The market stall offered relief from anything that hurt. The sign promised PANGS WANGLED at fair rates, and the proprietor worked with bare fingers, removing pain as easily as pulling lint from cloth. A toothache came out as a bright white bead. A humiliation emerged as a damp knot of thread. Heartbreak required a larger jar.
The widow returned several times.
Eventually she brought the grief of her husband’s empty chair.
The proprietor chose a glass demijohn and drew the sorrow from her chest in a long black ribbon that carried the faint sounds of keys in a lock, boots by the door, and a man clearing his throat before speaking. She paid with her wedding ring and walked home wonderfully light.
The chair became furniture, which should have frightened her, but instead, she slept beautifully.
A month later, parcels began arriving.
The toothache had gone to a man who enjoyed pain and paid well for clean specimens. Her embarrassment had been purchased by an actor who needed authentic shame for a role. The smaller pangs had all found customers.
The demijohn had not because grief that old was difficult to place.
Then someone bought it.
The next morning, a stranger stood outside her house wearing her husband’s coat.
He knew where the spare key had been hidden. He knew which stair creaked. He knew the joke told during their honeymoon and the exact way her husband had ruined eggs on Sundays. The proprietor had sold the grief intact, and whoever carried it now possessed everything embedded inside it.
She demanded her sorrow back, but the stranger refused.
He had paid dearly for thirty-eight years of love and said it was the closest he had ever come to being loved himself.
At the market, the proprietor listened sympathetically and explained the difficulty. Pain was not waste. It was compressed attachment, memory, expectation, and identity. Removing it did not destroy those things. It separated ownership.
She asked what it would cost to recover hers.
The proprietor studied the empty place inside her and named the price.
She returned home without her wedding ring, her happiest memory, or the ability to recognize her own reflection.
The stranger was waiting in the kitchen.
This time, when he smiled, she understood why it hurt.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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