The Snow Globe

by Faith J Engle

  THE SNOW GLOBE

  Faith J. Engle

  Prologue

  8 years earlier

  (An excerpt from Grace's diary)

  Dear Diary,

  So, I had the best day! I spent the whole day with Bethany :) ...God, she is soooo beautiful! I can't even look at her for an extended amount of time or else I'll start to feel these crazy butterflies in my stomach and then my cheeks get hot. I hope it doesn't show on my face. I get so nervous around her, it's ridiculous! Today, I even got goose bumps on my arm when she accidentally brushed her hand up against it when going to change the radio station in my car. Oh?? And did I mention how incredibly soft her skin is??? ....I swear that girl has to bathe in clouds or something!! ...and her smell. She always smells SO good. It's intoxicating! Anyway, we just walked around a park today. Nothing special. ....well, then again, I mean, just getting to be with her makes it special. .....SHE'S special!

  We stopped for a second to admire the view of the trees and take in the summer air. Although, I found myself having a hard time finding the air to breathe. She takes my breath away sometimes. And, breathing didn't get any easier when we found ourselves up against a tree engaged in a kiss that could only be described as AMAZING!!! Her lips were so soft....so perfect! But, then again, they always are. My favorite part is always that subtle hint of mint I taste on her lips from her lip gloss.

  The day was just not long enough. I didn't want to let her go. The part I hate most is when we arrive back at my house and I know she'll soon get into her car and drive away....back to her place :( I wish I could just take her into the house and spend the whole night kissing her.....caressing her......cherishing her. I really wish I would have known about my sexuality before I went and got married. Maybe I would have met Bethany earlier and we could have had a life together?? ...but, that's probably wishful thinking. For one thing, if we hadn't moved here, chances are, I would never have met her. And, another thing. I don't know if that's something she'd even be interested in. I mean, we started this whole thing as a "friends with benefits" type situation. It wasn't meant to get serious. ....but it has! ...well, at least it has for me. I can't always read Bethany. I'm not sure exactly what she feels for me. I don't want to bring anything up or ask her about it for fear that it would scare her away. She'd see that I was getting too attached and she'd cut all ties with me. .....I can't lose her like that! ....that would kill me! ...NO! I'm just going to keep my true feelings for her a secret. Just go with the flow. I can't tell her what I so desperately want to. I can't tell her that......I love her.

  The Snow Globe

  It was a typical morning. Bethany was making her way home from her job as a customer support representative for Capital Computers. It was her turn to work the night shift and she had just gotten off from a 10-hour shift. She was exhausted.

  ‘I’m so ready to get some sleep’ she thought.

  She pulled her car up into the driveway. As she got out and walked towards her front door, she noticed something very odd.

  “What’s this?” she said. She was referring to a brown paper-wrapped package sitting perfectly on her front porch.

  It didn’t look like it came from any postal service. There were no labels or stamps on it. She looked at it baffled as she unlocked her front door. She walked in and dropped her purse and her work bag onto a nearby table.

  Going back outside to further investigate the package, a panicked feeling came over Bethany.

  ‘Wait a second! What if it’s a bomb? ……or maybe anthrax? ….a flesh-eating virus sent by ISIS as biological warfare??!'

  “Oh, Bethany! Stop being crazy! she said to herself, dismissing her thoughts that it could be some form of terrorist attack.

  She figured it was probably just a present that someone had left at the wrong house. It WAS close to Christmas, after all. Nevertheless, she knew she should still be cautious.

  She slowly approached it.

  Reaching down, Bethany picked up the package. It wasn’t light, yet it wasn’t all that heavy either. She held it up to her ear.

  ‘Alright. It’s not ticking’ she discovered. ‘……do bombs even tick anymore??’

  Before she had a chance to think of an answer to that, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. It was lying on the floor of the porch, right next to where the package had been. It appeared to be a tiny envelope, like the ones you would see attached to a flower arrangement. It was lying with the flap side facing upwards.

  Tentatively, she bent down, picked it up, and flipped it over. The word BETHANY was handwritten on the front of it, in all caps and written with a very thick ink flow as though it were meant to look like bold font.

  Seeing her name on the envelope, she realized her earlier assumption was wrong. This package was definitely meant for her.

  Curious as to who the sender could be, she wasted no time opening up the tiny envelope.

  “The heart wants what it wants” is what Bethany read on the card. She flipped it over to see if she missed something, but the other side was blank.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked herself.

  Bethany looked very confused. She walked back into her house, sat the package on a table, and started to open it.

  Underneath the brown paper was a white box. She opened the box and saw a spherical shape. She lifted it out of the box and gasp.

  “Oh, wow!” she said.

  She was holding the most beautiful snow globe she had ever seen. It had the prettiest winter scene inside of it. There was a colonial-style slate blue house. Amidst the house was a frozen pond with a wooden garden bench beside it. Tall snow-capped pine trees made up the landscape.

  Bethany gave it a little shake and sparkling glitter along with tiny snowflakes encompassed the globe. They floated around in the water inside the globe until they slowly descended back to the bottom. It was truly a captivating sight.

  Bethany smiled at the snow globe. She wasn’t sure who had sent it to her or why, but she was happy to have it.

  Suddenly, Bethany started to feel unsteady on her feet. She realized she’d been up for hours and her body was simply fatigued. She absolutely needed to get some sleep.

  Taking the snow globe with her to her bedroom, Bethany sat it on the nightstand by her bed. Crawling into the bed and getting under the covers, she gave the snow globe one last look. She smiled at it again, closed her eyes, and drifted off to sleep.

  * * * * *

  An hour or so later, Bethany began to stir. She could feel the daylight that was peering in through her window blinds. She slowly opened her eyes. To her surprise, the light she sensed wasn’t coming from the blinds. It was coming from the snow globe!

  A bright starburst pattern of light was emanating from the snow globe, reaching every corner of Bethany’s bedroom. It took her a minute to shake off her sleepiness and become fully aware of what was happening.

  “What the hell!” she blurted out loud.

  The pattern of light began to rotate around the room.

  It was slow at first, but then it picked up speed, moving so fast that it resembled a strobe light. Bethany thought maybe it was just some crazy feature of the snow globe.

  However, that notion was quickly pushed aside when her bed began to shake. In fact, the whole room started to shake. Things were falling off the top of Bethany’s dresser. Her drawers were jarred open and some were even knocked completely out of the dresser, hitting the floor with a loud boom.

  Bethany was quite frightened at this point. She thought it could be an earthquake. Getting more and more scared by the second, she pulled the covers up over her head, hiding underneath them. She shut her eyes; petrified.

  A few seconds later, the room became still as the sudden quake came to an
abrupt end. The room was no longer shaking. Everything had become quiet; eerily so.

  Bethany, still hiding under her covers, shivered. She was uncertain about what had just happened. A cold chill suddenly brushed over her and slowly crept up her spine. It was starting to get colder and colder around her. She couldn’t fathom why. A strong, chilly breeze then flew past, making her even more afraid to see what was going on outside of her hiding place.

  She inevitably had to look at some point. She knew she couldn’t hide under the covers forever. With her heart pounding in her ears, Bethany slowly peeked her head out. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  Bethany was outside. Large trees covered in snow surrounded her. Tiny snowflakes were drifting down from the sky, landing in her hair. The temperature was freezing.

  She quickly wrapped her covers around her arms to drive off the chill and keep warm. Bethany was dazed. There she was sitting on her bed, outside, in the middle of this wintry forest, and it was snowing.

  “Okay, I’ve lost it! I have GOT to be cracking up”

  She looked around in utter disbelief. ‘I’ve got to be dreaming’ she thought.

  She motioned to get out of the bed, still using the covers to keep warm, taking them with her as she stood up.

  Immediately, she felt the cold snow on her bare feet as they touched the ground. The coldness burned brightly into the bare soles of her feet. She hadn't been wearing any shoes.

  She sat back down on the bed, taking her feet out of the snow. ‘Well, how am I supposed to go anywhere?' she thought.

  Bethany contemplated on what to do next, reluctantly concluding that she was just gonna have to grin and endure it if she wanted to further investigate this conundrum that she currently found herself in.

  Taking a few deep breaths, she bit the bullet and stood up again. It was still extremely cold on her feet, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time. With a renewed determination, she started walking.

  Bethany walked past a few trees, looking up at them puzzled. She looked up at them so intently that she didn’t notice what was right in front of her.

  Thump!

  She hit the ground, falling backward right into the snow. Dazed and confused, she sat up.

  “What the hell was that?” she asked herself.

  Bethany got back up on her feet.

  She had ran smack dab into something, but she couldn’t figure out what. She could see nothing in front of her but an endless forest of trees. She tried again to walk forward; this time more cautiously, and again she was stopped.

  It seemed like there was an invisible wall there preventing her from going any further. She reached out her hand in front of her and she could feel it! It was a hard surface yet completely transparent. She walked alongside this “invisible” wall. It stretched out for many feet and then the wall started to curve.

  As she rounded what appeared to be a corner, she gasped. She couldn't believe it! Right there was a big, slate blue house. It had a frozen pond out in front of it, and sitting just left of the pond was a wooden garden bench. It looked EXACTLY like the snow globe she had received.

  Between the sight laid out in front of her and the discovery of this 'invisible' wall, she put two and two together.

  "Holy crap!" she exclaimed in disbelief.

  "I'm in the snow globe!!!"

  Before she could even make sense of anything, the door to the house opened up and she could see that someone was coming out of it. It was too far away for her to know what this person looked like, but she could clearly see that it was a female and that she was walking directly towards her. As she inched closer and closer, her features become more visible. She was, a thin, petite woman with long black hair and curls for days. The minute her almond-shaped brown eyes met with Bethany's, she knew exactly who this person was. It was Grace.

  Grace is the girl who got away; and she thought the same of Bethany as well. They had a brief love affair back when they lived in the same state.

  It had been a sizzling taboo relationship. Grace was married at the time to a man, but she was very much attracted to women. She, unfortunately, really didn’t discover her true sexuality until after she was married and had a child.

  So, Grace found herself having to sneak around, having secret relationships with women to quench her thirst for that taste. ....the taste of a woman, that is.

  To Grace, there was nothing like it.....and nothing better.

  At first, it was just all about the sex for her. Simply primal, no strings attached, no commitment sex. And, that's exactly how it started with Bethany. However, Bethany was different.

  Yes, the sex was nice, but there was more to it with her. Grace loved just being in Bethany's company. They didn't have to be having sex. Simple things like going out to lunch, catching a movie at the theater, or just walking around the mall window shopping gave Grace so much joy. Before she knew it, she had fallen in love. She became more concerned about her relationship with Bethany than she did about her relationship with her husband. Bethany became the important one, the special one. She began waking up in the mornings with her first thoughts being of Bethany. 'Is she up yet?' 'What is she doing?' 'Where is she going today?' 'Am I gonna get to see her today?' were the questions that would flood her mind.

  They had but only a year together, if even that, before Grace had to move away. Her husband had taken a job in a different state.

  Bethany hadn't seen her since.

  ....and there she was standing in front of her right now, and all the feelings she had for Grace came rushing back. She felt like running into her arms and touching her face just to see if she was real. They both stared at each other as Bethany’s heart flipped over and over again.

  "Baby, what are you doing out here without a coat on?!" Grace asked in a frantic tone.

  Grace was carrying a red Sherpa throw which she placed over Bethany's shoulders and Bethany immediately felt 10 degrees warmer.

  "And your shoes??" Grace asked, looking down at Bethany's bare feet. "Where are your shoes?!"

  At this point, Bethany's feet were so cold that she couldn't feel them anymore.

  Grace promptly ushered Bethany into the house.

  * * * * *

  The inside of the house was warm and the scent of gingerbread hung in the air. There was a fire going in the fireplace and the heat radiating from it felt so good to Bethany.

  Grace sat her down on the sofa and quickly scurried off into another room. Bethany felt extremely disoriented.

  'What IS this??' she asked herself.

  'I'm inside the snow globe??......Grace is here! .....I MUST be dreaming??'

  Bethany officially concluded that she was actually still asleep in her bed at her house and that this was all just some elaborate dream she was having.

  Bethany could hear Grace's footsteps approaching as she walked back into the room carrying what appeared to be some type of plastic basin. Grace carried it over to Bethany and sat it down by her feet. Bethany could now see that it had water in it. Grace knelt down beside the basin.

  "Here. Let me see your foot." Grace said as she held out her hands.

  It took Bethany a minute to register what Grace had said because she was still shocked to see her. She lifted her right foot and placed it in Grace's hands.

  "Oh my God, babe! Your foot is like ice!" Grace said. She started to massage her foot.

  At first, Bethany couldn't feel a thing because her foot was so numb from the cold. Gradually, however, the numbness started to fade. She began to feel the warmth of Grace's hands and then, she could feel everything; the rubbing, the kneading, the pressure. It felt great!

  Bethany realized that this was the first time she'd had any skin-to-skin contact with Grace since she moved away. Bethany had forgotten what Grace’s hands felt like, not to mention how her touches made her feel. She suddenly felt a rush of heat surge through her body. Grace wasn't just warming up her foot. She had set Bethany's whole body ablaze.

  "You're luc
ky you didn't get frostbite!" Grace said, putting Bethany's foot into the basin of water which she now discovered was warm water. Gently, Grace picked up Bethany's left foot and started the same massage on that foot.

  Bethany sat there and watched. It had been years since she had seen Grace and even though she knew this was just a dream, she wanted to enjoy every minute of it. She had wished for this so many times and here it was, her and Grace in the same room, breathing the same air. It felt like a miracle.

  "I was gone for, like, 2 seconds and when I came back, I couldn't find you," Grace explained, still working on her foot. "What were you doing outside?"

  Bethany sat there not knowing what to say. All she could think to say was 'Well, I went to sleep in my room and woke up inside a snow globe!!'

  'She'll think I've gone crazy if I tell her that!' Bethany thought.

  Bethany wasn't sure why she even cared what Grace thought given the circumstances. After all, this wasn't 'real' Grace. This was 'dream' Grace.

  Nevertheless, Bethany decided to just play along and go with the dream.

  "Uhh....I....uhh" She struggled to come up with an explanation quickly.

  "I....uhh....I....was.....hot," she said, feeling how lame that was the minute it left her mouth.

  Bethany couldn't read Grace's reaction at first. She sort of gazed at Bethany with a dumbfounded look on her face. After a brief second or so, Grace started to chuckle. It started small and slowly grew into full-out laughter. Trying to compose herself she said,

  "Ok....let me get this straight. You were hot....so, your solution for that was to go outside with no coat and with no shoes or socks on?"

  She started chuckling again.

  "That's crazy, babe!" Grace said, through her amusement.

  Bethany realized that her proposed reason for being outside wasn't much better than her real reason. Grace would have thought she was crazy either way. Bethany still knew, however, that being outside with no winter gear on because you're hot was a lot less crazy than saying you’d been magically transported inside a snow globe!!