friends outside work; three bookshops with their own specialties, but all relying mostly on used book sales to stay in business; a candlemaker; a tobacconist that always smelled of exotic spices; a place specialising in mediæval weapons for those weird reenactment groups; and a dozen more shops with names like 'Chormondley and Sons' displayed above their doors – the places whose names were familiar to everyone who was interested in that particular trade, but gave little information to strangers about what they sold.

I took a deep breath, and stepped through the archway onto those ancient cobbles. I told myself that I didn't need to be nervous; that I wasn't an addict. And if I wasn't addicted, there was no reason to hesitate before walking past the one shop I would try to avoid remembering when I remembered all the different merchants on Fletchling Alley.