(Written by NaivEevee )

My grandpa says Lavender Town was freaky even before the Pokémon Tower was built there.

Today, the town is modestly modernized with paved concrete roads, marble-white sidewalks, and homes lined up so neatly that an image of the neighborhood would seem like it was straight out of a healthy lifestyle magazine. The mailboxes are shiny red like they had been wiped down with wax-based shoe polish. The fenced-in lawns are so flawlessly trimmed and green that you can easily spot imperfections - the feces of someone's pet Growlithe for instance - without intentionally trying to.

But during my grandpa's young years, the roads then were dirt trails. Forget mailboxes, the population wasn't large enough for any post office to care. The small homes were shacks with roofs painted an ugly shade of violet, as if the color choice was really someone's conscious decision to help lighten up the dull atmosphere. And for whatever reason there was, there was always a thick layer of ominous fog settling over the town, unwavering. If you stayed quiet for too long, you would hear chilling moans and creaking sounds of doors and window shutters when there was no wind. Sometimes things would fall off shelves without explanation or the lights would flicker on and off when the electricity bill had been paid. Every now and then, someone would spot a strange white hand resting on someone else's shoulder. Or, a black figure lurking behind their reflection.

Conspiracies and theories came naturally, Grandpa Turk says. The surroundings just facilitated that process. People started looking for things to make up stories about for amusement. For spine-tingling thrills. And a lot of those stories ended up being passed down, remembered, and recalled, even today.

My grandpa says he can't say for sure that all these stories are false. As a fisherman by Silence Bridge his whole life, he has heard a lot, and he says there are both believable and impossible stories. He has experienced some uncanny things himself, and I believe they're true because, really, I have no reason to doubt him. I'm the only one out of his five grandchildren who can handle his tales of the unusual. Maybe that's how I've come to claim the spot of his favorite grandchild.

My favorite story of my Grandpa's is his story of the old trinket store. Before a PokéMart came to be there he said, there was a little gift shop in its place that always smelled like sawdust and Pokémon kibble. It was just as rundown as the homes around it, and the old man owning the store was supposedly blind with long silver hair. There were rumors he had psychic powers too, but most just waved it off as untrue and said he probably had some psychic Pokémon that wasn't native to Kanto.

My grandpa had the biggest crush on this girl in his single-classroom school. She had blonde pigtails, he described, and bright blue eyes. She wore pink ruffles and laced dresses to school everyday. Her name was Brittany, and he thought she was an angel who fell from the sky. Except, his buddies thought she was beautiful too, and instead of taking Grandpa Turk's suggestion to go pick nice flowers from a field for her, his buddies wanted to shoplift a gift for Brittany from the old store instead. I guess they thought doing something bad for a lady was impressive. Or that they were going to get away with since the owner was disabled. They were close enough that Grandpa Turk says he'll never forget their faces or their names.

There was Freddy, the fat one.

Lincoln, the skinny kid with huge front teeth.

Quinton, the stuck-up kid with muscles.

And Jack. The really, really dumb one.

My grandpa was a good kid. He didn't want to take part in the stealing action, so he offered himself up as the scout: someone who would stand outside the store on the lookout so the gang wouldn't be caught.

They weren't successful. It was their first time, so my grandpa said they only grabbed the first few things they saw before Jack was of course, caught and stopped on their way to the exit. The ones that did get away fled to the bushes to where they emptied out their pockets and revealed what they had.

Freddy had a Snorlax beach ball that wasn't inflated yet.

Lincoln had a Slowpoke wind-up toy that wiggled its head and stubby plastic legs when you let it go.

Quinton had orange scissors that were shaped like Krabby claws.

They waited for Jack to come out after he was caught, but Jack was smiling like a clown when he came out. He said the store owner had told him the gang had two options: return what they stole and pay triple the amount of the items' prices or suffer a brutal curse.

"And guess what?" Jack said, grinning as he held up his stolen loot that he somehow managed to get away with - a keychain of a single Ninetales tail. "I picked the second option. Like come on, there's no such thing as curses."

Jack passed the keychain around because it was apparently a lot more interesting than the cheap toys the rest of the gang stole. It was a rather scarlet color, soft, and my grandpa swore it was warm.

In hindsight, my grandpa says what his buddies did was really stupid. He says he tried to tell them to give the stolen goods back, but his buddies wouldn't listen. They just laughed. They even congratulated Jack for being smart for once. But the next day when they met in the sand pit to discuss how to wrap the present for Brittany, some strange things started happening. Some very bizarre things that my grandpa swears on his old soul happened.

His buddy Quinton was the first to notice something as they were deciding on what color wrapping paper Brittany would like best.

He said,"Hey Freddy, what happened to you? You look bigger than usual."

"What are you talking about?" Freddy scoffed. "I had a big meal last night."

"No, I'm serious. Guys, look at him. Something's happening. You're getting bigger by the second."

And indeed he was. My Grandpa Turk says he can recall it vividly, and he starts laughing really hard every time he thinks about it. Little Freddy was swelling up from the inside out as if someone was vigorously pumping air into him with a bicycle pump. His round cheeks became rounder and rounder and redder and redder. His round body became huge - like a beach ball. His arms and legs became representations of nimble sausages. He started to float.

"G-Guys," Lincoln chattered suddenly next. "What's w-wrong with m-me?"

Everyone turned to look. Lincoln's mouth kept opening and shutting mechanically so that his giant teeth made contact with each other every time. His whole body started jerking and vibrating uncontrollably. He sounded like he was talking into a whirling fan. He fell over on his side, still twitching on the ground like a wind-up toy.

"My fingers!" Quinton yelped next. "Arceus, help me! My fingers!"

Finally, Quinton's fingers were extending rapidly like tough weeds shooting up out of fertilized ground. They became orange and then sharp, like razors. Like scissors. Both his whole hands were becoming bigger than even his large body, and they started becoming monstrous weights of colored metal. Quinton couldn't lift his hands off the ground anymore.

"Get hum awuy from muh!" Freddy shrieked, muffled. His floating body was drifting towards Quinton's sharp hands. The horror on his face was unmistakable. There was a scream. And a sudden pop. Freddy went shooting into the sky, the sound of air escaping in trails of hisses after him. He was flying in all directions. Panic seized the group.

"D-Don't just s-stand there," Lincoln then tried to say. "D-Do s-something!" Except, my Grandpa says, he didn't know then if Lincoln was referring to him or Jack.

"It's the old man's curse," Quinton screeched as his face went pale with realization. He was obviously the smart one - smart enough to pick up the first signs, connect the dots, and lay shame to the supposed culprit. "Jack, you idiot!"

Quickly, Jack and young Grandpa Turk scrambled back to the trinket store to apologize. My grandpa says he had to beg for a long time because Jack wasn't helping. He was just standing there in a corner of the store, shaking, quivering, and trying hard not to bawl or wet his pants. Eventually, the old man consented, but only because my Ggrandpa Turk didn't steal anything himself. My grandpa says he'll never forget the smirk under the dark shades of the man's face when he agreed to release his buddies of the curse with a quick snap of his fingers.

His buddies had to return the items, pay the price three times over with their allowance, and write "I solemnly swear I'll never steal again" a hundred times each on paper. They couldn't even leave the store until all these conditions were met. Needless to say, my Grandpa Turk says, they never stole anything from anywhere again. Ever. And they all moved away shortly afterwards, and he never saw them again.

Later, the old trinket store vanished before the end of the month and a PokéMart came in to replace the empty slot. It was like it had always been there. No one questioned it.

That's my grandpa's story, and to this day, I still believe it. Just because it happened in Lavender Town of all places doesn't diminish its value of truth, I think. My Grandpa Turk never lies. He doesn't fabricate stories; he isn't a storyteller. After all, according to him, that's also how he came to know my Grandma Brittany.