The French Table

by Jeff Baker

Oscar and Elliot had been driving home from Denver to Kansas City when they stopped in D’Artagnan, Kansas. Not much there. Houses. Businesses along the highway and along the main drag through town.

“Main drag!” Elliot laughed to his husband.

They were driving down the main street to grab lunch. The Mexican restaurant was surprisingly good (“Every serape is a pride flag in disguise!” Oscar whispered as they had sat down in their booth.)

As it was mid-afternoon when they finished they decided to work off their lunch with a stroll down the street and they found the antique store in the shadow of the old-fashioned marquee above the movie theater, next to a Bridal Shoppe.

“Turtle Antiques,” Oscar read aloud from the green sign hand-painted on the front window with, yes, a little turtle at the base.

“Town’s looking like a Gay Mecca,” Elliot whispered as they walked in the door. Nonetheless, they were both glad they were forty-somethings dressed in jeans and nondescript sweatshirts.

The shop was brightly lit and pleasant with antique furniture placed in spots between cases displaying old clothes, posters and books. There was a long glass case lining one wall filled with pieces of decorative glassware. To one side of the case was a small, ornately-carved wooden table. It looked very much like someone had draped a blown, lace cloth over the top letting it hang to the sides but it was all carved wood.

“Oh wow!” Elliot said. “This would go so well in our living room.”

“We have a red vinyl couch and a Snoopy lamp in our living room.” Oscar said. “Still…”

“What’s it say on the card?” Elliot asked.

Oscar picked the card off the table and read: “Brought from France in the mid-1800s. Dates back to the late 1780s…”

“Curious piece,” the voice behind them said. The speaker was short, plump, grey-haired and wore a faded plastic name tag. “The owner was going to donate it to the museum but she wanted the money more.”

Oscar leaned over the table, resting his hands on either side like he was going to pick it up and the room suddenly changed and swung around. It was like he was upside down and alone in the long room still holding on to the table he was standing beside. The carpet both were standing on had become translucent and Oscar could see Elliot and the plump man standing immobile. It was like looking through a mirror made of tinted glass. There was no image of Oscar at the right-side-up table.

Oscar glanced at the upside-down version of the antique store; the dusky light reminding him of a partial solar eclipse he had seen. The glassware in the dimly-lit display case now had unearthly angles and seemed malevolent somehow. The room stretched down into darkness.

Oscar gasped and let go of the table, certain he would fall headfirst into the dark ceiling of the dim room. Instead, he was back in the ordinary shop with Elliot. Neither he nor the plump man had noticed anything unusual.

The plump man was still talking, seemingly uninterrupted from the pause when Oscar had grabbed the table.

“…the owner was an interesting woman, but if I may say so, rather strange and she…”

Oscar didn’t wait to hear the rest. He grabbed Elliot by the arm and pulled him out of the shop, insisting over his protestations that they had to leave.

The plump man shook his head.

“We lose more customers that way,” he said to nobody in particular.

Still it was better than the young delivery man who had brought the table into the store and had vanished without a trace.

He started his nervous habit of drumming his fingers on the table, then thought against it and quickly pulled his hand away.

—end—