[align=right] Gramps Gallery [/align]
He was a strange man, tottering on one leg with a strange limp, and speaking in several different tones all at once. I couldn't understand him at first, but slowly I caught onto his strange way of speaking. As he led me inside, I was fascinated by the queer decorations in his store. Were some of these things actually for sale? A golden bottle of liquid caught my eye and I moved over to pick it up. He was still grumbling about some portrait of my great aunt over in the gallery in the back, but I wanted to know what this was. The liquid was a dark green color, somewhat translucent. When I turned the bottle, the mellifluous liquid oozed along the edges of the bottle like honey. "Gramps, what's this?" I asked. He dawdled over after sometime, giving me a glare and snatching the bottle out of my hands. He placed it on a higher shelf, muttering curses to himself. "Gramps?" I was curious. My aunt had said that my grandpa was a bit of an odd-ball, but I wondered if he was into witchcraft or something. He didn't answer and hobbled down the aisle, commanding me to follow. With a sigh, I glanced over at the bottle again before moving along. "Thisss..." he started to say, gesturing my attention to an old looking mirror on the wall, "was your great-great-grandmotherss. His tongue slipped on the s and I had to hold back my laughter. He wouldn't tell me what the strange vial of green liquid was, but he wanted me to compliment an old mirror. What was up with that?
I leaned over to look at it properly anyway. It was really really old, and reeked of a weird something. The golden frame was dark brown, but hints of color could tell you it was once golden. The glass was cracked and the surface morphed by age. My reflection looked back at me, distorted in ways I couldn't even imagine. I suddenly felt a rush of disgust return to me. I wanted to go home. My aunt had warned me not to come live with my grandpa, but I wanted to stay in the city. Now, I wasn't sure if my freedom was worth putting up with the odium of this man's 'treasures'. I turned to look and he had walked off into the one of the back walls, hissing something about another favorite piece of his. I sighed and followed along, everything he gave importance to was some picayune memoir of the past. He never actually met my great-great-great grandmother, did he? So what was the point of treasuring these things? They had no value anymore. I didn't understand the sentimental value, either. Why would you feel attachment to something that belonged to someone you never knew? He was beginning to seem more and more of the miser my aunt had described. It looked like he didn't throw a single thing out of fear of losing it. Whether it was really garbage or not was out of the question.
"Thisss was your sistersss.." There he goes and sibilates again. It creeps me out when he does that. I don't think he even hears it when he does it. I turn to look at what he's pointing out. By sister, I suppose he means the baby that died before I was born. Not interested. I don't need to tell my aunt that I saw...
My heart stops for a second the moment I lay eyes on the doll. I've seen it before. I step closer to the table and can almost swear that my grandfather looks pleased with himself. It's a small porcelain doll with clear blue eyes and blond hair, the usual. I could have seen it anywhere, in a store window, on the internet. But no, not this doll, my mind says, that isn't where you saw this. Time passes and I stand there, frozen. The glass bottle of strange liquid, the creepy old mirror, my grandfather's annoying hissing voice, everything is forgotten.
"I'll go make sssome lunch.." My grandfather says and hobbles into the backrooms of the gallery.
I don't even hear him as he leaves. I can't tear my eyes away from the doll. I bend so that the doll is at eye-level and stare it at closely. If my sister truly died before I was born like my parents said, why would I recognize the doll that belonged to her?
