Snow Globe

The door to apartment 1011 rattled as a key was being forced into the lock. The whole wall felt the repercussions of the battle raging against the door. The dust lifted from the books on the shelf that slumped crookedly next to the door. On the sloped top of the shelf the hula girl lamp, and the snow globe of Manhattan were slowly inching their way towards the precipice of the shelf. The snow globe, undeterred by a power cord, made its way halfway over the edge when the door opened and in stumbled Leon Van Damme carrying an armful of empty boxes from the package store.  In a fit of exasperated rage, Leo flung the boxes to the ground, and went to retrieve his key from the lock. Having done so, he slammed the door, giving the snow globe all it needed to fall from the shelf in with a satisfying thud. Leo reeled at the sound, then seeing the globe waddling around on the floor, knelt down and picked it up, a spidery crack now encompassing the dome. He peered inside, the twin towers standing at attention, snow lightly dusting Central Park. The snow and the dreary inescapable nature of the dome reminded him of last winter, and the day he almost died.

It was December 22nd, and the snow was piling up in front of Castle Apartments, keeping the sardines packed in their tin. The holiday sentiment did little to brighten the moods of the confined Castle Lonlies. The snow had shut the radio station down, the icicles freezing the weak bandwidth, leaving Leo with nothing to do. This gave him an opportunity to spend more than a fleeting instant in his room, this depressed him even more. Leo's breath hung effortlessly in the frigid air as he fumbled with the shitty space heater. In an attempt to increase the pitiful range of the heater to even another foot, the machine reared up all it's energy only give up and shut off with an apathetic hiss. Leo glared at the machine in disbelief, his lower lip slowly stretching towards the floor. He'd had enough. Leo threw on his big army-style parka, grabbed his cigarettes off the coffee table and thundered through the door. The hallway was warmer than his apartment, he thought, as he reached the stairwell and headed up.

The wind, supercharged with biting snow, whipped at Leo’s sharp craggy features as he stood motionless on the roof of the apartment. Having shuffled his way out on the icy pavement, he managed to get a cigarette lit under the shelter of his jacket. Not risking the slippery conditions, Leo had resolved to not move from his precarious spot. Feeling just as antsy in the stifling rush of wind and snow as he did in his apartment, Leo felt as if the world in which he lived was slowly crushing his soul. He was the outdated European sedan hanging under the power of a magnet, the next pancaked car in the junk yard. Leo decided to return to his room – dissatisfied by the inability of the wind and snow to liberate him from this claustrophobic hell. Without thinking, Leo took one big quick step towards the open door of the stairwell behind him. He slipped on the ice, and stumbled, sliding with every step towards the stairwell. At last, his foot caught the lip of the doorway, and he went careening through it. For a moment, he felt like he was flying, as his feet left the ground and the rest of his body went speeding over the first flight of stairs. He was temporarily suspended in the weightless second, as his flailing body arced through the frigid air. Then he pictured his body crumpling into the dirty brick wall. He landed a couple steps short of the landing, crushing his shoulder under the rest of his body. The momentum then carried Leo down to the landing, and across into the ill-maintained brick wall.

With his shoulder in searing pain, and blood rushing to a nasty bash on his head, Leo gazed back up the stairs to the flimsy metal door testing its hinges in the frozen wind. In his dazed state, and at this distance, Leo could see the intricate swirling patterns the snow made as it rode the wind. He shifted his weight, tested his shoulder, and grimaced. Already regretting the trek down the stairwell, Leo pulled out his crushed pack of cigarettes and took a moment to light one up before attempting to walk down flour flights of stairs. He reveled in the slight warmth the smoke brought to his body, and the fact that it was his shoulder, not his neck that received the full force of the fall.          

  

Leo dusted off the old snow globe, and placed it in one of the many boxes now scattered about his living room. He stood, and feeling the shoulder that hadn’t felt right since that day, Leo surveyed his apartment He wondered how much of his useless stuff he’d actually want in California, and how much of it he’d need to throw into the absolving waters of the Pacific before he could forget Castle Apartments, and this ruddy little shithole town.