Spar Witch (fiction)

 

Spar Witch

The grocery store marked the end of Dublin’s one block Chinatown. It served as both a late night place to buy drinks and imported snacks and as a playground for the kids living in the estate building complex flanked its side completely. 

I only went there to buy cereal, milk and digestives when I couldn’t get it from the supermarket on my way home. Each time I would walk out scowling at the prices I had just indulged. Oddly, I feel sentimental about the place. Thinking about it now it feels like one of those standard dreams turned real, where the most bizarre things happen in the most mundane settings.

One night when we were hastily packing our tiny carry-ons for a flight to London, I was craving a digestive so I suggested we take a quick dessert break and go to the grocery store to get something. My apartment at the time felt more like a prison than a room, it was a subterranean lair at best. On an average day in Dublin the greyness of the sky and hence the puddles and all other reflective surfaces in the city bore itself into your vision. The window of my room was no help in providing an escape. If the blind was not drawn it projected a greyness that pervaded the room and sunk the dusty corners into a deeper black than when it was closed. It was easy to feel a bit sorry for yourself. 

We ran out of my apartment block and onto the wet street. 

We kept running through a couple of lanes of traffic until we were in front of the store. It was hectic, the local kids were tackling each other into the soft drink aisles fueled by the adrenaline of mischief whilst the angsty security guard watched apathetically. At the counter, a young woman and an older Middle Eastern man engaged in a whispery conversation in a foreign language. I always get hypnotised by supermarkets and grocery stores; all thoughts beyond what is immediately in front of me leave my head. I grabbed a stack of digestives from the rack and snatched a fruit bar, pivoting quickly to face the line leading to the counter. 

The usual stunned feeling faded as I stared at the back of what appeared to be an older woman disrupting the line's flow of progression. I had the instant feeling of premonition, like when you’re anticipating something to appear out of the darkness of an unfamiliar house at  night. A rushing feeling from the depths of my chest made my neanderthal brain throb with warning. 

She was exceptionally short and wore a hood or scarf, which seemed to have patterns shifting and changing as if alive. I doubted my vision. Briefly composing myself I tried to squeeze past her and actually enter the line. As I was passing she grabbed my wrist with a completely unexpected strength. My arm tensed up, my eyes shot to her own in a startled, wide eyed attention. Her eyes, saucers of milk pulled me into a weird trance as she spoke to me in tongues or gaelic – I wouldn’t have known the difference then. For whatever reason I felt as if I was about to learn something from a distant past.

I tensed up more, then quickly pulled my hand away and we sped to the counter to buy snacks. 

I don’t think we spoke until we were right outside my apartment building, maybe because we ran through the traffic again and didn’t have our breath. But when we stopped, I remember you asking me, “Is our plane going to crash?” I shivered and my hair stood on end.