Unused Spirits

Image by Tomás Robertson

Malgorzata was bustling in her little hut huffing here and puffing there. With her short stature, heavy set body and back bent by age she looked almost round, like a large boulder rolling around in the tiny space, disturbing the delicate balance of little glass bottles and vials set on long shelves. Her granddaughter was telling her about these shops that don’t actually exist, where you put a picture of your old junk in some weird little box made of metal and plastic and other people can see them on their little boxes and send money which has no shape or form through the ether and then you send the item through post and that’s how it works nowadays, she said. Malgorzata was a fan of decorative teapots, but completely hopeless with clay and glaze, so having some extra money sounded great. As well as getting rid of some of her old junk, since she needed to make space for the decorative teapots. She placed the vials she collected into a basket and hurried outside where she could already hear the hum of the engine. She and her granddaughter went for a pleasant afternoon out, Malgorzata tried something called vanilla flavoured ice cream, although why people would use beaver’s anal gland secretion as a replacement for vanilla bean, she didn’t know. She guessed the taste could be considered similar, so maybe good to use in a pinch if your vanilla stock was unexpectedly depleted.

Finally her granddaughter pulled the little vials from the basket, took pictures of them one by one and made notes of what’s in them.

“Oooooh, these are pretty, what’s in them?” she asked, holding one of the three vials which held something that seemed like an ever swirling rainbow.

“Oh, those are just some of my unused spirits” Malgorzata replied, waving her arm dismissively. The granddaughter gave her a weird look, but made a note of it all the same.

***

The first vial was bought by a chef. He was a very old chef and very well travelled - there was no meal, no dessert, no piece of fruit or type of animal he hadn't tried. When he saw that weird swirling mass in a vial he just knew he had to taste it. He was old enough not to particularly care if eating something of unidentified origin he found on the internet could kill him, he lived long enough and ate well enough to welcome Death however she chose to come to him. And even though he did not believe there was really a spirit in there, he could not help but wonder how it would feel to eat one. Once the parcel arrived, he made himself a grand steak and ate half of it with gusto before opening the vial and sucking out whatever was inside. His mouth got all tingly, there was a slight taste of chamomile, rhubarb pie and, weirdly, sardines, but there was something else too, something that was almost like a feeling he could taste, the chef felt elated and thrilled, he has never tasted anything like it in his life and, as we already established, this was a grand thing for him. He felt slightly drunk on excitement and cut another bite of his steak dreamily when, suddenly, he heard a voice.

“Hello?” it called. It sounded very close but the chef was certain he was alone. He looked around to confirm this. Maybe the substance was drugs? The thought only now occurred to him.

“Why are my fingers so stiff?” said the voice and his own hand shot up at him, where his eyes involuntarily examined it.

“Oh, Jesus, this is not much better than the vial” complained the voice despondently.

“Who is this?” asked the chef in what he hoped was an authoritative voice.

“And who’s this?” answered the voice.

“I asked first,” said the chef, “Besides, it’s my head you are talking so rudely into”

“Rudely? It is you who decided to drink me!” answered the voice, indignation sharp in its inflections.

“Drink? You…?” asked the chef trying and failing to grasp the situation.

“Yes, you imbecile, you took the vial I was in and put it in your mouth so now, instead of a little glass container, I am trapped in a big, old, achy lump of meat. I already was a big, old, achy lump of meat, I just want to move on.”

The chef remained quiet, he was ready to face Death but never even entertained the thought of having to deal with the dead.

“Ah, maybe it’s better this way now that I think about it, how long can you have, anyways. Waiting for you to expire is way more hopeful than waiting for the old crabby hag to release me. Do you have anything good to eat, like chicken nuggets or something?” the chef felt himself stand up and it took all his strength to sit down again and protest against fast food.

***

“Some buyers are complaining.” said the granddaughter matter of factly the next time they met. This struck as odd to Malgorzata, she knew all her stuff, old as it may have been, was good quality and the descriptions were simple enough so that no one could mistake the item for anything else than what it was.

“Did you mix up the descriptions?” she asked as this was the only option that made sense.

“No I did not! Anyways, one guy bought one of your “unused souls” bottles and is complaining that he now has another person in his head.”

“How on earth did that happen” gasped Malgorzata eating her bubble waffle

“He said he drank it”

“Who, in their right mind, would drink a spirit? Did he no longer wish to hold on to his faculties?” Malgorzata was astounded and confused, “Well there’s nothing to be done now, once a spirit is in a living body, only Death can take it out. Imagine her surprise when she has to drag two of them out of this poor lad…”

The granddaughter gave Malgorzara another one of those weird looks and said nothing. The bubble waffles smelled vaguely of the same beaver secretion they put in ice cream.

***

The second vial was bought by an alchemist. He was not a very good alchemist, mind you, but then, having in mind that they all had pretty much just one goal and none of them managed to reach it, who was?

The alchemist believed all sorts of crazy things, so believing he just bought a spirit in a vial for 25 euros was not much of a stretch for him. The trouble was that he did not really know what he could do with it or how to go about doing it. He had this theory that in order to get more life you would need to take someone else’s life, because you can’t get anything from nothing, which was the correct line of thinking, however, he failed to consider that you cannot take life from someone who was already dead. With this gaping oversight obvious to all but him, the alchemist persisted. He perused his books and scrolls and scraps of notes he took in alchemist conventions. He poured the spirit from one vial to another, then to some test tubes and even, at one point, a teapot. Finally he decided to perform a ritualistic sacrifice and poured the spirit into a large basin, from which it promptly rose into the high vaulted ceiling of the basement he chose for this endeavour. There were no windows and the door was shut so the spirit could not escape, but the ritual was halted. The Alchemist swore and scurried for the ladder, he then spent the next half hour putting the ladder near the spirit only for it to move away from that part of the ceiling once he was halfway up. The alchemist sat, panting, murmuring swears and curses at the spirit as it changed colours and shimmered mystically. If he was a good alchemist he might have wondered what it means, but he simply glared at it and took the shimmering as some sort of a taunt. After a short while the basement got really cold and he could see the darkness darken even more at the far corner, where it then separated from itself and stepped out as a figure in a cloak so black it seemed to be made from the darkest corner of the cosmos. It raised its hooded head at the spirit which was shimmering frantically now, then turned to the alchemist.

“My friend here says you were trying to sacrifice her.” it said in a voice that felt like icicles.

“I was just…experimenting.” stuttered the Alchemist.

“My friend here is dead, which means she is mine. My responsibility is to accompany her to wherever she is meant to go next. You forcing her through the wrong door into the wrong place would be very, very inconvenient. Do you understand, little human?”

The alchemist understood. He scurried to open the door of the basement intending to let them both go, failing, once again, to consider the fact that if it did not need a door to get in, it probably did not need one to get out. The spirit descended from the ceiling and seemed to slip cosily under the figure’s cloak. It then moved in the opposite direction of the door and melted into the same dark corner from which it materialised.

***

“Your unused spirit bottles keep getting weird reviews.” said the granddaughter while they waited for their sushi.

“Some people are just weird, I guess, those are very good quality spirits.” Malgorzata shrugged and tried to drink the soy sauce before being stopped by her granddaughter with a shake of the head telling her that this is not what this weird brown liquid is there for.

“He said the spirit did not allow him to finish his experiments and summoned Death to take it away instead.” said the granddaughter, “He’s asking for a refund.” she added with a shrug.

“I’m not refunding a silly man who does not know how to contain a spirit. What was he doing, trying to pour it into a basin or something?” Malgorzata cackled for a good while at such a thought, “Of course it summoned Death if the fool released it, that’s all that it wants - to go with Death.”

The granddaughter opened her mouth as if to say something but decided against it as she saw the waiter weaving his way towards them with a tray of delicious looking sushi and did not want further conversation to get between her and her sake makis.

***

The last vial was bought by a beauty guru. She was dreaming of releasing her own makeup line one day and this rainbowy shimmery swirly thing seemed like a perfect thing to base a limited edition colour on. She put a dropper into the vial and tried to get a few drops of the pigment into it, but the whole thing went it. It made little sense, how can it fill the entire vial and also fit into a dropper? She then tried to suck and cut and tear and wrench at it, but it would always go all in or not at all, there was no way to get just a little bit. Finally the beauty guru gave up and decided to make a large quantity of eyeshadow with it all. She mixed and kneaded and rolled and it was finally done. It was beautiful, shimmery and dreamy. She tried to apply a little bit of it to her eyelids and, somehow, her entire face ended up being covered in the shimmery colourful mess. And it did not come off. The beauty guru could swear she also heard a faint cackle coming from somewhere really close by. Her face started glowing and shimmering in all the wrong ways and suddenly a really old and ugly woman bent almost threefold showed up in the corner of her room. The beauty guru tried to scream, but the cursed makeup seemed to have hardened around her face like cement.

“Really, this is how you imagine me?” said the old woman inspecting herself in the mirror, “Well, you ARE quite young still, maybe you’ll mature.” she conceded.

The beauty guru said nothing, not for lack of trying though, she was turning red under all the makeup from her efforts to scream.

“Oh don’t fret…child.” the old woman added the last word after some thought as if deciding that it belongs in the mouth of someone like her, “I’m only here for our unfortunate friend. And you’ll be able to wash your face once we are gone, ain’t that nice for all of us?”

The beauty guru could see all of the brilliant colours drain from her makeup and trickle in a long thin stream into one of the many pockets on the ugly woman’s ugly skirt.

“Oh, this one is going to a very nice place indeed.” the woman smiled and was gone just as she appeared: suddenly and completely. The beauty guru regained control of her face, which was now simply very pale as if covered in loads of unpigmented eye shadow. She washed it off and, after a bit of consideration, decided against writing about this experience in her product review; she did give it one star, though.

***

Malgorzata shared her little hut with her granddaughter now, as they were finishing the last bits of the pizza she brought with her. They were meant to be collecting more stuff for sale once they were done having lunch, since the first batch sold quite quickly.

“Maybe let’s not sell any more of those unused spirit thingies...” said the granddaughter after a period of contended silence once the pizza was consumed, “The last buyer did not write a review but gave it just one star, they just don’t seem to be working out for anyone.”

Malgorzata only shrugged and nodded, she only had a couple more left anyways and was sort of thinking of using them to catch up with Death, who, in Malgorzata’s opinion, was one of the best companions one could ask for exceeded only by her granddaughter and her fancy snacks.