The Wishing Well

The Wishing Well

The man had visited the wishing well on a bleak and chilling afternoon. He tossed a low value coin in the well and voiced his one, simple desire. “I wish for the girl at the book shop.”

Then, of course, he departed the wishing well and made way for the book shop just a block away from this wishing well. On his walk he thought of the girl behind the cash register. It seemed as though she was always there, busying herself with either a customer or a book. The woman was beautiful, he thought.

She was a slender woman, with an ivory complexion. Her eyes gave way to nothing. You could never tell what she had been thinking, what she had experienced in her years. She would wear patchwork dresses, and gaudy jewelry with shiny stones. She would let out a light, carfree chuckle at the simple sight of the odd man who walked into her book shop, around the same time everyday. And the man would smile at the odd woman behind the counter at the same time, every day.

He’d walk in and make some sort of excuse as to why he had done so, “Just getting out of the rain!” or “I need another bookmark, and fancy pen perhaps.” The store sold much more than books, most items being little knick-knacks or shiny stones, even your occasional throw pillow.

He’d leave the book shop everyday and walk to his lonely efficiency apartment that felt empty to the brim, other than the amount of books, bookmarks, and other knick knacks. He consumed his life with the little things he knew that brought him joy, and didn’t try for anything more, anything new.

The years would pass by. The woman would work at the book shop, the man would wish for her, but never make his move. He would hope that the universe would do it itself, bring him his desire without him even having to try for it. The day would come, he assured himself, the day would come.

But he had waited for so long and the day was not yet upon him, he started to wonder if it would ever come or if it was simply just an unfulfilled wish he’d live with the rest of his life. He would pity himself about this often, ‘Why does the universe hate me? Why can’t the girl just ask me for coffee?’ Something would have to give, eventually.

One day he made his way to the wishing well, as per usual. He had looked in and started to grow angry. He shouted at the inanimate object, demanding it give him what he wanted, demanding to at least know why it wouldn’t. And then, the unexpected had happened, but it was not what he had hoped or wished for.

A strong gust of wind blew by and knocked him into this large wishing well, plummeting him to his unavoidable death. As he was falling, in his last moments, a thought brushed through his mind, ‘Nobody is gonna remember me.’ He was almost correct to think this.

He had no funeral, no one knocked on his door questioning where he was, no calls for him to return anywhere. He had never had anywhere to go in the first place. He was almost completely forgotten, almost.

The woman at the book shop would begin to wonder where the odd man was, and why he had stopped coming to her shop. She began to grow dispirited, so she visited the wishing well.

She threw in one of her fancy stones, and made a wish. “I hope wherever the man goes, I hope he is happy.” He wasn’t happy, but she wouldn’t know that. And neither would anyone else.

The world would keep spinning and eventually even the woman would forget about the odd man. The man who had wanted little, but had done nothing to get it.