The Wizard of Witton Street

He wore a beige blazer littered with asymmetrical brown polka dots — much smaller and they would have made him a walking advertisement for melanoma. He ate little more than lettuce; his daydreams probably included Grace Kelly and platypuses in pin-striped suits.

I met him in McDonalds.

He peered at me as if intrigued, then walked over and blurted out, “Ahhh! You’re the man from my dream. Do you know that you’re heavily pregnant?”

“Errr…” I replied, completely taken aback.

“Yes, the other night, I told you about the importance of babies. I think I have a baby in one of these pockets. I bought it yesterday, I thought it might help the pregnancy along.”

“You’re joking, right? This is crazy. You can’t buy babies, and I’m not pregnant. Besides, how would a baby help a pregnancy along? That makes no sense.”

“Every baby is its own progenitor,” he stated.

Next, he pulled feet first from his pocket a newborn baby; it was small, pink and fleshy; it sported a sad, lifeless expression.

I couldn’t speak, for several moments I was simply drowning in seventeen different emotions. My eyes busied themselves with the burgers — it was probably a final attempt to touch normality.

“Babies grow up. Take my baby, and your soul will mature,” he explained, at once breaking the silence.

He handed me the baby, which had now turned into a small plastic doll.

Still, I gestured my refusal. I decided not to take it.

After this refusal, he said, “Take my card, you’ll be needing it.”

I gave him the benefit of the doubt, placing the card in my pocket.

“Order 56: Three slices of lettuce,” the server announced.

The next thing I knew, he had picked up his lettuce and was gone.

...

10/6/2024: Cheltenham — 2:54am. I woke up. It was all a dream. How obvious that always is after the fact.

3:27 am. I went back to sleep after writing it down.

7:00 am. My alarm goes off for work.

I reached over to grab my phone, there was something plastic in the space where it should have been. I felt around further; it seemed like this object had arms. I turned on the lamp to find the doll was on my bedside table! This time there weren’t seventeen emotions, just two: panic and disbelief.

How the hell could an item from my dream appear here? But there it was, exactly as it had been in the dream — small, pink and plastic; a baby in doll form.

Naturally, my emotions slowly calmed. As they did, I remembered the card from the dream. I focused intensely on the image and retrieved a title: ‘The Wizard of Witton Street’.

Witton Street was located in my hometown, Northwich. I was quite familiar with it; it was on that street that my childhood GP had diagnosed me with chickenpox.

The man in the dream said I’d be needing his card, and here I was completely in need of it — I couldn’t quite fathom how it had happened.

I soon took my laptop in hand and googled, ‘The Wizard of Witton Street’. I found out that there was a man called Jonathan Turnbuckle who used that title, I decided to visit him — screw work, this was more important.

While packing the doll into my rucksack, I noticed it had become slightly larger than when I first saw it. Nonetheless, I hauled the bag on my back and walked through Cheltenham to the train station.

After several changes, I finally made it to Northwich. I walked through the old blue and white gates (situated to the far left of the platform) and greeted the crossroads with an ever-growing baby in tow. It was now so large that it was almost ripping through the sides of my rucksack. It was heavy, too.

I slowly stumbled past several black and white timber-framed buildings until I approached the shop of a Mr. Jonathan S. Turnbuckle, AKA ‘The Wizard of Witton Street’.

It was a small shop near the bottom end of town, not too far from McDonalds. Oh. Near McDonalds — I just realised, the dream. In the dream, I met him in McDonalds, and here I was meeting him near McDonalds.

His shop was where the old British Red Cross charity shop used to be. It said online that he had relocated from Nantwich to Northwich several years ago.

The building was small and weird. He had installed a large square antique wooden door with cast iron hinges. But this didn’t match the black and white timber above, nor the large glass windows on either side — it was as if someone had hired the chuckle brothers and tasked them with fitting a new roof.

As I opened the door I almost fell through it, burdened by the weight of the baby on my back. But seconds later my eyes opened to a shop that I can only describe as magical and cosy.

The walls and shelves were a traditional brown, somewhere between a deep mahogany and a stained oak. The shelves leaned into the room in a naturalistic way that contributed to the shop’s cosiness. On them lay a plethora of curiosities — from monkey’s feet to magic wands, from engraved brass tables to antique alchemical texts.

About five metres in front of me stood Jonathan. He was a man of average height, with a tidy grey moustache and a goatee. He was dressed in a two-piece pink suit, with a white shirt and a light yellow tie. He had a beige pocket square boldly spilling out of his blazer. He looked slightly different from the man in my dream — older, and more human.

He spoke with a confident quietness, “Hi, how may I help you?”

While offloading the almost adult-size baby, I chanced to ask, “Are you the man from my dream?”

“Ahh! So he’s done it again, has he?”

“What?” I replied, somewhat confused.

“My dream body has done a runner, he keeps visiting people in their dreams and causing innumerable problems. He gave you my card, yes?”

“He did, and this baby appeared on my bedside table after the dream. He offered the baby to me in the dream, but I refused.”

“Ahh! Never refuse a gift from a dream body. A genuine refusal will see the object appear in the world. It is forced to live out its task and balance the energy of life — it’s like a Meeseek with extra toppings,” he stated with a chuckle.

At this point, the man on the floor (previously the baby), rose ominously to his feet.

His body was black and hard; red liquid glowed as it passed between the deep trenches present throughout it. His eyes were heavily jaundiced; his mouth was grey, and his hair was nowhere to be seen. He shouted with a deep, bellowing voice, “Why did you reject me?”

I stumbled over my words, “I…I…I don’t know.”

He quickly followed up his first statement, “I am all the days you lost, all the memories you missed. Now you must live those memories through me.”

Before I could do anything, he hugged me. His black body melted into my skin, and soon we were nothing more than a rotting pile of flesh and rock.

Jonathan stood over us; what was left of us that is.

After a few minutes, smoke rose from this heap of matter, and the cries of a baby filled the air.

Jonathan reached down and pulled out a newborn baby, “Well little one, we best take you to the hospital.”

...

25/8/2113: New York — 2:54 am. I just woke up. It was all a dream. Well, not exactly.

The story I have just told you was the content of my dream, but at the end of the dream, something amazing happened.

I am a spiritual person, and primarily a devotee of Lord Vishnu. After Jonathan had said those final words, the dream transferred.

I stood knee-deep in a white foamy substance that extended as far as the eye could see. Above my head, the sky was black, littered with a thousand stars.

A deep voice spoke, “The events you just saw were no dream.”

A human figure composed itself from the foam, quickly gaining skin and colouration.

I soon recognised him, “Lord Vishnu!” I shouted.

Vishnu continued, “It was no dream. The man living in Cheltenham was truly you, but a repressed personality plagued him — he never showed the full breadth of his true self. This karma needed to be lived out, so I used the dream body of the wizard to instigate my plans.”

I replied, “This is madness, you’re here! This feels so real.”

“It is far more real than you know,” Vishnu stated. “Now hear me. Your past self died into his spiritual development, becoming the baby. Jonathan took the baby to the hospital, and your past self was forced to live out the main karma of his life through the life of that baby.”

“But why reveal all this to me? Why now?”

“Because now, by my grace, you have become pure enough to accept sainthood. Here in this life, through your deep sādhanā, you will become a saint. I ask only one thing of you. When you are bestowed certain siddhis, use them to preserve happiness in others, as I preserve the universe through quantum foam.”

As Vishnu spoke, his body slowly dispersed back into the foam, and the dream faded from my eyes.