Image: Michael Grogan….Innsbruck Austria*

I loved to taunt the old crone who ran the magic shop in the town mall. She was an ugly old woman with an unpleasant personality and I liked nothing more than to rattle her door and leave things behind just the irritate the old hag. Like lunch wrappers, apple cores and whatever rubbish I had with me.

Mine was a bias based solely on her looks.

My mother told me she was once a famous magician and witch who could conjure all sorts of magic potions.

She gave me the chills when I looked through her front window and saw her all hunched over her counter, surrounded by an array of goods and ingredients for potions, which only added to my perceived horror of her.

She never did anything to me, she was amazingly patient considering the nuisance I made of myself but yesterday I know I went too far.

Being the smartarse I am I went in and asked her for some unspelling potion. She looked puzzled but then asked me to wait while she disappeared behind her back curtain.

She came back with a small blue bottle, told me to take it at bedtime and all would be like I never knew before.

I was thinking she’d recognised the joke but I decided to go along with her. As it was I believed everything about her was hocus pocus.

At bedtime I took the lid off the bottle and sniffed the contents. It had the most alluring scent. It captivated every one of my smelling sensors and before I knew it I had drunk the entire bottle.

Nothing happened other than the lingering aroma of the enticing liquid. But I did feel sleepy.

I slept well.

On opening my eyes I was stunned to see myself standing in the mall, all around me the town was going about its business oblivious to me standing there.

A panic ran through me as I realised I couldn’t move.

I turned one way and then the other but nothing happened.

I realised I was inside and couldn’t get out.

All cries for help were inaudible, every futile gesture ignored.

I was now a statue in the town mall.

A little after noon the old crone came wandering by, stopped and looked up me. I saw a crooked smile, her hag features creasing uncharacteristically as her face cracked a hitherto feature I’d never seen before.

She looked me in the eye and said: “I told you life would be as you never knew it before.”

She wandered off and left me standing there. A small girl stood before me and asked her mother what I was supposed to be.

She told her I was one of those new life like statues the town was investing in and if she wasn’t a good girl she might end up like this one.

She said this and I looked at her as if asking how do you know?

The mother looked at me and I saw it was my mother and the girl was a young me. I was instantly horrified, what had happened to me I asked myself. Had I gone back in time?

My mother smiled at me as if recognising it was me and wandered off holding my younger versions hand.

A little later a man came and sat below me and ate his lunch. Several others joined him and I knew I had company, I was not alone but that night as the sunset and the cold descended I shivered inside my stone tomb.

The old crone came by and sat below me and watched as the moon rose. She rubbed an oil on my feet and instantly I felt a new warmth, as she rose to leave she said I would be warm for the night and that in a week or two she’d think about releasing me but in the meantime I should reflect on my attitudes to others and maybe not judge folk on their appearances, after all within a week the pigeons would have discovered me and then I’d really know what it was like to be shit on every day.

* I have always admired street artists of this kind and this lady was kind enough to allow me to photograph her, I did leave her a few euros in her collection hat. I saw another street performer many years ago as part of a Christmas display in a large department store in Sydney. She was brilliant, she moved but so slowly you could barely notice it. I watched her for ages captivated by the outstanding discipline she showed.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/tale-weaver-19-locked-in/