Known

What is new was once old...but there's no real difference

(Word Count: 300)

"You look familiar."

I turned around, startled, thinking I was alone in the dim antique shop. Everything was dusty, like no one else had been there in months.

"I'm sorry, I don't...think I know you."

She grinned knowingly. She was an older woman, handsome, tall as me, with short silver hair. The door opened admitting an old man.

"Excuse me," she said, walking toward the newcomer. I watched her with an instinctive suspicion.

"Ungh!" The sound jerked out of me involuntarily. As she spoke in hushed tones with the old man at the door, I could see they were the same height, even though he was easily nine inches shorter than me—she'd shrunk!

She lifted a teasing eyebrow at me before turning back to the old man. They exchanged a few words, and he left, nodding. The woman returned.

"Are you quite alright?" she asked in a low musical voice She looked me in the eye. She was my height again! I was speechless. Things had turned very eerie very quickly: good time to leave.

I checked my watch, that age-old gambit. "I'm fine, but... I have to go, I'm late..."

She grinned disconcertingly. She replied calmly and softly, shaking her head: "No, you're not."

"Well...I...really, I just stopped to browse. I should go."

She reached toward me, and I flinched away. Something atavistic warned me her touch was dangerous. She grinned and reached past me, pulling a drape from incredibly old painting.

I turned, not wanting to see, but helpless not to look. The woman stepped past me, staring into it: a misty, undefined space, a man looking at a painting, an old man with a murderous snarl directly behind.

The woman caressed the picture, murmuring cryptically: "Yes...I knew you looked familiar..."

I heard a sound behind me.