I walked slowly through the misty corridor. A strange feeling passed over me. It was a feeling of familiarity, a feeling that I’ve been here before, but at the same time I felt as though I shouldn’t be here. Gray, office-looking doors appeared at my side. Instead of name tags they all had pictures on them, picture of a little girl as she stuck her finger behind a door, and the door was shut, a picture of a little girl dancing on stage and falling on her face, a picture of a six year old girl clutching a Harry Potter book, a picture of a not-so-little 11 year old girl as she rode a bike for the first time, and the last door had a picture of a smiling boy. It was a familiar picture; a picture I’ve seen way too many times, a picture that no matter how many times I looked at I felt the same melancholy, sad feeling wash over me. It was no different this time, as I stared at the picture and reluctantly reached for the door, opening it. For a moment I felt like Harry when he entered Dumbledore’s memories as I entered my own. As I pushed the door open I walked into a familiar room.
It was my grandmother’s house. A little girl was kneeling on the bed; her hair tied up in piggy tails, her tiny feet dangling off the side of the bed, she was staring at the same picture of a smiling boy in black and white. Realizing the little girl was the five year old me, I followed her closely as she stood up from the bed and ran out the room. The room was a step lower than the kitchen, which the girl had to cross in order to get to the other room. I watched the girl as she ran toward the kitchen and fell flat on her face as she forgot about the step. As if nothing had happened the little girl got up, and walking slower, continued to the other room. It was a room with an ugly bright orange bed cover, a room I had always despised for some reason, and in that room there was a picture frame with the same boy in it. Again as his picture hung on the wall; he smiled at me, his black and white smile, trapped in the black frame. I noticed how big his ears were. The picture slowly faded away and another one came into view.
A boy and a girl were sitting on the floor, ignoring the chairs next to them, were looking at a picture of the same boy.“Who is he?” the boy, my cousin (even though at that time we thought we were brother and sister), asked. “I don’t know,” the seven year old I answered, “but he makes me sad.”For some unknown reason both of us were afraid to ask our parents about the mysterious boy. Why was he in both of our grandmothers’ houses, why was he black and white and why did he never come out of that picture? The picture dispersed again as another one zoomed in.
A boy was sitting on an ugly orange chair and was flipping through the TV channels; a girl lay lazily on the bed, staring at a picture of a boy. When the boy, my cousin again, was finished flipping through all six of the channels on TV, he turned it off, disappointed as always. Both of us were much older now. I was thirteen, my hair was no longer black, but brown, and my cousin and I were no longer convinced that we were siblings. I was staring out the window at my grandma as she chased the chickens around the yard, trying to get them inside their little house. “We should ask,” my cousin said suddenly, turning to me. “Ask what?” I answered confused. “Who he was. The boy.” I didn’t say anything, as I watched my grandma walk in the house. She was an old, fat woman with a kind smile; she was the kind of woman that fed you immense amounts of food even if you say you aren’t hungry. I turned to her and finally asked the dreaded question about the boy in the picture. She looked at both my cousin and I before answering slowly. “This is Ivan,” she said as she sat down on a chair and looked at the picture of the mysterious boy. “He was your mom’s brother,” she continued, without taking her eyes off the picture. “Was? Wait, what do you mean was?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear the story anymore. “He was a nice boy, “my grandma continued. “He played guitar, he sang and he danced, everyone in town loved him. He was one of those perfect children, he helped old ladies carry their groceries home, and he was top of the class, always getting A’s, complete opposite of your mother. She was always mean to him, she was the young one, and she was the only girl. She always got him in trouble, your mother, she was of the evil kind,” grandma smiled, not taking her eyes off the picture. “Your mother, she was always breaking things, getting in trouble and blaming it on her brother, but he never protested, he never told on her.”
“What happened to him?” my cousin asked. “There was an earthquake in 1979, one of the strongest earthquakes Bulgaria has ever experienced. It happened on a really hot day in May. It struck at around four o’clock in the afternoon, both of us were sleeping, and your mother was out playing with your aunt. Everything started shaking, I didn’t know what to do, I jumped out of bed, screaming for Ivan. I woke him up, scared him to death almost. After the shock of the earthquake everything started. The constant headaches, the weakness that took over him, he wasn’t the energetic boy he was before. We took him to hospitals all over the country, and they told us there was nothing they could do. This was one of the rarest cases they had ever seen. He had leukemia, and two months after the earthquake, at the age of 14 he died.” The scene faded out and I was back at the misty corridor.
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