Blue gown

 

RESPONSE TO ’S PROMPT RE A THRIFT SHOP

The mystery of the blue gown

a story

Photo by Riccardo Bernucci on Unsplash

It looked just like any village thrift shop, quite full, with poorly displayed stuff, and no one onsite, as well as in sight!

I walked around, and then went in. The quality of the stuff was good, it seemed that the thrift shop owner had brought all this stuff from a far, as clothes and other stuff, didn’t seem to belong here, but then it also seemed unlikely that women in this village would be interested in buying such fine quality gowns and handbags.

Our driver had told us, that people of this area were quite poor. I actually liked a few, and stopped at a blue gown, its cut, and the fabric, as well as the work on it was exquisite. I was almost going to touch it, when the door to the shop jingled and someone rushed in. I turned around and saw a young man, maybe in his late thirties, rushing to where I was standing.

Are you buying this gown?” he asked me straight away in broken English, but he spoke with confidence. I withdrew my hand at once.

Yes, I had liked the gown, but on our 30 minute toilet and a stretch stop, on our way to Siena, I was actually looking for something to do, rather than to buy! So I shook my head, and the man almost snatched the gown from its hanger, and left.

I looked around a bit, and was about to leave, when I noticed that the owner, whatever break she had been on, had come back. Out of curiosity, I walked to the other end of the shop to the counter, and on my way, picked up a small fabric coin purse. The woman behind the desk raised 4 fingers to tell me the price. I paid and was about to ask her about the blue gown, when saying, “buona giornata”, and bidding me a good day, she disappeared at the back of the store.

Back at the bus, I sat down in my seat, and taking a sip out of the chilled water bottle that I had grabbed out of the esky, next to the driver’s seat, I was about to tell my husband about the strange incident, when he said, “You missed quite a drama here”, he pointed at the shop, that I had been in!

What happened?

“Oh, a man ran out of that shop with a blue dress, and was stopped by a woman who was standing there, but the man shouting something in Italian threw some money at her and ran away.

What did he say? Did you find out?

I was dying of curiosity.

No”, my husband said, and went back to the book he had been reading.

Thanks 

, for always prompting us to be creative, and , for this prompt to write a story with the first line as “It looked just like an ordinary village thrift shop…”.

Thanks to 

 for an excellent spooky story on this prompt, I read her short story “The Haunted Doll”, yesterday, and got inspired to give it a go.

I was trying to think of something, then a shop I had seen on one of my trips in Italy came to mind, and the story just unravelled like a ball of blue cotton!!

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