I haven’t been to a doctor in decades. Every health problem, pain or minor annoyance my body throw at me, Etna had a solution.
‘Etna’s Natural Remedies and Potions’ is a tiny shop, it’s more like a hole in the wall around the corner from my building. The store front is just a window with a metal shutter next to an intimidatin steel door with a glass handle that had a sphere in the middle and glass tubing that went strainght up and down from the shpere and bent sharply towards the door. Above the handle were three ancient locks. They may just be for show. There is nothing in the room behind the counter but a similar metal door in the back, right corner.
To make a purchase, you ring the electronic buzzer to the right of the window. Sometimes Etna comes to the window right away, sometimes she takes up to 10 minutes. You tell Etna your problem, she walks back through the metal door and in a few minutes, she comes back with a paper bag with a sheet of paper stapled to it. This sheet of paper contains instructions on how to properly use the remedy.
Sometimes it’s a powder, sometimes it’s leaves to be made into tea or rolled and smoked. Sometimes it’s cream, sometimes its soap. I had never received anything from Etna that, by any stretch of the imagination, could be called a potion.
Anything purchased from Etna came with a steep price tag but completely cures whatever ails you. Usually with less than five doses or applications, often only one. I would gladly pay more for medicine that actually works.
I once felt a hard lump in my breast and since breast cancer runs in my family I was frantic. I was trapped in my mind, replaying time spent with my mother and grandmother in their final days. Picturing myself dying alone in a hospital bed, remembered by no one.
I saw a doctor who ran all sorts of tests. I impatiently awaited the results. I had no one else to talk to in so I confided in Etna. She went through the metal door and returned with a bag that contained some colorful leaves and told me this order was on the house.
The instructions were to roll up the leaves and smoke them, so I did. Later that night the lump was gone. My doctor eventually called. In a somber tone told me things didn’t look good and asked me to schedule more tests. I told him it wouldn’t be nessacary, hung up and ignored all future calls from his office. I didn’t need a real doctor.
Me and Etna had become close over the years. It started one Christmas morning, I woke up with a cough and a sore throat. I went to Etna for a remedy. After I paid, we started talking and I discovered that we were both going to be alone for the holiday. Neither of us had any living family, nor, did we have any friends in the city. I invited Etna up for dinner, she was overjoyed and to be honest I was very relieved to not be alone.
We ordered pizza and wings. We spent the evening drinking wine, telling each other about our late family members and sharing stories from our pasts. I won’t get into it but our back stories were extremely similar, wrought with pain and loss. She never mentioned anything about how she had come to run her shop. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so I didn’t ask. Wine, pizza and wings became our tradition for every major holiday.
I have had a very hard couple of weeks. My cat died and then a week later, the company I had worked at for the last 13 years filed for bankruptcy and after three days of tending to me in a state of complete mental breakdown. My boyfriend decided I wasn’t worth the trouble and hasn’t answered or returned my calls for about 8 days now.
I had never felt so low, I couldn’t get out of bed. When I did, it was to use the bathroom, definitely not to shower. Etna came to mind, she had miraculous answers to all my body’s problems, why wouldn’t she have a remedy for problems in my brain.
I explained everything to Etna. She didn’t have to go to the back, from her pocket, she pulled the first and last potion I ever received from her. It was a clear, round bottle with a flat bottom that seemed to hold about 300ml. it had a 2 inch neck and about a three inch mouth, a large, cork stopper was shoved down it. When you picture a potion, you’re imagining this bottle.
There was a small tag attached to golden, braided string that hung from the neck, that I assumed were the instructions. The liquid itself was a pinkish purple, not unlike the color you get when pink and blue cotton candy is mixed together.
I ask Etna how much the potion for the potion and brace myself because on any other day a remedy from Etna would be a huge portion of my remaining money. A knowing smile creeps over Etna’s face as she speaks.
“For a friend that is truly in need, there is never a charge at Etna’s”
I smile for the first time in over a week. I can feel an embarrassing tear about to escape my eye. I lunge over the counter and hug Etna, she’s resistant at first but eases into it.
“Thank you Etna, I feel like you’re the only good thing I have left.” I confess, the one embarrassing tear has become a flood of salty water, drenching my face. Thank God I gave up on makeup after I lost my job.
“I hope I always am, darling” Etna says in her accent I’ve never been able to trace “now, drink that and get some rest. Things will seem better in the morning, I promise”
I sniff and wipe my tears with the sleeves of my sweater. “Thank you Etna, I’ll see you later”
“See you soon, darling”
I put the potion in my pocket and head home.
I place the bottle on my kitchen table and read the tag.
‘drink the contents of this bottle and do your best’ was written on the tag in gold letters.
I understood enough of the instructions. I didn’t care about the cryptic, second part, at this point I would try crystal meth if it put an end to my mental agony. Meth doesnt come with instructions though or maybe it does, who knows.
I downed the cotton candy colored liquid in two giant chugs. I was pleasantly surprised that the mixture actually tasted like cotton candy. It leaves a sugary taste in my mouth that has, already, raised my spirits.
I wait a half hour, an hour, two hours. Nothing happens, the sugary taste that is now long gone was the only positive effect of the potion. I wait another hour before I give up on feeling better and go to bed. I’ve never bought anything from Etna that didn’t work. I couldn’t be too mad though, I hadn’t technically bought the potion. Why would she give me something for free that didn’t work? You get what you pay for, I guess.
She had said “I’ll see you soon, maybe when I go back she’ll tell me ‘the real happiness was in me all along’ or something. I go to bed, I fall asleep fast and deep.
I dream of Etna, she’s green with a shine to her skin that didnt really make sense. she is picking herbs in a beautiful forest and placing them in a satchel that is slung over her shoulder. She looks up at me and smiles.
“Do your best, darling” she whispers
I wake up, smiling. I feel like my skin is vibrating in tune with the universe. It feels sooo good. Its like microscopic fingers massaging every part of my body. I now realize how unimportant the things I had lost are. I am over them, above them. I can’t put it into words but I am content in a way that comes with knowing the things that are truly important in life.
Uh oh…oh no….
I can’t open my eyes……..I cant…..open my eyes! I fumble around on my night stand and turn on my lamp. My eyes are open but everything is extremely dim, like I’m wearing really dark sunglasses. My skin…it’s…hard, like rock. it’s not uncomfortable and feels really good to scratch. The skin thing doesn’t seem so bad in my drug induced state but the eyesight has me panicked.
I go to the kitchen, the potion bottle is still on the table. The bottle now has a small golden key in it. Even with my dimmed eyesight the key shines like a diamond, it cuts through the darkness. I am confused and terrified. I fight through my feelings and put on my sweater. I put the potion bottle in my pocket and head down to see Etna.
The shutter was closed, I wasnt upset, I knew what to do next. I shook the key loose from the bottle and tried it on the top lock of the metal door next to Etna’s window. The key appeared to be too small to fit in any of the locks and the locks themselves were all different sizes. To my surprise the little key unlocked all three, I only had some minor trouble with the middle lock.
The door opened into some sort of huge lab with high ceilings about the size of a tennis court. Everything was stainless steel, polished to a mirror-like shine. There were beakers and flasks over Bunson burners. Glass Tubes came from them and ran all over the lab in different directions. The liquids flowed through spirals and twists and turns, the purpose of which I may never know.
There were test tubes and bottles filled with different colored liquids. On every wall were labeled steel drawers. I didn’t understand any of the words on the labels, it may not be English. In the back left corner of the room was a huge black cauldron, bubbling over a wood fire with a thick wood stick poking out of it that I can only imagine is a giant spoon. So…it wasn’t completely unlike what I expected.
Behind the cauldron is a brick wall with a doorway, 6 feet high and 4 feet wide. The edges glowed bright blue and I could see grass on the other side. Was it a painting with lights? I moved towards the door way and called out.
“Etna! Are you in there!?”
There was a nervous warble to my speech but I wasn’t afraid. My body must be terrified but my mind had no objections to running through the doorway at full speed, without checking if it was a picture first, so I did.
I emerge to a grass feild and start walking, every movnent is so much more difficult, like I’m heavier. I can now see perfectly, better than perfect and there’s an alien shimmer to everything, it’s like there’s colors here, I had never seen before. Everything here is musical. The wind, the birds the trees are all producing pleasing tones in different pitches. I do not hear one note that is out of tune with any of the others. The air is heavy, it’s hard to breathe but it’s far from debilitating. I can feel the sun burning my skin already, even with my eyes dimmed, the brightness is brutal.
I look up and see that I am about 100 yards away from an impossible forest. If I had to guess, I would say that the shortest tree was 100 feet tall. The tallest streched so close to the sun that I thought they should be on fire. There are brown clouds in the sky that look like fluffy, chocolate mousse.
The sun…it isn’t the sun….it’s much smaller and the most brilliant of whites. There are beams of light that shoot out from the top and bottom out to infinity and it is spinning rapidly. The beams wobble slightly, it makes a rotation every few seconds. I stare at the oddity for a few minutes with my mouth wide open.
I look back at the doorway I had come through, it was now on a stand-alone brick wall about 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide. Towering monlithically over the grass. Grass that was very sharp it was poking through my pants. Did a blade of it just puncture my shoe? I feel it trying to puncture further but my hardened skin stops it.
The sun, or whatever this star is called, was starting to really hurt my skin, I head towards the forest.
There are bugs jumping around that look like little blue whistles with black, stick figure legs. The seem to be jumping to invisible platforms in the air, they jump ever higher, I didnt see any come down.
There were birds in the sky. When one of them lands closer it rolls to a stop on what I can only describe as biological wheels. They are just one big wing with beady eyes and a long lance-like beak. Long feathers come out the back and all end at the same length, making the back of the bird a straight line. If you took a stealth bomber and glued gold and silver feathers to it, it would be this bird.
I enter the forest and see a cabin with a smoking chimney.
WHACK! Something slams into my side, I am now on the ground, scrambling in the dirt trying to right myself to run. Any good feeling the potion was providing was gone the second I was hit. I make it to my feet. I don’t take a step before I’m on the ground again, there was something tied around my feet.
I reach down to untie the binding around my ankles, before I can there are several pieces of what looked like sharp black glass pointed in my face. I see that the sharp objects are attached to wood sticks with thin rope. The sticks are about half an inch thick and impossibly straight. One of the black tips brushes against the left arm of my sweater and a giant gash opens up on the sleeve. The spear heads must be very sharp, it had barely touched me.
I look up towards the spear’s weilder. It is light green, with the shimmer of unnamed colors of this place mixed in, it seemed to be glowing. It’s head was perfectly round, it reminded me of a bubble. It had large red eyes that were divided by black lines into a grid pattern, very much like a fly, it had a small mouth with two two inch fangs hanging out of it.
The creature had 6 arms, a slim chest and a long, rounded cylinder shaped body that ran parallel with the ground. An impossible number of purple centipede-like legs coming from its bottom portion.
All of my attackers were the same light green, had the same facial features with the same indescribable shine but they were different shapes. The one that I assume had hit me initially was just a round ball with no legs, rolling around and the rest…was actually only one other thing. It was very thin and coming from it’s sides were long, light green arms that surrounded me in a ring. 13 or 14 arms came from the ring, each one with a spear, pointed at my neck at a different angle.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know where the door would lead! I swear! I was just looking for Etna! Please just let me go home! Please don’t kill me!” I am begging for my life but am wondering if I even want them to spare it.
“Etna? Mit youwn on ipton grouj?”
The centipede legged creature asks, I can’t understand what it’s saying but it comes up at the end like a question.
“I’m just looking for Etna, please” I whimper, tears pouring down my face.
“Etna?” The round one says.
“Etna!” The thin one shouts happily as it retracts the ring. the spears fall into the grass.
The round and thin monster relax into a similar shape as the one with the centipede legs, that I assume is the leader. They sprout their own nightmarish bug legs. Are they shapeshifters?
They form a line and walk away. After 10 feet they stop and scuttle back to me. They turn red and make grunting sounds, they walk away again but this time I follow them. They lead me to the front door of the cabin. They are all green again and it sounds a little like they’re laughing, it’s coming deep from within their chests. I lift the heavy steel knocker on the door and I smash it into the back plate three times.
Etna answers the door, she has a huge smile on her face and is the same green as the creatures that led me here, besides that, she looked exactly the same. She let out a strange whistle that didn’t seem like a noise a human could make and the monster’s ran off into the woods.
“Come in, darling, I assume you’re here to ask about the potion’s side effects, you must be so scared” she says in an empathetic tone.
I wanted to run but didn’t want to deal with Etna’s security force again. I entered the cabin.
The house is exactly what I was expecting to find when I entered the metal door that led to the lab. There was bundles of plants hanging from the ceiling, animal specimens in glass jars. Every wall was covered with labeled drawers but they were made of wood. There was another cauldron over a fire.
I sit down in a chair at a round wooden table. Etna hands me a glass of wine, I take a sip, it tasted like what a star filled sky looks like. It also had hints of the feelings associated with beholding the magic of said sky. I finish the glass and Etna pours some more. She is giddy, I’ve never seen her like this.
“The wine is good, Etna. I don’t mean to be rude but WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?” I ask, losing my cool at the end of the sentence.
Etna laughs and responds “oh darling, I know it’s a lot to take in but I promise you’re safe and by the end of the night it will all make sense”
Etna walks to the cauldron, stirs it up, reaches in and pulls out a pizza box. She brings it to the table and opens it. Inside the box is a steaming pizza, it smells amazing. She repeats the process and comes to the table with a plate of wings.
“Everyone here loves pizza and wings. I made for them after that first Christmas we spent together” She chuckles as she pours herself a glass of wine and sits down in the chair across the table from me.
‘Everyone’? how many of those green things are there? My mind is having trouble putting words together. I just stare at Etna and take another sip of my wine.
Etna explains “The potion I gave you, changed your body so you could survive in this place. It also removed your fear that may have kept you from entering the doorway. The effects are temporary, I promise that you will return to your normal self once you walk back through, if thats the path you choose.”
This was the information I came for but was now the last answer I cared about.
“What were the things with the spears?” I ask timidly.
“Oh them? Those are some of the native inhabitants of this world. Those three are my guardians, they are meant to be intimidating but they are actually a very kind and loving people. They all care about each other more than themselves. A society without problems doesn’t exist but their’s comes damn close. Ha!” Etna slaps her knee.
“Where are we?” I ask but think I already know the answer.
“This is a different planet, although I’m sure you guessed that by the star in the sky but It’s more than that. This is a different place entirely. The physics and chemical reactions are very different here. It allows for the creation of my remedies that seem magically effective on earth.” Etna takes a deep breath. It seems like she working towards something she’s afraid to say.
“How does the doorwa…..” I get half the question out before Etna interrupts.
“I am not Etna” she admits
“Who are you then?” I’m a little upset that I had been lied to.
“Well…I do go by Etna but my original name has sounds that the human brain can’t comprehend. You can keep calling me Etna, Aunt Etna if you prefer. I know I do” Etna now gets to the part of the conversation that she was building towards.
Etna stared into my eyes for a moment, forces a smile and says.
“The potion shop was given to me by the enity that I also knew as Etna. I purchased medicine from her just like you do from me. I reached a very difficult, transitional time in my life. I had given up and felt I had nothing to live for. My Etna offered me a way back, offered me purpose. The same purpose I am now offering you.” Etna pauses and nods. I open my mouth to respond but Etna cuts me off again.
“I am dying, its not going to happen soon but it will be much sooner for me than you. Someone needs to run the shop when I pass on and I know you’re the one to do it. I knew the day I met you. The money is amazing but running the shop is the least important of my responsibilities. I am the keeper of the door in the brick wall. This place must remain untainted by earth, it is absolutely essential that the two worlds remain seperate. You’re free to return but I just know this life is for you” Etna looks to me, trying to read my expression.
I don’t know what to make of this offer. I don’t know if I even understand what she is asking me. I have no idea how to answer but I am thinking about my life on the other side of the doorway and know I wouldn’t miss it.
Etna smiles and says “you’ll be great, darling, you just have to do your best”
With that phrase I make my decision.
“Ok, Etna” I say softly, taking my first step down a strange, exciting, new path.
Etna squeals with delight and throws her arms over my shoulder and hugs me with all her might.
“I knew it was you, I always knew” Etna says excitedly.
I pull away from the hug and am confused by what I see. Across the table from me…is me. The is an evil smile on the face of the me across the table. I scream and the other me bursts into laugher.
“You were wasting your life, I think I’ll get much better use out of it. Don’t worry, you’ll be free one day, once you find someone else as gullible as you” my clone says, cackling.
I look down at my hands, they are light green. I hop off of the chair, I am much shorter. Me and Etna had switched bodies.
Etna ran out the door with my body, I attempted to run after her but her bodygaurds blocked the door. I slumped to the floor and cried, regretting everything.
That was how I became the new owner of Etna’s Natural Remedies and potions.
D’end