the space between grit and grace

Breakfast in a magical shop is never simple

The apartment above the shop smelled faintly of coffee and burnt toast. If it was a matter of ‘still’ or ‘again’, Orrin couldn’t say.

Fenner, standing by the stove, scowled at the pan in front of him. Or rather, at the eggs inside the pan, which stubbornly refused to cook. A few of them had already tried slithering away, and the spatula in his hand wasn’t helping—it was clearly offended by the idea of touching them.

“Look,” Fenner muttered, adjusting his grip. “I don’t care if you don’t like eggs. Just do your job.”

The spatula shuddered in protest, and Fenner grit his teeth. He hadn’t even been here a full two days, and already, everything in this place had tested his patience at least once. It wouldn’t surprise him if the coffee pot decided it was a flower vase, or if the bread tried to arrange itself into rude gestures instead of neat slices.

A soft creak of the stairs caught his attention. He turned his head just enough to see Orrin emerging from the stairwell. Little Sir Menace was curled up in Orrin’s grip, clay limbs tucked in close, chest rising and falling in an eerily steady rhythm for something that, technically, shouldn’t even be breathing.

The ivy plant, however, was very much not asleep. Its vines twisted lazily over Orrin’s shoulder, a few of them twitching toward Little Sir Menace.

Fenner narrowed his eyes. “Why,” he asked flatly, “did you bring that upstairs?”

Orrin exhaled, nudging the door shut with his heel before answering. “Because I don’t feel like hunting for new lanterns the next few days. And if I leave it downstairs, it’ll tear apart the few I have left.”

The ivy, as if to punctuate the statement, let out a soft, rustling sigh and curled one of its vines toward the nearest object. Orrin gave it a sharp look. “Stop it.”

“Can’t we just get rid of it? Leave it outside moments before your weird shop picks a new place or something?”

The ivy rustled loudly—as if offended by the suggestion alone. Orrin, who looked like he was at least thinking about the possibility, shook his head a moment later.

“I’d need a full-voice decision.”

Fenner raised a brow. “How many voices do we need? The floorboards bite me when I step too hard on them, the spatula for the eggs hates touching eggs and curls away from them all the time, and earlier, when I tried to get some water for your coffee, the tap merely said ‘gurgle, gurgle, gurgle’ instead of giving me actual water. We’ve got all the voices we need.”

As he spoke, Fenner jabbed the spatula at the toast in the other pan with the same lack of caution one typically reserved for handling feral animals—stopping it from escaping the pan. “This place is cursed,” he muttered under his breath, pressing down on the toast. It yelped indignantly, and he gritted his teeth. “This place is absolutely cursed.”

Not even a second later, Fenner scowled at the eggs, which were now attempting to shuffle to the other side of the pan, hoping he was too distracted with the toast to notice.

“I see you’re adjusting well,” Orrin said, completing skipping the topic they had started a moment ago. “It doesn’t look like you’re burning anything today.”

Orrin strode to the worn-out couch and carefully set Little Sir Menace down, tucking a fraying blanket around him before finally peeling the ivy plant from his arm and draping it onto a small table—away from anything it could damage or break. The plant sulked dramatically, vines curling inward.

Orrin ignored it and rubbed his temples. “So. How’s breakfast coming along?”

Fenner gestured to the scene in front of him without looking away. “The toast is screaming at me, the rest of the bread is arranging itself rudely, the eggs are trying to escape, and whenever I walk by the cupboard, its door tries to split my head open.”

Orrin nodded. “How nice of them to involve themselves in your day so much. They are shy most of the time.”

Fenner turned to glare at him. “I am this close,” he said, pointing the spatula at Orrin now. Orrin grinned, utterly unfazed by the spatula now leveled at his chest.

“This close to what? Complimenting my excellent taste in real estate?”

Fenner’s eyes narrowed further, and he took a slow, measured breath. “Why,” Fenner asked, voice calm in a way that suggested it was anything but, “do you live like this?”

Orrin waved a dismissive hand. “Ah, you know. The shop and I have an understanding. I keep it together, it keeps me on my toes. It’s a delicate balance.”

Fenner shook his head, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘I hate it here’.

“It’s cozy.” Orrin said with a shrug, to which Fenner gave him a long, sanity-questioning look.

“It’s deranged.”

“Maybe. But it’s deranged in a cozy way.”

Fenner turned back to the stove, accepting that arguing would get him nowhere. The toast, now properly golden-brown, let out a weary sigh. The ivy plant gave a small, mournful rustle from its spot, one of its leaves turning toward the two of them like it was trying to draw the attention back to itself.

Fenner glanced at it and then back at Orrin. “And what about that thing?”

“What about it?”

“We were talking about getting rid of it. I mean… we’ve got all the voices you may need. I’m developing anxiety just thinking about the light bulb hanging near the shower. It can see everything. It might have thoughts about the ivy too. And while we are at it, why not ask the leftover lanterns? Surely, they have something to say to the murder plant as well.”

Orrin sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“I was joking! It’s a plant. You don’t need any voices!”

The ivy immediately rustled in a dramatic, insulted fashion. Fenner pointed a finger at it. “See? That. That right there is the problem. It’s not supposed to do that.”

Orrin raised a brow. Reaching past Fenner, he grabbed the coffee pot and a mug. “It’s just expressive.”

“It reacted dramatically.”

“Well, wouldn’t you too, if someone dismissed you as ‘just a plant’?”

Fenner inhaled sharply through his nose, gripping the spatula like it was the last fragile thread tethering him to sanity. Orrin, meanwhile, had strolled over to the ivy and was gently untangling one of its more exploratory vines.

“It’s been with me for so long now. It would be afraid all by itself.”

“Did you forget the strangling part? The torn up lanterns?”

Orrin hesitated. Which, in itself, was answer enough. Fenner pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, what, you just keep it? Like some weird, sentient houseplant pet?”

Orrin gave a helpless shrug. “Wouldn’t be the strangest thing.”

Fenner groaned again, dragging a hand down his face. “I hate i—” Before Fenner could finish his sentence, a loud, thud echoed from downstairs.

Both of them froze.

A second thud followed, heavier this time, shaking the walls just enough to make the hanging pots clink together. A slow creak shuddered through the ceiling beams, and somewhere near the stairwell, the floor let out a soft, ominous groan—like it was trying to decide if it wanted to stay in one piece or burst apart.

A deep, dragging noise followed, like something heavy was shifted across the wooden floorboards below. Fenner tightened his grip on the spatula—almost as if that was the key tool to solve whatever disaster was approaching now. He glanced at Orrin.

“Please tell me your shop is just the hangry type and I’m too slow with breakfast.”

Orrin didn’t.

Which, to be quite frank, made the entire thing much worse.

Instead, the shopkeeper rolled up his sleeves. “I suppose I should check that.”

As Orrin strode towards the door downstairs, the mug in his hand vanished, only to reappear next to Fenner on the counter. Inside, the liquid uttered a soft, somehow sulk-like sounding ‘gurgle gurgle gurgle’, causing Fenner to whip around to it, glaring.

“Not now!”, Fenner barked at the mug, but by the time he had turned back to Orrin, he was gone. To his utter horror, the apartment’s door was, too.

“Orrin? Hey! You can’t leave me by myself! Orrin!”

Downstairs, Orrin heard no such thing. With a snap of his fingers, he moved the apartment door into his pockets. As it settled inside, Orrin glanced at the shop below. The staircase itself seemed fine; no scratch, no squeak, no traces of magic other than the one belonging to the shop.

The shop’s door was where it belonged and so was the old grandfather clock by the counter. Merete’s traces had vanished—which was normal—, though Orrin couldn’t help but wonder where the woman had found herself after walking out through the shop’s front door instead of back into the pay phone booth.

Thinking of that one…

Orrin stopped in his tracks. From his spot halfway down the stairs, he looked around, searching for the big, red nuisance, however, it was nowhere to be found. He descended the rest of the stairs in near silence, boots barely whispering against the wood, the noise of them like a held breath.

Once he stepped to the counter, the air changed and faintly, he heard the unmistakable click-hum of a rotary dial spinning. A tone that didn’t belong to any working landline anymore, followed by a static-choked sigh that prickled the hairs on the back of his neck.

Quicker now, to prevent the worst, Orrin hurried into the maze of aisles and shelves, ignoring the way the old shelves settled around him protectively and how the books rustled their pages as if agitated.

The dragging sound came again. Closer now. A corner or two away.

So he turned one, then another, finding himself between empty frames, melted candles, moth-bitten curtains, and broken lamps.

And there it was, tucked away between a mannequin missing its head and purpose, and a dusty hat-stand holding coats no one would come back for; red paint chipped and dulled by years, its glass still streaked with watermarks and smudges of fingers long forgotten, but the lingering smell of rain was sweeter now, harder to swallow.

It had soured into something syrupy and sharp, like urine and bile boiled together. It clung to the back of his throat, forcing down the sour stink of unwashed bodies, and corners so dark and dirty they seemed to sweat neglect. Its door creaked open by the smallest degree, just enough for a sliver of flickering, sepia-toned light to spill onto the wooden floor.

Orrin stared.

The booth, pristine and brazen in its presence—shiny, smug even, like it knew it didn’t belong but insisted anyway—was now barely anything anymore. Dirty, repulsing, something not even Orrin would stop for. And neither would Grant, whose sole purpose it was to collect and deliver things to people like Orrin.

For days it had stood at the front of the shop, polished to the point of arrogance, smelling of fresh rain like it had something to prove. Orrin had hated it for that—its persistence, its refusal to fade quietly because it didn’t belong here. It had annoyed him to ends and roundabouts; a phrase rarely used in his field of work, but here he was, thinking it anyway: About the type of hate that didn’t just linger endlessly but instead left, only to come back more intense whenever you looked at the one who caused it.

Now, though… with it rotting away in the corners that even the dust didn’t want to settle in…

Orrin’s eyes drifted to the twin tracks on the floor behind it—long, splintered scratches through the wood, like someone had moved furniture that didn’t want to be moved.

Or like the booth had moved itself. Loudly. Clumsily. Shamefully.

He took a slow step forward, suddenly aware of how small it looked now, hunched between forgotten things. The sepia light flickering from within was weaker here, like a candle trying not to snuff itself out. One of four doors ajar, it didn’t tease him this time. Didn’t provoke or mock. Didn’t stubbornly ruin his shift. Instead, it looked... tired.

“What’s going on over here, mh?” he asked quietly.

The booth didn’t answer—well… of course it didn’t. It was a booth, right? A little haunted perhaps, but that was all there was to it. It just sighed softly through the crack in its door, the rotary dial inside spinning once with a gentle click that almost sounded like a hiccup.

“You made yourself look new,” he said, voice gentler now. “Why?” And how, but that was a question for another moment.

It gave another sigh. A flash of movement in the glass—memory, not reflection. A little girl, her freckles bright under the flicker of the overhead light, gripping the receiver with both hands and bouncing on her toes as she recited her spelling test results to whoever was on the other end of the line. The phone booth glowing in that moment, full of her joy, her pride, her need to share.

Then—gone. Static. The booth didn't move, but the light dimmed further. That same sweetness in the air now smelled like sugar spilled in a sunroom, between thick roots and thicker foliage. Sour, sticky.

Then the rotary dial spun again. Slower this time. Another memory.

A man, alone and soaked through with melted snow, his hands shaking too badly to put the coin in the slot. The booth doing it for him—not that the man had noticed. The click of connection. The trembling breath of relief when the voice on the other end answered. ‘I found him’, the man had choked out, and the relieved cry at the end mirrored the joyful, relieved rustle of coins gathered inside the phone booth.

The light pulsed softly again. Another spin of the dial.

A boy this time, no older than twelve, holding a stray dog wrapped in his jacket, both of them shivering under a curtain of rain. The booth’s interior steamed with their combined breath, and the receiver dangled uselessly, forgotten, as the boy crouched and whispered promises to the animal: I’ll call someone, I will, just wait, okay? Just stay awake. The booth flickered its lights back then, trying to keep the cold at bay, trying to stretch itself bigger, warmer, safer until a couple rushed towards it, cradling boy and dog, leading them out of the booth, through the heavy rain, and into the nearest warm place.

The rotary clicked again, slower this time. Heavy. A final memory shimmered across the glass.

Two women leaning into each other, coats buttoned tight, one holding the others hands, the other holding her breath. There was love there—shy, fierce, hidden in the curve of fingers brushing over a wrist. Neither wanted to go. Neither could stay.

The booth had stretched their time inside; keeping its little light red rather than green, signaling that the booth was occupied already. There were no coins being used, no calls being made. It had given them three more minutes in secret. Three whole minutes of not-letting-go.

And then: static. The dial went still.

Orrin blinked hard. His throat felt like he’d swallowed a wire brush.

“I see,” he murmured. He looked at the booth again—not a machine, not really, but a shape built from memory and service and waiting. So much waiting.

The light flickered once more, violently now, angry.

All four doors and their glass panels shivered, each of them showing a flicker of a memory.

Not soft this time. Not warm.

One showed a group of teenagers laughing as they kicked the booth’s side, beer bottles clinking in their backpacks. One of them unzipped and urinated directly into the corner, the liquid splashing across the floor, the booth unable to move, unable to scream, unable to do anything but hold it. It had always held things—calls, secrets, warmth. Now it held waste.

Another panel showed a smear of crude graffiti—words carved and inked into its walls with knives and permanent markers. Some vile. Some meaningless. All of them loud in a language that only ever meant you don’t matter anymore.

The third panel flashed with night. Heavy boots stomping through it during a storm, someone lighting a cigarette, flicking ash onto the receiver before tossing the whole thing into a pool of rainwater left inside. The wires fizzled. No one noticed.

The fourth—slowest, cruelest—showed silence.

The booth, still intact, standing in a forgotten corner of a parking lot.

Covered in grime, its glass spiderwebbed with cracks. A half-eaten sandwich crust rotting inside on the floor. People walked by, too engrossed with themselves or the life of others in bright little screens.

No one looked.

And if they did, they didn’t look kindly. They didn’t smile. They didn’t treat it gently anymore. They complained because of the smell. Of how disgusting it looked. Of how it wasted space.

The smell was back now—sharp, metallic, ammonia-stained. Grief and filth, soaked into the floor. The kind of smell that only came when something had tried to stay good long after the world stopped deserving it.

A low, wounded click came from inside the dial.

Not a memory this time.

Not an ask.

Just pain.

Orrin stepped forward again, hand brushing the edge of the closest door. “That’s why you brought Merete here, right?” he asked, voice low. “Because Merete came to you every night. And she sat with you and your filth. Probably talked to you. Just quietly appreciated you for what you are: a safe space. A means of connection. A place for secrets of all kinds.”

Orrin let out a slow breath. He pressed his palm flat against the door frame, fingers grazing the ridged edge of peeling paint and carved slurs.

The rotary dial twitched. One slow spin. It stopped halfway this time. Not a click. Not quite. More like a shudder. And then there, in the fogging glass, Orrin spotted Merete: perched inside in the cleanest possible corner, knees pulled up to her chest, humming to herself, content with where she was—despite what she was dealing with, despite the smell, the dirt and the grime, the slurs.

“I get it now,” Orrin said, and then, softer still, “I’m sorry I didn’t before.” As he spoke, Orrin glanced at the floor. The drag marks stretched long behind it, a path of shame scraped into the wood. And indeed, as the silence progressed, the booth etched itself ahead; inch by inch towards the darkest, furthest corner of the Four Fourty-Four.

Orrin closed his eyes for a moment before he followed along, catching up to it with a few, long strides. “Now, now.” He said, once again placing a hand over the carvings etched across the closest wall. “I think we’ve got room for one more stubborn, time-lost relic. Of course, we have to polish you up a little, get rid of all the dirt and slurs, give you a new layer of paint. And who knows, maybe someday, someone will walk in, the battery of their phone dead, and in dire need of making a call? The Four Fourty-Four is a place meant to offer exactly what one is in need of. And if anyone was to come here, needing to call someone, I’d have to turn them away. We can’t have that happen, can we?”

Orrin crouched down slowly, letting his fingers trace over the jagged carvings that lined the booth’s side. Each one felt like a scar—a reminder of how many hands had touched it and left their marks. The ones that hadn’t cared. The ones that had used it to abuse it, and then moved on. He could almost hear the voices that had come with those marks, harsh and uncaring, leaving behind only the remnants of their frustration.

It was a different kind of human; a breed that rarely found their way into Orrin’s shop, and if they did, it was for the worst of them, not for their best. Like Grendel and Pete.

He stood up again, wiping his palm against his pants. He moved over to the empty shelves, fingers brushing against air until old bottles of polish and cleaning cloths quivered into existence. “Let’s see what we’ve got for you,” he said, as he pulled a wet, steaming rag from the shelf and began to rub gently at the grime on the booth’s door. The booth seemed to lean slightly into his touch, just a fraction, as if it knew that this wasn’t the same as when it had been ignored, kicked aside, or desecrated by strangers.

As he worked, wiping away layers of dirt, Orrin kept talking. “You know, there's a difference between being needed and being wanted,” he said quietly, not looking at the booth but at the dust motes floating in the air around them. “Being needed is... simple. It happens when there’s a gap, a lack. It’s a consequence of something missing. Someone calls you because they need to, because they have no choice. You're filling a hole. And yeah, that’s important in a way. But it’s also temporary. It's about what you can do, what you can provide when there’s no other option.”

He set the rag down gently. With a snap of his fingers, the dirt and grime inside the booth disappeared. A bucket of paint floated closer, followed by a few brushes. Orrin reached for one, grabbing it out of the air as the others took on their job of coating the booth anew.

As he dipped his brush into a smaller bucket of black paint, he carefully re-painted the paneling around it. “Being wanted, you know, is something else entirely. There’s no hole to fill. People seek you out not because they have to, but because they want to. They have options but you’re their first one; perhaps not the most beneficial one, but the first one regardless. It’s not born from a need, but from the recognition that what you are is something worth having.”

With another snap of his fingers, the fractured glass smoothed out, leaving no trace of breakage. Behind him, the deep tracks in the wooden floor vanished, too, the planks mending themselves with a soft fwish fwish fwish sound.

Orrin stood back for a moment, admiring his work, a soft hum escaping him as the booth shimmered in its new, near-pristine condition. “There you go. As good as new.”

The booth, for its part, seemed to hold steady, its faint hum of light flickering in agreement—or at least, that’s how Orrin chose to interpret it.

“Well, now you look presentable,” Orrin said with a light chuckle. “Let’s introduce you to Fenner. You’ll love him. Reacts to everything, so I’d kindly ask you not to play the full haunted book on day one. Small steps, alright?”

The booth’s light flickered once; if that was agreement or rebellion, Orrin couldn’t tell, but surely, he’d find out. With a snap of his fingers, he settled himself by the counter and the booth across from it; wedged into the small space between the window nook and the door, away from the dark corners holding on to the faded possibility of being found.

“No blood running down your window panes in my shop. Fenner will only add mine to it if he has to scrub that out of the wood flooring. And no midnight-calls. He needs his eight hours of sleep or he’s no one you want to be around.” Orrin warned, eyeing the booth with a bemused smile.

It stood there, gleaming in its newfound cleanliness, its faint whir of static still humming away in the quiet shop. The air was thick with the potential for chaos and Orrin couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh my, you are going to be trouble.”

But the best kind of trouble; like kissing in the rain when one is already sick, like writing a bad grade on an exam because you spent the night giggling and laughing at your favorite book, like the sweet thrill of breaking the rules for the sake of an adventure that you know will make a great story later.

It was the kind of trouble where you stayed up all night baking cookies that somehow turned out burnt, but you ate them anyway because it felt like the best midnight snack ever. Like spilling your coffee just before a meeting, and laughing it off, turning a small disaster into the start of an inside joke.

Like sneaking into a movie you’ve already seen just because the popcorn tastes better the second time around, or getting lost in a city and finding a hidden café with the best fruit salad you ever ate—despite half of the salad being fruits you’ll need allergy medication for later.

It was trouble wrapped in delight, the kind that didn’t feel like consequences but like little adventures with the occasional lesson to be learned.

The booth, in its quiet, whirring presence, seemed to promise exactly that—the sort of magic that reminded Orrin why a little chaos could be the best part of any day.

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