Magic Shoppe - A Model Student

With an audible pop as the air nearby was suddenly displaced, a woman, au naturelle, appeared in the center of the shoppe. She looked around to find the proprietor and immediately complained, “I just found out it’s the twenty-first century!”

“Fiona, you’re three decades late,” said the tall, thin man standing behind the shoppe counter.

“You have some nerve. You turned me into a statue. I just found out that was fifty years ago,” Fiona said. For all her bluster, she joined the man on his side of the counter and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“I did miss you,” he said.

“You should be ashamed.”

“Me? You made me promise you if you ever found the perfect idyllic place for a statue, I would turn you into a statue for twenty years right on the spot.”

“It was the perfect spot. Even my pose was perfect. It’s been fifty years?”

“Yes, it has been. You kept extending the spell, as I recall.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember that now.”

“Yeah. I saw no reason to interrupt it. Why did you stop extending it?”

“I remember now. Someone decided to put an office complex on the plot of land right in my line of sight. Totally ruined the view.”

“Why would someone build office space in these days of work from home?”

“Like I understand business ‘these days’,” she said. She finally noticed where she was. “What have you been up to?”

“Business. I opened The Magic Shoppe a little over thirteen years ago.”

“But, magic is forbidden in public.”

“That used to be true. The accords were revised. Still can’t do any overt advertising. But, magic can be discussed openly.”

She ran a finger along a shelf behind the counter. “Do you ever dust? Typical of you to ignore the fine details.”

“Yes, I’m not detail oriented.” He rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you do something about it?”

The door to the store opened and the little bell on it chimed. Clothing appeared on Fiona: a black short skirted dress with white lace trim and crinoline. A white apron cover the front. She noticed the feather duster in her hand and used it to dust the shelf she’d just complained about.

“Welcome to the Magic Shoppe,” he announced. “What can I do for you today?”

“Did you just turn that customer into a maid?” The man asked.

The tall, thin man chuckled. “This lovely woman is what you might refer to as my wife. The spell I just cast on her is of the type she most enjoys.”

“Being a maid?”

“Being transformed, especially where her perception of herself is part of the transformation.”

“Interesting. What does that really mean?”

“At the moment, she has no memory of a time when she wasn’t the housemaid for the Shoppe.”

“What happens when she finishes cleaning?”

“Well, should that happen, the spell will end and her memory of her true self will return. Knowing her, she’ll get indignant, ‘How could you turn me into a scullery maid?’, ‘I don’t see you in years and this is the first thing you do to me?’, or ‘A maid? You know I prefer to be turned into an animal or a statue. How dare you put me to work!’”

“But she wouldn’t mean any of that.”

“Not in the slightest. Well, maybe the slightest, but not for long.”

“And given that, you still did it to her.”

The proprietor only smiled in response.

“The Shoppe doesn’t really look dirty.”

A small portal opened a few feet in front of the man. Small bits of dust and dirt floated to the floor from the portal that closed as quickly as it opened. The portal vanished. The man reached out and caught some of the dust in his hand.

“She was complaining the shoppe was filthy. That’s why I chose to turned her into a maid.”

The man laughed. “And this will prevent the shoppe from being fully cleaned any time soon. I guess you want me to just let this fall to the floor.” When the proprietor nodded, the man turned his hand over and brushed the dust out of it with his other hand. “She didn’t even notice the dust just appeared from nowhere.”

“Looks that way.”

“Funny thing is I kind of want something similar for myself.”

“I already have a maid.”

“No, I want to be a model student so I can finish my degree.”

The proprietor pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you ever find a genie offering to grant you a wish, flee from them as fast as you can before you speak aloud like that.”

“What did I say wrong?”

“Here, I’ll show you.”

The man disappeared. A deferment note appeared in a university’s student database. “Note to self, restore him in six months.” He looked at Fiona, humming tunelessly as she swept. He added to the mental note: “Not fifty years.”

“I need to find a field for you lose yourself standing in, Fi. Here for less than an hour and I'm already a bit loose with the magic.”

*****

In a student book store, at the local university, a mannequin appeared in the window. If someone asked a member of the staff or student body when it was placed there, they’d say the mannequin had been there as long as they’d been around the university. It wore a school hoodie, school branded slacks, a book bag with the school logo on it, etc. A model student.

The mannequin was overjoyed. It was always overjoyed. It couldn’t remember not being overjoyed. It was dressed as it was always dressed. The way it preferred to be dressed: modeling clothes, student clothes. It was a model student.

A model student.

A model student.