Fibonacci’s Furniture Flea

Here you are.

Here you are, sitting on a hard metal stool flecked with little rust stains near the creases and wrapped in dusty decaying medical tape.

Here you are, staring out through a twisted sea of vintage chairs, antiqued end tables, and odd shaped loved seats.

The bell hung just above the door to Fibonacci’s Furniture Flea hasn’t rung a single time since you started your first day at the front desk. Except when Mr. Fibonacci himself left for the day.

“Now, remember,” he told you before checking off the store’s rules one finger at a time, “cash only, no haggling, we don’t deliver, and…”

He pauses, testing you.

“Stay out of Kevin’s room,” you say.

“Don’t even open the door, oh, and do some dusting… when it isn’t busy,” the wrinkled old man said as he walked out the door.

You check your watch, it’s been two hours and you haven’t even moved to take your backpack off your shoulders.

A fly buzzes lazily round your head and into the spacious showroom around you. You can imagine it landing on the green corduroy lounge chair near the window. It’s hairy little arms rubbing back and forth as it surveys the room.

You pick up the little feather duster. It’s time to stretch your legs.

You choose one of the doors in the showroom, another showroom. The room is filled with leather furniture, cow skin rug, a longhorn bull head mounted on the wall. It’s a themed room. It’s creepy.

You follow through to the end and there is another door. Inside is a random assortment of midcentury modern furniture. You run your duster over bubbled glass, starburst clocks, and a sputnik chandelier.

This showroom leads to a long cement hallway that has half a dozen doorways off to each side and a showroom at the end. You duck your head and a little loose cement crumbles into your hair anyway. You can smell the mildewy dirt at your feet.

There is a room filled with nothing but folding chairs, a room with shelves of color assorted pillows, rugs, beds, and one room set up like a bar with stools and a liquor cabinet. Themed rooms and random rooms and some open into other rooms and some are dead ends. The store twists and turns, with and upstairs and down, and furniture is stacked triple high.

Before you realize you’ve been lacklusterly dusting for over an hour and you feel your stomach begin to hum. You find a little spot in a little blue room where wicker furniture is waiting for you. You take off your backpack and sit to eat the sandwich you made, chicken salad with those cut up grapes.

You alternate bites of sandwich and sips of water from your bottle. You let yourself enjoy the silence for a moment. This job sucks, but you are grateful to have a job. It’s quiet, you can take some time to reflect, alone. It could be worse, plus exploring the store is kind of cool.

And you feel it: a wave of pleasure, of relief, of… of…

You’re tired.

You should really get back to the front desk. You still aren’t sure how many more rooms there are to explore. This place is a maze.

You go out the only door in the room and find yourself in another cement lined hallway, a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. There is a little cutout to one wall and you glance through, it’s the front showroom, you have found yourself in the room directly behind it.

There is no one in the store. The phone does not ring.

If you are here, you know that the showrooms must double back to the front, you assume you must be close to the end of the tour. Probably out the very next door.

You take the next door and find yourself in another long hallway, wood wainscoting below yellowed pink flower print wallpaper. There is a single doorway at the end of the hallway.

The door is open.

The hallway is awkwardly long.

You approach the room and gaze inside, fingers grasping at the frame. The square room is bare, white walls, no windows, except a single mattress on the floor. Brand new mattress, out of the packaging, and laid crooked to the room.

There are no doors in the room either.

The front of the store is right there.

You’ll hear if the bell jingles.

You’re exhausted.

You go into the room, get on your knees, and put one hand on the mattress. It’s soft. You put both hands on the mattress. It’s really soft, but with a firm bounce.

You push yourself forward, letting the silky material of the springy mattress massage your face, your chest, your arms and you land smoothly in the center. You roll until you are facing the bare ceiling. You close your eyes.

You begin to drift off and your mind wanders. For some reason you think about that song you heard when you were a little kid. It went something like, “hmm, hm hm, hmm hmm hm hmm hm,” but you just can’t quite capture the words.

You feel the little prick at the center of your back. It hurts, a little, but you are so tired that you barely notice the pain. It’s probably just a loose spring, but you barely mind it. You are dead tired.

You only noticed the first prick. You don’t feel the ones dotting up and down your arms, up and down your legs. You don’t feel them against your neck or your sides. You absolutely don’t feel them against your fingers as they submerge.

The mattress wriggles and writhes below you, folding inward, pulling you into its warm cushiony embrace.

“Is this like a waterbed,” you ponder as digestive juices flood the concave you-shaped divot in the mattress.

The bell at the door jingles.

“I’ll be right there,” you say, but your head is so heavy.

You can barely pick it up enough to see the handpainted sign on the door before something closes it.

“Kevin’s Room, Stay Out.”