DON’T BUY IT

I’m pushing my way through a crowd of fellow citizens obsessed with shopping.
Discounts are pumping adrenaline through their veins. Any trace of embarrassment has been trampled somewhere between the shelf of laundry detergents and the rack stacked with lip balms.
Most people are on autopilot, following their pre-written lists without a flicker of doubt.
Store signs mean nothing to me.
I helplessly search for any connection to the items on the long list from my wife.
Piles of bodies block my view of the displays. The only landmarks left are meaningless signs blinking in a tired rhythm.
I need a map, a leaflet, no,
“I need time to…”
I dash toward the symbol I recognize from the bar.
A metal icon of a glass. Water. Salvation.
I didn’t see him. He was in just as much of a hurry.
Our heads collided, as if greeting each other.
“Ow,” I grab my forehead and rub the bump swelling over my eyebrow.
“Can’t you see?” he snaps.
“Sorry, but…”
“Where are you rushing off to?” he smooths his bald head as if checking it hadn’t disappeared.
“Does it matter?” I wave a hand, my eyes watering.
“In fact, it doesn’t,” he giggles. But his laugh sounds hollow, like he was testing it out of curiosity.
I step aside.
He blocks my path.
He looks like a yellow pudding wearing sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt.
“I’m really in a hurry!” I clench my fist.
“Why?” he asks, contorting his face into an expression that could entertain an entire puppet theater.
“Are you okay?” I look into his bloodshot eyes, gleaming like two captured carp.
The Hawaiian shirt patterned with pineapples, the buttery tone of his skin, a few trembling golden hairs, I watch it all with one eye. The other is fixed on the Spartakiad of his facial muscles. In a second, about five emotions flicker across his face.
“Sure,” he smiles, as if he’d just won the lottery.
“Right! You know, I’d love to chat with you but, I don’t want to,” I take off running.
Our heads thud together again, like a routine greeting.
“Ow,” I grab my forehead.
“What will you do now?” he asks in a voice sweet as sticky syrup.
“What?!” I rub the growing bump. This yellow guy is starting to scare me.
“I’m going shopping,” I wave my list.
In the reflection of his huge mirrored sunglasses, the items flicker past as though he were scanning them.
While he reads, another thirteen grimaces crawl across his face, disgust, amusement, nostalgia, jealousy, and a few more I can’t name without a degree in pathological psychology.
“All nonsense. Why do you need any of this?”
Two small mirrors duplicate the blank stupidity of my expression.
I wonder if I should scream or just faint. Maybe that would be easier than explaining why I’m chasing after things I don’t need.
Maybe because when you don’t linger, you can at least forget for a moment how much you stand to lose.
“Buy now!” he spreads his arms so wide his shirt balloons like a parachute.
“But s…l…o…w…l…y.”
I swear by the time he finished the word, I had grown a beard.
Everything around me took on a sharp yellow tinge.
Avalanches of plaster trickled from the walls.
Signs disappeared, people dissolved like steam over a mess tin.
I was alone, standing in the skeleton of what used to be the city’s pride.
I feel the sweat on my back go cold.
I must have eaten something bad. Something that,
I have to get out of here! I have to snap out of it! Right now!
The palm inching toward my cheek looks like a satellite.
I estimate it will land in about one light year. I have plenty of time to get acquainted with the herbalist granny.

“Looking for something, young man?” comes a woman’s voice behind me.
I spin around.
Standing before me is an old woman whose face is traced with delicate veins like maps of forgotten territories.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” she brushes sweaty hair off her forehead and smiles. In her mouth, her teeth glisten, more yellow than white, as if she had chewed light all her life.
“I’m not afraid, just… where am I?”
“Where else? In a shop,” she bares her yellow teeth.
What is it with everyone and this color? I didn’t have eggs for breakfast, did I? Or maybe I just rubbed my eyes too long.
“Ah. So what are you selling here? These two mugs?”
“Reputation, sonny. I sell reputation,” she lifts the lid and a plume of steam billows out. It smells like burnt honey and scratches in my nose.
“Ah. Sure!”
“What are you putting in there, granny?”
“Gossip, envy, well, various things,” she stirs a mass that looks like melted tallow.
“Hmm. And then… is it done?”
“That’s right,” she opens the smaller pot.
“And this is also reputation?”
“Yep. This one’s the good kind,” she licks the spoon.
“So the big one is the bad kind?”
Hand! Move already!
“That’s right.”
“But it doesn’t add up, granny. Shouldn’t there be more of the good kind? Who would want to buy the bad one?”
“Oh-ho. The bad reputation sells better than hot death.”
“Hot what?”
“Death. My husband sells it,” she nods toward the stall opposite us.
The death stall was a low counter covered in rusty sheet metal.
On the shelves stood small vials filled with thick black liquid.
The place reeked of chlorine and stale bandages.
Above it hung a sign,
Death – all kinds, good prices.
Behind the counter sat him, the man I’d met at the start.
A yellow pudding in sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt.
He looked like he had been waiting for me a long time.
In his hand, he held a slip of paper with names on it.
When I looked into his eyes, I saw my own face there, pale and silent.
“Your husband sells death?” I shake my head.
“We’ve divided the duties. I’m more for herbs, he prefers remedies,” she sifts her fingers through her gray hair.
“But… sells. So someone actually… someone wants to buy death?”
“Everyone.”
“But why?!”
“It’s commerce. Something for something,” she nods.
“That’s nonsense.”
“Young man, if death seems too expensive today, wait for the clearance sale. Just be sure it’s still there when you come back. Besides, he sells other things too. Stardust for wounds, pills of oblivion…”
“Enough! I don’t want any medicines.”
“I knew you were more the herbal type,” she smiles.
This woman seems awfully cunning. I’d better watch out!
“For good customers, I have children’s products too,” she winks.
Toys made up most of my list. Asking wouldn’t hurt.
“Here you go, young man,” she bends under the counter, as if she were reading my thoughts.
“Pebbles?!” I shake my head at the full bucket.
“Oh no. These are seeds. This one here is malice. And this one, humility,” she holds up a white stone.
“Well… honestly, I expected something… else.”
“Everyone expects something different. That’s why it’s so important to rummage and carefully choose what to plant,” she hands me the container.

I hurry home.
Without any bags, but with four stitches on my forehead and a head full of images that weren’t there before.
Shopping never suited me.
Maybe because it was never really about shopping.
Today I made an excellent deal.
I bought the future.
In my palm, I clutch a few small stones for my children.
I don’t know if I chose well.
I just hope that when I finally stand at his counter, I’ll have the courage to ask the price.
Death doesn’t seem so expensive to me anymore.
Just far too easy to get.