Prologue
When I think back on everything that happened, the memory I come back to the most is this one, even though technically it isn’t even a memory, it’s just how I imagined it must have gone:
The little house was still. Its vibrant walls and boldly patterned furnishings remained, looking impersonal as ever despite their attention-seeking demeanor. The silence gave everything a strange, stage-set feeling, like the actors had left mid-scene. The only remaining sign of the house’s previous inhabitants was a single object on the fireplace mantle. A small, deliberately placed snow globe.
Styles Chilton peered through the window and squinted as he narrowed his focus through the kitchen to the living room at the back of the house in the distance. He leaned his face close to the glass, but his baseball hat brim hit the windowpane, prompting him to remove it before leaning in again and cupping his hands on either side of his head to shield his view from the sun’s bright glare.
He had already tried the door at the front of the house, looking up and down the quiet street beforehand to make sure there was no one around. The kitchen window wouldn’t budge. Despite his career choice, he wasn’t the type to do things that would call attention to himself in public, hence the ball cap, sunglasses, and his intrepid demeanor as he skulked around the house. Deciding the coast was clear, he climbed up the wooden fence gate at the back of the house and hopped over it, gaining access to the backyard.
He stood in the yard for a moment and looked around wistfully. The sound of a neighbor’s barking dog startled him, and nudged him to make one final attempt to get into the house. He tugged on the sliding patio door, and to his surprise, it moved. Pushing it as quietly as he could, as if to not disturb any ghosts, he slipped through the door into the living room and went to the fireplace. He looked at himself in the mirror above it. He looked older, smaller, dishevelled, not at all like how he saw himself through the lens of his perceived persona. “What am I doing here?”, he thought.
A feeling had brought him back to this house in search of an intangible “something” that might give him the answer he was seeking. He took the snow globe from its place on the mantle. His initial surprise at finding it still there was quickly overtaken by a wistful loneliness and the realization that he probably shouldn’t have been surprised at all. He tipped it gently and watched the snow fall over the little world inside, safely contained in its protective dome. Then he shook the snow globe again, this time with more force. “Look what I just did”, he mused. “I made it blizzard in Los Angeles.”
Then Styles slipped back out of the house as carefully as he went in, with the snow globe in his jacket pocket.
Or maybe the landlord gave him the key. That’s also plausible.
