#basement fantasy

He supposed it was a problem for another day. He was tired. It had been an eventful time with Verity, and before that a long morning and early afternoon of organization, a few deliveries, and some arduous conversations with the recipients. The clientele of Margaux’s Medicines were mostly older, frequently grumpy folks, many of whom had known the pharmacy’s namesake back when she was still alive, some fifteen years ago. Hugh’s boss -or “master,” if the old man was one to take the apprenticeship seriously-  knew most of them as old acquaintances, or friends in the rare cases, but he had work to do, and his knees were not what they used to be, and his late wife had been the one with the pair’s share of charisma, so he was wont to send Hugh on the delivery runs instead. The man himself, Lewis Munks, was brushing his teeth very loudly in the building’s one bathroom under the stairs.

“You remembered Miss Marigold’s delivery this time?” Mr. Munks called up from the doorway that was throwing light onto the wall opposite, after the sounds of a light splash and some porcelain tapping. He had heard Hugh close the door and step up the first stairs, and he knew Verity was gone, as she usually left before it was full dark. The pharmacist had a habit of starting conversations in their middle. 

“Yes, I did her delivery first,” said Hugh, a little exasperated- one of his earliest jobs for the pharmacist, several years ago, before Hugh was living in the building, he had forgotten Miss Marigold’s prescription. Not a once had Lewis forgotten to ask about it since then. 

“And Mister Tappings?” Lewis turned the light off in the bathroom and stepped out, in full uniform of striped pajamas and nightcap, looking up at his apprentice past the banister.

“I gave him the run-down as you asked,” said Hugh, counting the next couple steps up the stairs as hard-won trophies.

“Which was…” Mr. Munks had an eyebrow raised in expectation. Hugh suppressed a sigh and took off his glasses to wipe his face with a hand.

“‘Take two daily, with or without food, but be sure to burn sandalwood or frankincense just before ingestion, and make sure not to take it after nightfall,’” Hugh recited dutifully. Lewis looked pleased. The old man waited a beat, the look vacated, and then a mischievous grin took up residence. 

“And did you find his daughter?”

Hugh could feel his face go pinkish, and much as he tried to smother it, a smile of his own swimming up from below. “Oh, go sit on one,” he coughed out from a smirk, and continued up toward his room as his boss chuckled all the way to his own bed.

The man did have some residual charisma, Hugh would concede, it was just that it was reserved for, or only accessible by the people closest to him. 

He was also very perceptive at times, which was especially bothersome considering his fanciful romanticism. No other partners for him than his dearly departed, but for Hugh, anyone and everyone the young man’s age was a possible match made in heaven. He had an eye on Hugh’s love life like a tender gardener on a cherished, growing rutabaga. Thankfully the time had passed when his inquisition focused on Verity, but it had moved on since to many others.

Mr. Tappings’s daughter was very pretty, and she always made a point of greeting Hugh every time he came around with her father’s various tinctures, pills, and poultices. Hugh had noticed that she was one of a few girls his age or thereabouts that would look into his eyes a lot, and sometimes laugh and put a hand on his shoulder or forearm just for a moment. It was nice, but very confusing, and a little frightening. He wondered whether they weren’t worried that he’d get the wrong idea. So he stammered his little stammers and niced his little niceties and then fancied his little fancies within the aegis of his own home, and in his lonesome thought about how lovely it would be to hold her hand. He wasn’t sure if he had always had it or if he had picked it up from his old-man stand-in, but his romantic streak was well developed. 

So he made it to his room at the apex of the spindly building and took his glasses off and laid with his face up toward the middle seam of the ceiling and thought about girls and responsibilities and little slivers of magic.

The next day started as any other- the early morning conversations of crows above the shingles, coffee in the hourglass decanter, and attending to the pharmacist's much grumpier, dawn-rattled version of himself.

"I thought I told you to make sure those windows were closed before you went to bed," his crotchety voice almost sounded like a different person. His lilting flights of vicarious fancy always died off before the morning, Hugh supposed.

"I did close them, Lewis," he said. "I was just up earlier than you this morning and I heard it was supposed to be warm today." And indeed it was. Sunlight glinted blindingly off of houses' metal trims and gutters, and dewdrops from the previous night disappeared like a million shiny bugs all skittering away at the same time. Lewis begrudgingly grunted approval, if under protest.

"You have your list for today?" Lewis spoke after a moment.

"Yes, I have it," said Hugh, trying not to sound dismissive. After speaking, though, he realized he'd picked up on something unusual in the man's tone; speaking words like a high-wire artist taking steps across the midair in-between rooftops- deliberately, in a more balanced fashion than usual. Hugh tried to tune his voice away from sounding like he had any stake in the matter -though he was unsuccessful- and spoke again, "Why do you ask?"

There was a silence that was longer than what he was used to.

"I've had some… stranger calls, of late," said Lewis. Hugh waited. The silence had become colored with a new tension. "You've been taking our notes, yes?"

This time, the question didn't seem like its purpose was just to badger him. It was more questing, with less of an implied consequence. Hugh felt like he could say no, and wouldn't bear any admonishment, just that he might miss some sort of opportunity. Then again, he didn't have to answer in the negative, he had been taking notes. Early on, when Hugh was probably fourteen, his master had drilled into him the importance of keeping a notebook. He had been given a little spiral-bound pad, and commanded -"Mr. Munks," as Hugh had been made to call him at that time, had been a much harsher authority- to write in it, to use it for a different form of recording or art each time, to fill a page every single day, for three weeks. The slightly less-old man had insisted that once it had been done for three weeks, it would have become a habit. And he was right, Hugh had kept one ever since. Admittedly, the frequency of writing had fluctuated, but the presence of paper and pen reasonably near himself had become something he couldn't live without. It figured- the quaint little building that the pharmacist had spent half his life in, had armoires and chests and bookcases filled with not just Lewis', but Margaux's notebooks as well. None of them were in the attic.

"I have been, yes."

There was another bit of silence, and then the old man seemed to make his mind up about something. "On your house calls today," he said, the verbal deliberation hitting a more determined chord, "make sure to write down anything… unusual."

"Unusual?" It was a descriptive word that was significantly more nebulous than was in character.

"Yes. Today I will have you running your usual rounds, but also one of the house calls that I usually do. Before you protest, yes, you are ready." Hugh hadn't been about to say anything- normally he would have interjected with a concern or a misgiving, but something in his master's demeanor made him simply wait and listen. Lewis also seemed more like Hugh's "master" today than he had seemed for a long while, and thus the younger man was rapt.

"You just have to make sure of a few things. I know that you have trouble with acting, but your demeanor here is what is most important. These people may be upset, will definitely be confused, and will need some sort of solid presence to ground them in reality. People don't like thinking about this sort of thing, generally, and they will have been putting off doing so for a while, but if they see you, a professional," Hugh's chest felt lighter- that was one of the Pharmacist's rarely-uttered almost-compliments, "keeping his cool, they will be much calmer, and therefore much easier to interact with," said Lewis. "That is about a much as you have to do, though. Be steadfast, be calm, and take notes about the patient." A beat. "And also their house. Take notes about their house as well." Hugh nodded.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t kept a good grip upon it, and the ultimate yank sent it whizzing directly into Hugh’s desk, bidding his lamp and pencils a swift journey to the floor.

“See?!” Verity wiggled her toes, ignoring the mild destruction she had caused. Her feet were side by side, her knees pulled up toward her face and her hands hooked around the edge of the chair’s seat, as best to display the numerical disparity of her digits. Her expression wasn’t distraught, or horrified, necessarily- more like mildly annoyed, like one might feel upon finding a new blemish on their face before an important appearance at a dinner party- thinking ahead to the ways she might have to endeavor to hide it. Sure enough, the other foot was unaffected by whatever had suddenly deigned to give her that peculiar gift.

“I mean, you showed me the foot with the extra toe first. I didn’t think you were lying about it being only on the one side,” said Hugh, still a little shocked, but taking it in stride, as he did with most things related to Verity. No sense trying to argue away the anomaly- there it was. Almost like it was trying to be a thumb for her right foot, sprouting off the inside edge of the ball. It seemed to him she was able to wiggle it with just as much dexterity as the others.

“Yeah, well, I almost had to check to make sure another one hadn’t appeared suddenly in the time since I was last looking.” Verity moved to appraise it up close, bending her right leg so that her ankle was resting on her left thigh. “It wasn’t even like I woke up and noticed it, I swear it wasn’t there this morning! I mean, to be fair, I didn’t wake up and immediately count them-”

“What, you don’t regularly take inventory?”

“Yes ‘ha ha,’” she responded with absentminded sarcasm, “after this, maybe I’ll have to start. I knew you had to count the old sawbones’ pills, I didn’t know that responsibility extended to your body parts.”

“Oh, you know how it is.” He paused. “Wait, hold on- you’re saying it appeared partway through the day? Did one shoe suddenly become really uncomfortable or something?” The shock was wearing off. He was starting to actually pay attention to her story.

“I mean, I’m pretty well sure, as long as I’m not losing it- don’t .” Hugh closed his mouth and put his hand down. “It was more of a… slowly growing discomfort, I suppose? But yeah- I had to take my shoe off, give it a look without taking too much time, stifle whatever reaction would have been appropriate for a spare bloody toe -no it wasn’t bleeding, you know what I mean- and then get my damn shoe back on over it. You saw how hard it was to get this one off, imagine me doing the opposite while in a rush.”

He didn’t need to be prompted, the mental image was already tugging at the corners of his mouth. “How did you manage to take a look at it while on the job? For being a lady, don’t they berate you for, like, having feet at all?”

She laughed. “Feet are like opinions, Hugh. They don’t mind me having them as long as they can’t see them. And to answer your question, I had to pop into a phone booth.”

“How do you see an opinion?”

“What?” A beat, and then she rolled her eyes. “Oh, come off it, let me wax philosophical in peace.”

“Fair enough.”

Hugh stood up, careful not to bump the ceiling, and moved to close the small, if incongruously ornate window above his bed. Summer had ended, and Autumn was beginning to whine for attention by habitually dropping the temperature of the drafty little room.

The neighborhood pharmacy that he lived above and apprenticed for was, like the majority of the buildings around, a strange shape. Though it was one of the shorter structures on the street, it was still two-and-a-half stories -Hugh’s room being the “and-a-half” in question- with a silhouette like someone had grabbed the pointy top of a child’s drawing of a house and stretched it skyward, without much caring for whether they pulled straight up. The street that it sat quietly next to, curved in just such a way that the young man’s window looked out longways down the drag, and if one were to peer to the empty space not blocked by steep slopes of neighboring shingles in dull, cool colors, and little metal pipe chimneys bent at angles seemingly disadvantageous for their function, guests might be treated to a scene of commercial bustle and hustle all the way down to the next bend in the road. That is, if he were to have any guests of esteem at all. Verity didn’t count.

Hugh took a cursory glance outside before he pulled the window shut, checking to see if the neighbor’s cat was sitting in the window across the alley. It wasn’t.

“It has to be magic, right?” He left the windowsill and rocked arduously down to his knees to look under the bed. His legs were long enough that shifts in altitude were tough. “I mean, Meera had that thing with the fishes last year and your mum sees that witch doctor or whatever sometimes.”

“My aunt does. Did. Definitely not my mum. And don’t say ‘witch-doctor’ out and about, you’ll have some poor gramp in conniptions. You know how they like to pretend everything’s straight-and-narrow,” said Verity behind him.

“Oh, sorry, yeah, your mom would never do that, actually- I misremembered.” He tried to stop remembering the correct alternative as he dug around in the boxes under the bed frame. Verity’s mother was like a glistening steel scythe, in mind and body. Not that she was necessarily very “sharp,” as it were, just that any bit of wheat that stuck out a bit too far to the side was labeled a weed and violently harvested. “How is your aunt now, by the way?”

“Dunno, haven’t seen her since I moved out, and I barely knew what was up with her when I saw her more. I bed Da’s kept in touch, but she was always a sight too weird for the old lady to invite ‘round the old Revel.”

“I suppose you take after her, then, yeah?” He found what he was looking for as she chuckled. A old pair of shoes he hadn’t thrown out, not fitting her dapper, leather sensibilities, but good enough to hide an extra digit on a smaller foot than his. He wiped the dust off them, straightened his back, and turned around.”I always liked her stories, though- wha-”

She was leaning back, extending the leg with the new addition as far as it could go toward one shoe, the one close enough to be on the carpet. The tip of her tongue was poking out of her mouth in concentration, and the chair was suggesting that it may be inclined to fall over.

“Are you seeing if you can-”