A Bottle of Sleep

3,418 words - teen fantasy

Sometimes people want things. Dark things. Bad things. Horrible things even. Sometimes they want them so much they will do their own horrible things to get them. But sometimes, they don't even know they want them. The need is there, in their chest, eating their heart, breaking down their lungs. They can't sleep and wonder why. They wake up wide eyed and breathing hard, but can't remember what they were dreaming. They let the darkness bubble and fester inside them, pretending they don't know it's there, until what they want is sitting right in front of them. On a shelf. In a little glass bottle.

The shop was dark, and the air was so dry I could hardly smell the dust that had drifted into corners like gray snow. And it was oven hot. I stood there, already feeling moisture beading on my forehead like the dryness was pulling it from me, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
"Hello?" My voice echoed, even though, as the dimness melted, I saw that the shop was crowded with... What was it crowded with?
"Hello?" I called again. It had that empty feeling. The opposite of being watched. I knew there was no one.
I took a step in, wondering if I should wait for the shopkeeper to return, and dust swirled up around my ankle. Then again, I wondered if there had ever even been a shopkeeper. My shirt was starting to stick to my underarms and I tugged at the long sleeves. I wished I'd brought an elastic for my hair.
What the shop was crowded with was shelves. They were made of old wood that looked like it would creak or even collapse if I touched it. There was also an old counter with more shelves along the front, presumably where the shop's owner should be standing. I couldn't tell how large the place was because to either side of me, and behind the counter, were so many shelves I'd have to turn sideways to fit between them.
Each of the shelves was covered in what I assumed was drapes of cloth, though they were so gray they could have just been thick dust. A few remnants of cobwebs drifted off them, but even the cobwebs were old and tattered.
I shouldn't have been there. I should have stepped back out into the sunshine and forgotten about it.
But, now that my eyes were used to the gloom, I could see a faint glow coming from a spot on one of the shelves to my right. I took another step and coughed, not from the dust but from how dry the air was. It scraped at the insides of my nose and throat on the way down.
I got to the shelf and waited for the dust to settle around me. I felt so isolated in this place that the feeling turned eerie, like I should be able to watch my skin disintegrate as I stood there. Like time was either sped up or slowed way down, so that I was going to spend forever in this shop one way or another, and wouldn't be able to leave until I felt old enough to break.
I blew the dust off the glow, thinking I would take a look and get out.
But then I forgot what I had been thinking.
It was a jar. A plain old mason jar. And inside was... Well, it was something. And it was glowing. Soft yellow light washed over me, free from the eons of dust it had been buried beneath, turning and swirling. I could breath a little easier looking at it, like the light was bathing the air in freshness.
The longer I watched, the more content I became. The light was mesmerizing and soothing. It reflected off the things it was set next to, and I realized they were glass as well, though they didn't glow. I blew they dust off the thing to the right of the mason jar, and found a round blue bottle, about the size of my fist, with a flat base. The glass was dark, but I could see a sort of liquid inside. The bottle was topped with a small silver ball for a lid. Reaching up, I took the glass in my hand, lifting it off the shelf. It was cold and smooth. The liquid inside moved thickly and clung to the edges, like molasses. I could see my vague reflection in the dark blue glass, stretched so that my eyes were huge.
That was when I noticed a word etched into the silver lid: Sleep.
I peered at the bottle more closely. Maybe it was a medicine, or a poison. Even though I'd been holding the bottle for a moment, the glass was as cold as when I'd picked it up and I had to switch it hands before it drained all the heat from one palm.
I reached to open the silver lid, when I saw something move in the reflection. And it wasn't me. I felt the chill from the bottle sweep down my arm and into my middle. I should not be here. I should leave. I felt it as sure as I could feel my heart beating. In the bottle's reflection, I could see something large moving behind me, yet I heard nothing. I felt nothing. There weren't any eyes prickling the back of my neck. There wasn't a faint hush of feet on floor. I felt alone, and yet I watched as a serpentine figure suddenly rose from behind me, mouth gaping, fangs reaching.
I whirled.
A man's smiling face was inches from me.
I shrieked and jumped back, crashing into the shelf behind me, upsetting all sorts of bottles, hearing glass clink as it tumbled into its neighbors.
The man reached an arm past my head and I flinched, but he only steadied the shelf.
His eyes never left me, even as the glass settled back into place and his hand retreated to fold itself with its pair in front of him. Large spectacles were pushed up close to his eyes, magnifying them. I supposed he was old, but it was hard to tell. He could have been anywhere from early thirties to late sixties. His hair was nondescript and pale, hard to tell if it was blonde or going white. It hung a little lank, almost reaching his shoulders.
"So," he said, drumming his folded fingers across his knuckles. "It seems you have found my shop." His voice was smooth. He was still smiling, looking at me expectantly, as though waiting for me to place an order.
I cleared my throat. "Yes?" It came out as a squeak. "Uh, yes. Sorry. I didn't mean to pry." I turned, though knowing he was looking at me with those enlarged eyes behind my back was unnerving, and shoved the blue bottle back into place. My own muffled reflection looked back at me from the bottle's surface and again, I could see in the reflection, a snake-like form behind me. Maybe it was a trick of the glass. I started when the image of the giant snake swerved around me, and leaned in on my left.
When I flinched away and looked to my left, there was the man, peering at me, smiling.
"I should go," I said, taking my hand away from the shelf and stepping back.
"But don't you want something before you leave?" he asked. "Isn't that why you came?"
My eyes flickered to the glowing mason jar. "Uh, no. That's all right."
He was suddenly closer.
I jumped back.
"I see you are fascinated with my jar of hope."
"Hope?" I asked.
"But perhaps the bottle of sleep is more suited to your needs?" He lifted the round bottle I'd been holding and weighed it in his palm, as though testing it's durability. "After all," he said, "it is in sleep that we are our most lucid, our minds unlocked and unrestrained, able to make sense of the nonsensical and free to believe the improbable."
"The impossible, you mean."
He tipped his head, his smile coming back into place. "Ah. The impossible. Does it exist? Or does it only exist when we create it?"
I blinked. "Um, I need to be going. I have someone waiting for me."
His smile grew wider. "No one is waiting. If they were, you wouldn't be here, would you?" He set the bottle back in place.
I felt a chill run down my spine. "I was just curious."
"What are you curious for?" he asked. "What do you desire? You must long for something, or the jar of hope would not have drawn you in."
When I didn't answer, he leaned closer. "I have everything in this shop, bottled up safe, waiting for you to want it."
"Everything?" I asked.
He only smiled at me.
I peered at the shelves around me. There were all sorts of shapes and sizes, cloaked in dust, waiting to be revealed. "I don't want anything, but thank you." I felt I should take another step back. Turn, even, and walk out the door.
"Everyone wants something," he said. "Everything is wanted by someone."
"What if I don't know what I want?" I asked. I didn't mean to say the words. "Maybe I just wanted anything."
His smile curved up into his cheeks. "Isn't that why you're here? If you want something, it most likely wants you too."
I took a step forward, toward the shelf on my left, the one right up next to the counter. In my peripheral, I saw the man slide towards the back of the shop.
Nothing glowed on the shelf in front of me, so I blew the dust off a few shapes at random. They were all bottles. All glass. Though none of them were the same. One tall deep-green wine bottle was corked shut. A slip of paper tied around the bottleneck read: Jealousy. Next to it sat a squat square jar of clear glass. It was full to the brim with tarnished silver dust. A hammered metal label nailed to the shelf right below it said: Memory.
"Are these real memories?" I asked. None of this made sense, and yet, in a fluid sleep-like way, it almost did.
"Always ask the question you want to know the answer to," the man said, sliding behind the counter.
"Okay then. Where do you get all of these? These emotions and memories and things?"
"I buy as well as sell," he said. "People are always happy to trade one thing for another. What they don't want, for what they do."
"So, if I bought these memories," I said. "Would they be the memories of the person who sold them to you?"
He folded his hands on top of the counter. "Well, they wouldn't be memories to you then, would they?"
I looked back at the jar of memory. "That doesn't make sense. How can you extract memory from one person and give it to another?"
"Everything makes sense, though not many people let the logic fall away far enough to understand. Unless they are asleep, of course."
I glanced across the room at the bottle of sleep.
Frowning, I moved past the counter and explored a new shelf, deeper in the shop, wiping dust from a glass sphere, almost like a crystal ball, except that inside was water. It looked like condensation, the way it collected on the inside of the sphere and ran down the edges, dripping from the top into a small puddle at the bottom. I watched it for a moment, wondering where the water came from. The puddle at the bottom of the sphere never got any larger, yet the water droplets kept forming and trickling down. I lifted it, and the water sloshed inside. When I flipped it upside-down, the water collected at the bottom again, then formed on the sides and continued its endless cycle. There was no label.
"Sadness," the man said from right behind me, startling me so that I nearly dropped the glass ball.
I set it down in the small grove that had been worn into the shelf for it. "Why would someone want sadness?" Selling it I understood, but not buying it.
"Oh, there are many reasons," the man said. "Some people feel they should grieve more for people who have passed on, people they were meant to love. Others have sold all their other emotions and need to erase the blankness left behind. Sadness is quite potent you know."
Beside the sphere of sadness was what looked to be an old-fashioned perfume bottle. When I blew the dust away, I was right.
"What is it you are looking for?" the man asked, his head sliding into my peripheral vision.
"Um..." The perfume bottle was made of cut crystal. It should have been grimy from sitting in the shop, but now that the dust was clear, the crystal sparkled, throwing off flecks of color and light. Etched into the metal around the spray part was: Happiness.
"I do want to be happy," I said, more for something to say. Then I gave an apologetic laugh. "But doesn't everybody?"
"You are not here for happiness," he said.
"Then what am I here for?"
He only smiled.
I looked back at the shelf, lifting something that looked delicate but was so heavy I almost I couldn't get it off the wood. When I dusted it off, it was a thin curved vase of blown glass, a startling rose color. Inside were gems roughly the size of pin heads. I guessed they were small diamonds, with a scattering of pearls. There was no lid, so I was careful not to spill them. In gold leaf on the shelf where I had lifted the vase away it read: Beauty.
I set it down carefully, feeling I should have been be tempted. Beside it was a thin vial, lying on its side. Carved into the wood in jagged letters beside it was the word: Lust. When I wiped the dust away with a finger, I found that the black glass was sweaty, making the dust cling to it. The scent of blood reached me, and I pulled my hand away.
One more, I told myself. Just one more and then I have to go.
I walked past the shelf with Sadness and Beauty and Lust, and wandered, turning and picking out a shelf at random. The man watched me with amusement.
"You already know what you want," he said.
I took a deep breath, trying to ignore him, and picked out a lump on the shelf with my eyes. It made everything so much more tempting somehow, wrapping it in gray like a present, so you never knew what you would find beneath. As I stepped up to the shelf and reached for the shape, I could hear someone whispering. I turned, but the man was watching from where I'd left him, that same smile still on his face.
I reached for the shape again, lifting it. It was so light my hand shot into the air, expecting something heavier. The whispering got louder, as though it were coming from the shape itself. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I tried to make out the words in the hushed voices, but there were too many. The bottle was a flat square with a tarnished silver base and a tall thin cork of silver for a lid. The whispering got louder and angrier as I wiped the dust off the front of the glass. A swirl of red inside the bottle clarified into a face. A screaming, mouth-gaping human face. A piercing shriek made me drop the thing all together.
The man was right beside me, and caught it before it fell.
I was shaking, my heart thumping inside me, my palms slick. "What is that?" I asked.
"Fear," he said. "Strongest bottle I have." He slid it back into place on the shelf, and I turned away before I could make out any more faces in the red glass.
"I'm leaving," I said.
"You know what you want." He slid back into view.
I looked away from him, toward the front of the shop, but not at the door.
"You've known since you stepped inside."
I shuddered and closed my eyes.
"You've wanted it for a long time. A very, very long time."
I squeezed my eyes shut, as though this could block out the sound of his smooth voice, slithering into my brain.
"You've wanted for so long, you are tired with wanting. You ache and yearn and bleed with it. And it's right here," he said. "It's sitting on that shelf, wanting you as much as you want it."
"No," I whispered.
"Take it," he said, his voice so close to my ear I should have felt his breath. "You can have it. The waiting can end. The wanting can end. It can all end. All go away. You just have to lift the bottle into your hands, one more time. Lift it, claim it, drink it. I know how very much you want to."
"Stop," I whispered. "I don't want it."
He laughed, low and smooth, like the laugh was just an exhale. "You want it so badly, you came into my shop. You want it so much, you would give anything, everything, to have it. Just look at it, sitting there, waiting for you."
I ducked my head and pressed my hands over my eyes. "No."
I could hear him slither around me, hissing, circling, waiting.
"You have been waiting for this for such a long time. And now it's yours. The waiting can have an end. Everything can have an end, if only you give into your want. Let your desire have you."
My breath was shallow and fast. "Please," I said. "Please, stop. I don't want it."
"No one will stop you," he said. "No one will care. You can do this. Everything is sitting in that glass bottle, and all you have to do, is step toward it."
The hissing grew louder in my ears.
"Think of it. Think of how it will be. This one final wish come true."
"I can't," I said.
"Oh, but you will. Desire has shaped you from the inside, carved you out until you have become your desire, until there is nothing left but desire. And the only satisfaction, the only contentment, is to fulfill it."
"That's a lie," I said, jerking my head up, forcing my eyes open.
His smile got wider. His teeth were jagged and sharp, two fangs sticking out over his lower lip. "You think you can escape what you want?" He slithered closer, his head weaving back and forth in front of me. "You are what you want. Every word, every glance, every breath."
"No," I said, my voice taking more substance. "I said I don't want it."
He hissed, sharp and warning.
"There might not be anyone else waiting for me out there," I said, "but I am waiting for me. And I am more than this one want. I am stronger than this."
"You are this!" His eyes flashed, slitted pupils showing.
"No! I am so much more than this! I might want that one bottle, but I shouldn't want it. And I won't take it. I can still fight it. I can fight myself. And I can win."
The snake lunged for me, razor fangs barred, jaw unhinged, ready to swallow me whole. I grabbed the nearest bottle and smashed it against the side of the snake's head, glass shattering, purple liquid dripping down my hand and into the snake's eyes. The liquid vaporized into thick smoke, and I darted for the door, coughing and trying to shake the stuff off my hand.
The snake caught my ankle and brought me crashing to the ground, my chin smacking the wood and making my teeth clack together.
I rolled onto my back, ready to fight, but the snake was gone. The rounded dark blue bottle rolled across the floor and bumped into my hand.
I looked at my reflection in it, eyes wide, mouth small.
My hand twitched.
Sleep.
I couldn't want it.
Was it Sleep for now? Or Sleep forever?
No. I didn't want it. Not really. Not for sure.
I jerked my hand away and ran. 

3,418 words

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(photo courtesy of Linus Bohman)