Note: ICA and COOP are to supermarket chains in Sweden where I live. Plus, English isn't my native language so I would love it if you would take you time and read through this story telling and correcting me if I've made any errors or written something that dosent sound very natural
“Should I get the whole milk or the low-fat milk” Macbeth thought to himself whilst staring at the shelves packed with milk cartons of different brands. He ended up getting the whole milk, treating himself on a Saturday night.
Macbeth made his way through the store, clearing his shopping list and adding some extra goods to his cart. He stopped in front of the cereal shelf, getting the last item on his list.
He loved the Cinnamon Toast Crunch and he had them every morning together with his milk, but this day he couldn’t seem to find them.
“That’s weird, they’re always in stock” He looked dissatisfied. He didn’t want to get another brand of cereal; the Cinnamon Toast Crunch was perfect! The sweetness, the crunch and the lovely cinnamon taste had Macbeth drooling.
Searching through the shelves, Macbeth spotted a package of fruit loops.
“Well, I guess I’ll take this one, it looks pretty good”. He said with a curious look on his face.
Bending over to get the package, Macbeth heard glass shattering behind him. A lemonade bottle had broken.
“Oh no! That wasn’t me was it?” Macbeth knew it wasn’t him, so he checked behind him, searching for any nearby people, but no one else was close to the bottle.
“Well, maybe that was me?” He was embarrassed and he felt bad for breaking it.
Bending over on his knees Macbeth started cleaning up the pieces, helping the staff in the store. He gathered them in a stack beside him.
“Ahem!” Someone was behind him.
“Oh hey! I accidently dropped this bottle but I’ll replace it for sure!”
There was no answer. Macbeth’s vision had gone blurry and all he could see was three blurry spots. He could feel himself become nervous, and he didn’t know why. All he knew was that his whole body was filling up with fear.
Macbeth was scared, so scared that it hurt. He was usually a very talkative and confident person but not now, he felt small, tiny as an ant.
His vision was clearing up, and he could finally see who it was standing behind him.
There were 3 old ladies. They shared the same hair and eye color. They looked like sisters. Their faces were light-green and they had grayish hair, they looked hideous but they smelled even worse, his nose was being tortured by the smell of rotten flesh.
“Excuse you, why did you just break our lemonade bottle? That’s kind of rude you know…” The three witches spoke simultaneously, with an irritated voice glaring at Macbeth.
“I, I know… And I’m truly sorry, but as I said, I’ll replace it!” Macbeth’s voice was shaking, looking at them made Macbeth feel nauseous and dizzy.
“Come on sisters; let’s teach this young man a lesson for breaking our bottle” The lady to the left said with an expressionless face, it looked like she was in some sort of trance.
The ladies approached Macbeth, cornering him against the shelves behind him. Macbeth flipped, hitting the air and screaming out random words made the ladies back off.
“What are you doing young one? We just wanted to foretell your future.” They said with a confused smile on their faces. They weren’t angry, which made Macbeth feel a little bit better.
“Oh… I thought you were some crazy witches, who wanted to cast a spell on me or something, I’m sorry!” Macbeth laughed awkwardly of embarrassment, he felt bad after saying the horrible things he said. “Well, we are witches, but we’re not that crazy I think” They all laughed.
The atmosphere had changed. It wasn’t scary anymore and Macbeth had gotten back to his confident self. Living in a world with magic and beasts, it wasn’t unusual to run into strange people in stores or down the streets. Macbeth was very experienced on this topic, having a history filled with sword fighting and running away from fire breathing dragons.
They had a good time, small talking about work and the weather, though the witches seemed to ask a lot of question about Macbeth’s life. He answered them all honestly but Macbeth still had his guard up, not telling them everything about his life.
“It’s time” The shortest witch said.
“Time for what?” He answered back.
“Each of us will now give you one prediction of your future, the predictions will occur, so don’t try to flee from your destiny.” One of the witches said with a serious voice.
In the blink of an eye the witches charged at Macbeth, grabbing his hands and biting his left shoulder.
They began speaking in another language; He couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying.
The lights went black and Macbeth could barely see the other customers escape from the building.
The air inside the store got cold, he started shaking.
The warmth inside Macbeth was nowhere to be found, the room was filling up with a frightful tension that made Macbeth get lost in his thoughts, trying to escape reality.
The witches’ eyes turned black. Their skin darkened and got a more grayish tone. Macbeth was scared. He tried to escape from the old ladies but he couldn’t. The old ladies might’ve looked weak, but their grip was as strong as steel. The room got dead silent.
“All hail Macbeth! Owner of ICA!” The first witch said, still with a pale look on her face.
That wasn’t a prediction; Macbeth had been the owner of ICA for years. He hated it, he had hoped for a prediction about a better job.
“All hail Macbeth! Owner of COOP!”
“You have got to be kidding me?” Macbeth thought to himself. He was starting to get annoyed, why didn’t he get the future he wanted? It was nerve-racking to him.
“All hail Macbeth! King hereafter!” The last witch spoke.
Everything went back to normal, the lights turned back on and Macbeth could once again see clearly. The witches got back their light grayish skin-color and their eyes were filling up with life again, it was as if the predictions took a chunk of their life-span, but Macbeth wasn’t sure.
The witches opened their mouths, but Macbeth interrupted them.
“Wait what?! Am I going to be the next king?” Macbeth couldn’t hold himself; this was the future he had always wanted, a life full of money and luxury, great food and a warm bed to sleep in. Not the kind of life he currently had, working a full-time job and still not being able to feed his wife, he hated it.
“Yes, but only if you kill the current king, Duncan, and take his place on the throne.” They later added, before vanishing into thin air.
“But, but I had so many questions to ask…” Macbeth thought to himself.
Macbeth went to the checkout, and then home.
He lived in a small cottage out in the woods together with his wife and pet rock.
Having a pet rock might’ve sounded weird, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t afford anything else, plus, a pet rock couldn’t die so it had been with him ever since he was a kid. He treasured it a lot, probably more than Elise, his wife.
He had been married to her for five years and he loved her, but the marriage was definitely falling apart. The number one feeling he felt in the relationship was anxiety, because it felt very fragile and tentative. He loved her a lot, he didn’t know what the next “thing” that was going to deter the relationship would be or how long it would take until it became an awful mess, was it a year? Was it four days? He didn’t know, and it was killing him inside, making him more anxious after every passing day. But it did not mean that it wasn’t special, because it was; it was extraordinary to have a relationship that was fragile but somehow meaningful in that fragility.
Dinner was Macbeth’s least favorite meal.
It wasn’t the food that made Macbeth despise it, it didn’t taste good or bad. It was the fights.
Dinner was the perfect opportunity for Elise to complain about everything that was wrong in her life. The house, their economy, him, he never knew how to reply to her comments, so he often just nodded along and agreed with her. It always made her even more upset.
Macbeth felt bad for not being able to satisfy her, but the thought of leaving her had hit him many times, but he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t abandon her.
After telling her about the witches’ predictions, Elise eyes lit up with happiness. He hadn’t seen that spark in her eyes in years.
“So you’d become the king if you killed Duncan?” Elise sounded excited, not at all bothered about Macbeth’s unsettled look on his face, even though he was aware of him over-exaggerating his expressions just to make her notice them. She didn’t.
“Then do it!” She said with a look on her face that was screaming out that it was the obvious choice. But how could he, he had never killed any anyone, and he was not planning on doing so.
“No, we can’t kill Duncan, I’m his cousin!” Macbeth was determined, the most he’d been in a very long time.
“Oh come on! Why do you always have to go against me, do you not want me to be happy?” Elise was furious, she ran out of the house, shutting the door so hard that it broke.
And there he was again, alone in the house after a fight with his wife. He was getting used to it, but every time they fought, it always broke a piece of his heart. However, the sadness that used to fill his heart up was starting to get replaced with hatred.
Macbeth’s life changed drastically over a few weeks.
He became the owner of COOP, which made his salary grow drastically. Elise started smoking and Duncan, the king had moved in with them temporarily.
The country had an incident with dragons breaking the castle and big parts of the city, which led to making many citizens homeless. That was why the king had to move in with Macbeth.
Macbeth didn’t mind it, he actually enjoyed it, they brought happiness into the house. Macbeth and Elise hadn’t fought since he told them about the predictions.
The king was young, he was 17 years of age and very childish, but the city didn’t know that, they thought that he was the best king ever, making all the right decisions and being the best role-model you could ever be, but he wasn’t, all he was doing was taking the honors from his advisor, Nicholas.
Nicholas was a very smart man. He was a great leader and he was nice to everyone, but no one remembered him, it was as if he had some sort of spell on him that made everyone he met forget about him, maybe he had.
Nicholas was the one who ruled the country, not Duncan. Macbeth wanted to tell the city about it, but he couldn’t.
While Duncan spent his days playing video games or watching movies, Nicholas spent hours attending meetings and filling out papers and forms. Macbeth felt bad for him, so he sometimes helped him after work.
The house wasn’t big enough for 4 people. It was only a one bedroom house, which led to Macbeth and Elise being forced to sleep in the closet.
Macbeth always woke up to Elise lighting a cigarette late at night.
He used to watch her until she fell asleep again, just because it was calming for him. It most often took minutes, but it could take hours, Elise took a puff from her cigarette, making the pillar of ashes grow so tall that it threatened to fall off.
She always looked so peaceful, way different from what she looked like during the day.
Macbeth couldn’t breathe. It felt as if the room was shrinking, as if the walls where going to crush him, he didn’t like her smoking, but it seemed to make her feel better.
The tension between them was starting to loosen up. They could finally have conversations that didn’t end in her rushing out of the house again, he loved it.
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