Fan Fiction ❯ The Printing ❯ The General Store ( Chapter 1 )

The Printing

 

 

Willa looked towards the walls of the dingy old general store she had walked in of a whim. She had been exploring the streets of the ancient ghost-town she was staying in, and was nearing the very edge, where buildings were scarce. The store had looked quite lonely, and when she saw movement she decided to check it out.

The shelves were covered with different all sorts of knick knacks and tourist's souvenirs. She wandered toward them, eye caught by a round, black stone on the top shelf. Grasping the stone, she felt its surprisingly heavy weight in her hand for a bit, feeling the rough texture. Rolling it around in her hands, she decided she didn't quite like the feel of it. Something wasn't right. She glanced around the shelf of what were mostly rocks and bits of metal. One scrap of metal caught her eye, glimmering in the thick sunlight shining through the dusty store window. Uneasy, she replaced the rough black rock in its place and tentatively reached for the glimmering bit of metal. At closer glance, it appeared to be a coin. It had no date, no markings to indicate its origin, but was disk-shaped and roughly the size of a quarter. It was dented and scratched, but no significant etching of any kind came to her notice.

Odd, she thought. A disk of old, unmarked metal.

 

She put it back on the shelf and turned slowly around, watching her feet scuff across the shiny-new hardwood floor. It seemed such a contrast to the near quarter-inch of dust that covered nearly every surface, to be sure.

 

She noticed a pair of ratty-looking paperback books on a table standing in front of the shelves of odds and ends. They were identical in title and cover, only differentiating in the way the pages were dog-eared and marked.

 

Grasping the nearest book of the pair, Willa examined the thin, disintegrating cover. Nothing special there; the title was set in ordinary script-like font, the author was noted in smaller letters toward the bottom. The book was an aged creamy off-white in color, pages slightly yellowed at the edges and well worn indeed. She turned the book in her hands gently, as if the book would collapse into dust any moment. A harsh, grating voice caught her attention, and Willa looked up from the book to find an old woman standing in front of her. Vaguely she wondered what else would appear to take her by surprise.

 

“Careful wit' that, missy!”

 

Involuntarily Willa took a step backward as she looked the aged woman over. Grizzled gray hair pulled back into an impossibly high hairline met a forehead etched with frown lines between thinning eyebrows of the same dusty-looking shade of gray. Dulled and watery blue eyes watched her almost warily, thin lips pressed tight underneath a short, pointed nose. That tiny, thin nose twitched and the frown lines deepened marginally as the woman pressed for a reply.

 

“Missy?”

 

Realizing she was staring quite impolitely, Willa nodded meekly in response to the woman's earlier question, glancing back down at the book once more. The back cover, just as thin and ratty as the front, hosted a print of a painting of a war battlefield. She gasped as she brought the book closer to her face to examine the impossible detail.

 

“Nice shadows, ain't they? Makes you feel like yah were there, don't it?” The gruff voice spoke again, startling Willa out of her reverie of the cover. Such clear details…the cannon's smoke, the men's faces, etched with worry and fraught with fear…the painting must have been huge, to hold so very much detail. The odd woman's question came to mind as she noticed the long, long shadows of the men and the cannon, deep and black, and Willa wondered why the woman thought to mention the shadows, when there were so many other things to praise…

 

“Yes, shadows…the detail, though…” she paused and switched topics, once again uneasy. “when was the first printing?”

 

“We nivver found out. It's a long time back ago, though. Mebbe afore the Rev'ary War, even,” the woman replied thoughtfully.

 

“What? Err...” Willa hesitated.

 

The book didn't look that old, certainly, though maybe the first printing…she flipped absently through the pages, noting the typeset on the pages and the modern style of writing…Willa closed the book and looked once again to the painting on the back cover. For that to be there, there had to be a modern inkjet…but how did the book look so old? Willa shook her head, and flipped to the front cover again, paging through the first blank pages to find the copyright and publisher.

 

The old woman saw this action and tilted her head to the side, squinting at Willa.

 

“No-o, you won't find a copy-rit, or whatiiver they call `em now days. We print `em ourselves, and don't see fit to put a copy-rit on `em. No point, as they just keep happenin' over and over anyways…”

 

Willa looked down at the book again, confused.

 

“…but you said first printing…”

 

“Yeh. The First Printing… we don't even have a copy of it. Was never prop'ly written down, being so long ago…”

 

“The First Printing?” Willa mimicked the woman's reverent tone. Something clicked, just then.

 

“You say that…it repeats, over again?”

 

“The story. The Printing.” The woman gestured to the book in Willa's hands. “We print it, the story, with difrent sir-coom-shanches, every time it happens, so when people come to this `istoric town, they reed it, and soona a later, someone comes `n reads it and the story repeats itself, onny wit' them in the place of the charater.” The woman looked triumphant. “It nivver happened to meh.”

 

Willa didn't respond, she merely ran a finger down the print of the war scene. A tiny tingle ran through her scalp and down her spine, traveling through her legs and resting in her feet.

 

She dropped the book.

 

“'ey! I said be careful wit' that!”

 

“Terribly…sorry…” Willa whispered softly, eyes fixed on the book now laying open at her feet. A paragraph caught her eye and she read the page, enraptured.

 

`She laid her head on his coat The entire length of her hair, a matted and soot-smeared blonde, turned a deep red-orange. Red…red for the Indian-flowers he lay beside, still blooming, growing, despite the death they were surrounded by, red for sunset-orange sky above them…

 

Red, for the metallic blood seeping slowly onto her clothes, and which already soaked his…

 

She touched her hand to his chest, coating her fingers in shiny crimson blood. Raising a hand to her face, she swept a bloodstained finger across her lip.

 

And then, she wept.'

 

 

Willa gasped, her mind spilling over with memories that were not hers...and ran away, out the door of the ancient store, ignoring the screeches of the old woman. At the end of the street, she stopped, and looked back once. Just once.

 

But it was enough.

 

The dry, dusty and deserted town she had just exited...

 

...was now a thriving metropolis of the 18th century.