Mable's Marvellous Sweetie Shop 1

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

From the outside it looked like a typical old fashioned sweet shop. Dull brick facing, large windows which let you peep in at the wooden shelves dark with polish and stacked with big glass jars of colourful orbs. The wooden sign above the glass door read “Marvellous Sweeties” painted gold in a twee script.

There was no opening times or contact details listed. Just a white card dangling on the inside of the door, currently declaring “open” in an utterly unremarkable office typeface which happened not to feature in any known databases.

Rea must have walked past it hundreds of times in her short life. This route past the row of little shops to the park was routine. Yet it was only today that she actually saw the shop.

Why had she never gone in? Yes, the corner shop two doors down had a decent selection of sweets and snacks. And the supermarket ten minutes away was the preferred after-school refuel station for her friends and classmates. But here was a whole shop of sweets minutes from her house and she couldn’t remember setting foot inside.

Today was grey and threatening drizzle, and nobody had replied to her suggestion to meet at the gazebo, so it was the perfect time to explore indoors.

Just as the sign promised the door was unlocked and easily, eagerly even, swung inwards at the first push, the brass bell above clattering a jarring welcome. But there was nobody behind the polished counter.

Rea loitered on the mat, which was so thoroughly worn that it served more as a symbolic waiting area than any hygiene measure. Stepping off of it felt like commitment of some kind. Or at least risking being accused of trying to shoplift.

Still nobody. Nobody behind the counter, nobody calling from the back, nobody peering around the shelves.

“Hello?”

Maybe they got so few customers that they’d gone to lunch without bothering to flip the sign to-

“Hello.”

Rea jumped and spun to her right, and discovered the wavering croak belonged to a wizened old lady.

“Oh!” Rea lowered her hand from her mouth and managed a sheepish grin. “Er, hi. Is the shop open?”

“Of course, dearie.” The crone smiled. Despite her age, and profession, her teeth were celebrity-worthy. Even and clean and strikingly white. They looked entirely out of place in her worn and wrinkled face. Everything else about her screamed “old bag”.

‘Her husband must be a dentist, or something.’

Rea brushed the shock aside and edged past the woman, who stood there with an unwavering broad smile and silently watched.

‘No wonder nobody comes in here!’

But it would now be awkward to leave without buying something. So she turned to the shelves.

Her first skim across she was looking for familiar names. It was the second pass where she read them.

Love. Envy. Victory.

“Victory?” Rea laughed. “What would that even taste like?”

“Would you like to find out?”

Prompt was “If victory had a literal taste, it would taste like…”

[This rapidly grew into a full short story, so part two will be up tomorrow.]

Part 2 here.