chapter 2: far east grocery

There was an old man sweeping up the floor on a nearby aisle who froze in place and looked up. Amanda removed her hood and gave him a half smile. He stared back at her with a stern and unchanging expression. She walked slowly towards the shop counter, where a middle-aged Asian woman was walking quickly from the back room.

“Sorry, did you see the sign? We’re closed for the night.” she said loudly to Amanda, pointing in the direction of the door.

“I know...I uh...I’m here umm…I was sent here by my friend and she said to ask for the 11 o’clock special. O-or was it the 11 o’clock deal? I--um...I don’t uh-” Amanda stammered nervously.

The asian woman eyed Amanda up from head to toe then stared silently at her for what felt like a solid 10 seconds. She calmly said a word in mandarin to the man on the aisle behind Amanda who was sweeping the floor, and he immediately shuffled over to the shop door and locked it.

“Alright, follow me.” the woman said softly.

Amanda’s heart was pounding. Her mind was racing. What had she gotten herself into? What did her friend set her up for? What was she doing here? She knew this had been a mistake. The woman popped back around the corner to look at the frozen Amanda and beckoned her through the back door behind the counter, telling her to hurry up.

She walked through the back hallway of the small shop following the woman towards a door at the end. She heard music coming from an open doorway on her right as they shuffled past. In it there were two enormously fat asian women around the shopkeeper’s age sitting with their bellies pressed against a large table which was covered with a feast of food. They had a television on in the background and were laughing and carrying on. They abruptly stopped talking when Amanda walked by, locking eyes with her. They called out to the shopkeeper down the hall a few words in Mandarin, which was answered back with a single word - the same she had uttered to the man sweeping the floors up front. The two enormous women immediately began giggling hysterically, giving Amanda a smile and a wave as she continued past the doorway in complete bewilderment.

Finally at the end of the hall was a small office. The woman opened the door and motioned Amanda to a dingy leather topped chair. She sat down as the woman took a seat on the opposite side of a small desk in the office.

“Alright, I assume you brought the full thousand?” she said blankly to Amanda.

“R-right, that’s what Ruby told me to bring…” Amanda answered back nervously, wondering if she were about to be robbed.

She still didn’t know what it was that she was buying. All that she had managed to get out of Ruby were a lot of “trust me” phrases of reassurance and “you won’t regret this” and “it’ll change your life”. This was by far the craziest and riskiest thing Amanda had ever done in her entire life, but she was desperate and her friend had promised her a life of carefree fatness if she would only trust her. They had gotten so close. They were on a texting and occasional phone call basis and everything. There was no way her friend was just setting her up or catfishing her, right?

“Okay, money first and then we’ll get along with what you came for” the woman said.

Amanda fished the cash out of her purse. It was a good chunk of her savings since she was still on the starting salary at work and rent wasn’t exactly cheap. With a deep breath and a long exhale, she handed the cash over to the woman. After a few moments of counting, she got up, walked over to the wall, and removed a beautiful traditional chinese landscape painting revealing a safe. Glancing back towards Amanda and putting her hand up to obscure the combination, she spun the dial until it opened. Inside was a large jar absolutely stuffed with dollar bills. The woman removed the lid and jammed Amanda’s thousand inside.

“Alright, pull up your shirt” the woman instructed, opening the desk drawer and removing a large ornate looking key and a bottle of clear alcohol with a shot glass.
Amanda removed her coat and pulled up her shirt as the woman poured her a shot. She slid it across the desk towards Amanda barking “drink” at her, as she walked back over towards the safe. Under the safe sitting on the floor was an object covered with a dirty looking blanket. Amanda hadn’t noticed it there before but as the woman pulled the blanket off her eyes widened. There was a beautiful ornate chest laying on the floor which seemed to have extremely detailed hand carved wood around the sides and an enormous jade lid. If lonely nights in watching episodes of the antiques roadshow had taught Amanda anything, if a piece like that were real, it was easily worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The woman inserted the key and turned it with a heavy clicking sound, opening the lid.

Inside the trunk was a grid of elegantly styled wood holding in place perhaps 20 small figurines. There were a number of vacant spaces where figurines were missing, and Amanda could tell that what she could see of each one looked slightly different. The woman turned back to Amanda shouting to drink again. Amanda jumped remembering she had been caressing the shot glass but not consuming it ever since the trunk was revealed. She wasn’t much of a drinker but she was in this far already, might as well see it through. The shot poured down her throat and choked the breath out of her. Whatever she just drank it was like alcohol only more potent in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The woman glanced back at her sitting there, coughing, her shirt pulled up revealing her flat stomach. For a few moments she glanced back at Amanda, back at the figurines, back at Amanda, back towards the trunk eventually muttering something to herself in Mandarin and picking one out of the left side of the box. She closed the lid, locked the trunk and plopped the figurine down on the desk next to Amanda, pulling her chair around the desk to sit next to her. The figurine itself resembled a fertility idol. It was a white stone shape of a fat woman sitting down, apparently fingering herself.

“Repeat after me” the woman said staring deeply into Amanda’s eyes

She uttered some phrases in Mandarin, Amanda did her best to say the words exactly as she had heard them, and she felt she must have done a good job because the woman didn’t correct her as she went along. After the final phrase was uttered, the woman swirled her finger in the wet residue remaining at the bottom of Amanda’s shot glass and drew a clear wet circle on her stomach with it. She then repeated the step with the idol and bowed her head saying one final phrase very quietly. As soon as the last word left the woman’s mouth Amanda’s insides felt as if they were twisting themselves apart. “God, I must have been poisoned...I knew I shouldn’t have trusted this place…” she thought as she hunched forward and gripped her midsection in pain. The woman remained calm and uttered the same phrase again, this time tapping the idol on the head three times. As quickly as the pain had set in, it released its grip on Amanda’s insides, and she sat up taking in a deep gasp of air.

“What the FUCK was that?” she shouted to the woman.

“Shh... you’re done. Take it with you.” she said, grabbing a small velvety looking pouch and pulling the drawstring tight around the idol.

“What IS all of this?” Amanda demanded.

“Rub the belly to become what you wish. Tap the head three times to return. Never come back to this shop again, it’s time for you to go.” the woman responded, standing and motioning Amanda to the door.

As she walked back past the obese women she noted that the entire feast on the table had been cleared. They sat back in their chairs grabbing their immense bellies and moaning - she couldn’t tell if it was in pain or pleasure. Probably both. As she was hurried back to the front, the shopkeeper said another word in Mandarin to the old man sweeping the floors, and he quickly shuffled over to the door, unlocking it and holding it open for Amanda, giving her an enormous smile as she walked past. She staggered out of the shop in complete confusion wondering what the fuck had just happened. All she knew was that she went in with a thousand dollars and left with a statue of some fat goddess and a momentary stomach ache from some bad alcohol. She felt like a complete fool, running to her car, hopping inside and speeding away.


On her drive home, Amanda replayed what had just happened to her, and thought through the woman’s last words to her as they echoed in her brain. What had she meant? Rub the belly, tap the head? She parked her car on an open space on the street near her apartment building, grabbed her thousand dollar hunk of junk off the passenger seat, and headed inside. The elevator stopped on the 8th floor, and Amanda shuffled off of it as quietly as she could. Even though it was now 12:30 AM, she knew there was an extreme danger lurking nearby. She took her keys out of her purse as quickly and quietly as she could and tried to find the right one to fit into her door. She lost her grip and dropped them with a muffled crash of metal on the cheap hallway carpeting of her building. “Ah shit” she whispered to herself. The door across the hall behind her swung open with a slight squeak.