Down one aisle, a man, uncannily like the bearded stranger from last night, stood studying a bag of fertilizer, now dressed in a sharp suit and tie. The colored braids were gone, his beard neat and ordinary. Will hesitated, uncertain. Was it really him? He turned back for another look, but the man had already vanished.
As soon as he arrives home, he fills the pot with soil, carefully positioning it beneath the kitchen window where the morning light streams in. Humming with anticipation, he scoops out a hollow in the center.
He retrieves the little metal container with the mysterious beans. When he pops open the lid, he freezes. His heartbeat triples like a coked up prisoner who just caught an unpinned grenade. A strange mixture of ghostly terror mixed with confinement engulfed his body.
The beans are now perfectly aligned, each one a distinct color. Etched into the inside of the container is a new arrow, its lines sharp and gleaming, pointing directly at a single bean, a dark, forest green.
“What the Fuck?! This is the craziest shit that I have ever experienced in my life!” involuntarily blurts out of Will’s mouth.
His limbs feel as heavy as unfinished Aswan Obelisks still stuck in Egyptian bedrock. He slowly sits at his kitchen table and places the container down. He closes his eyes for a brief moment attempting to de-escalate his intense feelings of anxiety.
What the hell is actually going on here? he thinks.
For a moment his brain entertained a frightening gory ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ scenario. If he plants this “Magical Bean” will it grow into a monster that will eventually eat him?
Right after that thought which held a strange sort of exciting fascination, as usual, he thought about how his life is really going nowhere slowly. Now looking back on yesterday, he realizes how weak and pathetic he must have appeared to Chu Mei. Spilling his personal details and actually crying to a stranger he just met, that he had a huge visible boner for.
What do I really have to lose? roamed around in his internal monologue. He wasn’t sure if this thought was familiar or not. Was this his thought? Who else’s thought could it have been? No one else was there but him.
He picks up the selected bean, walks to the pot, and drops it into the hole. Just as he reaches for the soil to cover it, the dirt shifts on its own, softly burying the bean. He blinks, uncertain if he really saw that. Maybe he’s just overworked or maybe skipping dinner was a mistake. He walks back to the table and the container is now closed.
I didn’t close it. What the holy fuck is this?
He must have stared at it for at least three minutes. Slowly he grabs the container and tries to re-open it. It wouldn’t budge. It was like it was super-glued shut. Quickly, as fast as a slippery Wrasse fish falls from unskilled hands, William accidentally dropped the purple container on the floor where it made a broken type of sound. When he picked it up, it appeared to be as new as the first time he received it from the weird wizard. He was certain that it would be dented like the corner of his SUV after visiting Griffith Park, but it was shiny and new. It even sparkled a little after he returned it to the cupboard.
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