Part 3
Don't eat the bad cake!

I came late to work again today. Which I suppose wasn’t totally not my fault. But I blame the trains nonetheless. I cursed them as I left the carriage and cursed them some more as I was walking to my office. Not the type of curse that my wife does, mind you. Just your average silent potty-mouthed complaints over the current state of the New South Wales public transport service. No one will die because of these curses. No trains will explode. No fat conductor will be finding pustules on his arse today.

In fact, I once did ask Astrid if she would put an actual curse on City Rail and she flatly said no and I felt guilty about asking her. Although I still don’t understand how she can kill innocent (well… sort of innocent) men on a regular basis and yet she can’t put a curse on a large faceless organisation that continually takes us to work late. I don’t understand her morals sometimes. But I love her. And she’s hot.

I miss the meeting by about 45 minutes but no one seems to notice. They must have had cake during the meeting because what’s left of it is just sitting there by the bookshelves, and I go and eat some without asking anyone about the occasion. There’s usually an occasion. There’s always an occasion, really.

And it is during the eating of said cake that I actually notice that there is no one in my team who could have noticed me missing from the meeting, or been able to answer me about the occasion question. In fact, I can’t see anyone at all. Strange. My area is completely empty.

I look around the corner and can’t see anyone. Just blocks of empty desks. I then walk a bit further around the level and I finally find one guy. Arthur. What you need to know about him is he’s 35, short, glasses, checker pants and he has an unusually large face. He’s into pots. Not pot. Pots. Not pot plants. Just pots. The ceramic kind, mind you.

‘Hey Artie,’ he likes being called that, ‘where is everyone?’

‘Oh hey man. How are you?’

‘Good Artie. Listen, where is…’

‘You wanna see my new pot?’

‘Um… listen, I’m just wondering…’

Hey, that was good cake.

‘It’s really nice,’ he says with a smile that Winnie the Pooh would be proud of. I don’t really like to talk to him for extended periods of time. Actually I don’t really know anyone who does.

He hands me the pot.

It really is nice.

It’s about the size of his head, which is to say it’s about twice the size of my own head. Short, fat and rectangular on the bottom. Mostly blue. With yellow swirls. If you rotate it, it gives the illusion that it’s moving. Swirling. Like you’re looking into a bottled vortex. It’s nice.

‘I told you it was nice.’

Almonds. Fruits. A little on the heavy side, perhaps. It’s swirling in my stomach.

‘Yeah, it is, Artie. Listen, where is everyone?’

‘Oh yeah, they’re all sick.’

‘All of them called in sick?’

‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘They came in. Then they went home.’

‘How did they all get sick?’

‘It was the cake. Something bad in it, I think.’

I feel something coming up, all of a sudden, as if on cue. Up from the stomach. And before I know it, I’m emptying my guts into Artie’s pot.

He’s not a bad guy, that Artie. He helps me out the next five minutes or so — or maybe twenty — over a toilet emptying the rest of my guts. It feels terrible. Like having a vacuum cleaner pipe shoved up my throat. I then take some Mylanta and I go home too.

‘Are you sure you’ll be fine?’

‘Yeah. Thanks Artie. Sorry about your pot.’

‘Oh that’s alright. It’s dishwasher-safe.’

I catch a train home and it actually comes on time. This comes to me, in some perverse way, as a disappointment. The ride is also disappointingly comfortable and so I find myself with a pain in my gut but nothing else to whinge about.

By the time I’m about 3/4 of the way home, I’m feeling fine so I get off at Sydenham and catch another train. I haven’t had the chance to leave work this early for a very long time and it’s too good to waste at home.

I’m thinking about my wife, which happens to happen quite often. Usually I would be picturing her as I saw her last — waving goodbye to me in the morning, in her nice suit, before work. But more often then not, it would spiral into a series of dirty fantasies.

This time, it leads me into thinking that I haven’t bought her a present in over a month and being out early, I could come home and surprise her with something nice and make her happy (or something not so nice as is often the case with things that make her happy). So I make a trek to Newtown to the shop with the 400 year-old vampire owner (whom I suspect isn’t a vampire at all, since I’ve seen him in broad daylight and he wasn’t burning up).

It’s a tiny shop in an alleyway behind a bar that sells cocktails for half price during happy hour. It’s called Francis’ Magic ‘n’ Gifts.

Like most legit magic shops (as opposed to those that sell things like fake barf, wigs and whoopee cushions), Francis’ Magic ‘n’ Gifts has an entrance-by-invite spell, which in simple terms means that if no one has told you about it, you won’t be able to see it. It’s not that it turns invisible or anything. It’s still always there. But you’ll miss it somehow. Right there in plain sight, with its monkey heads and peacock plumes on the door. You’ll just walk right past it.

I open the door and the bell rings. Inside, it’s musty like it was the last time. The shop is tiny. Only two shelves line the walls. Everything else you want you have to ask for, and Francis gets it for you from the back room.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Francis barks.

‘Huh?’

‘How did you find this place? You’re not a magic user.’

‘How would you know?’

‘I can’t smell you. So you’re either good enough to hide yourself, which I sincerely doubt by the look of you, or you’re a non-user. Now explain yourself before I set off the traps.’

‘Look, I’ve been here before. My wife, she’s a…’

‘Ahh. The eye of newt. Economy pack.’

‘Yeah. My wife. She’s a…’

‘Next time,’ he says turning his back to me, ‘tell her to come herself for her supplies. You normal people make me nervous.’

I look around the shop. I don’t dare touch any of this stuff. There’s a head of a dwarf on the second shelf smiling at me.

‘I’m looking for a present for her actually. Do you have anything you might recommend?’

‘Hmmm…’ he seems more accommodating all of a sudden. ‘What’s she into?’

‘Um… I’m not sure.’ I’m thinking. ‘She kills a lot.’ Not sure if I should’ve said that. ‘She’s into curses and stuff, I think.’

‘Friendly girl, I take it?’

‘Oh but they’re all bad people.’

‘Yes… well… how about an orb of Orobos?’

‘What’s that?’

‘For flatulence spells.’

‘More sinister.’

‘The Dagger of Orobos?’

‘More flatulence?’

‘Exploding anus.’

‘Oh.’

I look around again on the two shelves that are there. Mostly crap really. A shrunken head, mummified hand candles. That sort of thing. Then I look up on the top shelf and I see it. It’s the pot. The same one that Arthur had today. It shimmers. The swirls almost seeming to move. I’m surprised I didn’t notice it before. Now it’s like it’s the only thing that I can see on the shelf. I can barely take my eyes off it.

‘What’s that?’ I say, pointing to the pot.

‘Ahh, that.’ He walks around the counter and, on tiptoes, grabs the pot off the shelf.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Well it’s a place to put all the gory bits after a kill. Hearts, livers, you know…’

‘Really?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t see why not.’

‘Is it magic?’

‘Er… of course it is.’

I like it.

‘How much?’

‘Hmmm… for you, $120.’

‘$120? For this? You kidding?’

‘It’s magic.’

I reel back.

‘I can’t afford that. Do you have something else like it? But cheaper. Not magic, perhaps.’

‘OK, let me look.’

Francis takes the blue pot into the back room and I am left alone for a couple of minutes to the entertainment of some sort of mystical muzak which, as well, I never noticed was on before. I am listening to the muzak when the doormat starts talking to me.

‘Does she use her tongue?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I bet she does,’ says the doormat.

I’m about to answer but Francis walks back out with the same blue pot with the yellow swirls.

‘You have a talking doormat?’

‘Of course not,’ snaps Francis. ‘You must be nuts.’

He holds up the pot to me.

‘Here you go.’

‘It’s the same pot!’

‘Certainly not! I de-magicked it!’

‘Oh.’

‘Magic-free now. I’ll give it to you for 60.’

’20.’

’20?!’ He’s acting angry. ‘40’

’25.’

’40.’

’30.’

’40.’

’35.’

‘Look, I’m a 400-year-old vampire. You don’t want to mess with me.’

‘Speaking of which…’

’40.’

‘You’re not really, are you?’

‘Not a what?’

‘I saw you in direct sunlight, loading stuff from a van.’

‘You did not.’

‘I did.’

‘OK, so you caught me. I wasn’t a vampire then. I lied.’

‘OK. So, how about 35?’

‘But I am now. A vampire that is. I got bit last week.’ He lifts his collar to show two marks on his neck.

‘Oh give it up!’

‘Hey, you can’t prove I’m not!’

‘Go ahead and bite me then.’

He starts to move towards me. I step back and hold my hands out motioning him to stay where he is.

’40 it is then.’

‘Deal.’

_____

I walk home with the pot, unwrapped, and it’s getting dark already. Winter’s like that. I suspect she won’t be home yet. She doesn’t normally get home yet but then again, I told her this morning that I’d be working late and yet here I am.

The way from the station to my house is a lazy ten minutes long. I pass the library and the local pub. There’s also this empty carpark that is often empty despite being near a pub and a library. I imagine there must be something magical about it but I’ve never actually checked that theory out. Actually there’s probably nothing magical about it at all.

The reason I mention the carpark is that from here I can already see our house and from here I can see that the light in the bedroom upstairs is on, which is rather alarming, seeing as though my wife isn’t home. So I start running, still pot in hand. When I get to the front door, it’s locked, which means the intruder must have gotten in from the back or climbed up perhaps. My heart is racing. I’m sweating.

I unlock the door and race up the stairs. The door to the bedroom is open and the light streams out of the room like a scene from a horror movie. I can hear a fair amount of commotion in there.

When I finally get there, I see Astrid which comes as both a shock and a relief.

‘Oh.’ I say. And she’s naked and is sitting on the bed. Or kneeling. There’s some man, also naked as usual, under her.

‘You’re home? And how come you’re doing the ritual in hear and not in the basement like…’ I’m talking fast now because I am in some sort of shock or daze, whatever you want to call it.

She turns around and looks at me, startled like I’m some sort of stranger. And she covers her nakedness with the sheets and she gets up and I’m thinking ‘where’s the knife’ and that there’s an alarming lack of blood on the sheets or on her or on anywhere really. And then the guy gets up covering his bits and grabs his underwear from the foot of the bed and I notice that he’s not the least dead. Or even drunken for that matter, and suddenly I get this shiver up my spine and I break into a cold sweat and I struggle to look away. Captivated like I’m under a spell.

It takes me a long second to snap out of it and I’m feeling strangely calm. I place the pot, which I realise I’m still carrying and is now warm and wet with sweat, on the carpet and I turn around and slowly walk down the stairs. I sit on the couch and turn on the TV and watch a show with this guy in a safari suit explaining to me how the bent pyramid of Dashur was built. It’s very interesting. So much so that I don’t flinch when I hear someone skipping down the stairs and walking out the door, taking care not to make too much noise. Apparently the pyramid is bent because halfway up, they realised it was too steep to hold itself up so the engineers lessened the inclined to complete the construction.

My wife comes down the stairs now. And she sits down next to me and places a hand on my knee and calls my name softly. I take the remote and turn the TV off. I stand up and look at her and tell her that I think I might go down to the pub and have a drink and then I walk out the door and I do just that.