The Collector: A Short Story

By Olivia Kapell

17 December 2024

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a short story authored by Camino teacher and CLASP coordinator, Miss Olivia Kapell. It is an enthralling read that is sure to simultaneously creep out and fascinate our readers.

Each week at the Experiences Library on the upper west side, I tend to books and memory files.

As I work, I think only of my snow globes, my prized collection. I’ve categorized them with diligence and expertise. Every week I shake them, update the inventory, and watch the little flakes bring the encased worlds to life.I have globes with painted houses surrounded by tidy white fences, globes with miniature skyscrapers that could burst through the glass domes. I have globes with perfect families holding hands, and with dancers, light, balanced, on a pointed foot, twirling in an endless dance. I like surrounding myself with these frozen memories; I desire their company. 

I was recently transferred to the tenth floor of the archive. There’s a great view of the Hudson River. My boss said I’m the right person for the job, that I’m a detailed person, a quiet person who wouldn’t mind being in silence most of the day. She knows I prefer the company of objects, physical and imagined, to that of people. 

But if you’re going to come, the archive requires an appointment. You can check the files for the deceased whose memories are here.

I got my first snow globe when I was seven. It was a gift from my mother; she gave it to me after seeing a Christmas show. Inside was a replica of Grand Central Station. I shook the snow globe all twenty blocks home, hoping the snow would settle, but it kept swirling in the air, never falling. From that moment on, I realized that within my globes, there would be a universe where time could stop, where the snow would never wet the floor.  

As a collector, I work against time. I’ve always wanted it to stop… but only in my objects, who don’t succumb to the persistent turn of night and day. My mother also wanted time to stop. People say I’m the male version of her, a practical clone of hers: green eyes with yellow flecks, curly hair with a life of its own, a laugh that would echo in any library hall. But instead of objects, she was seduced by the body, the way it’s highly susceptible to time. She wanted to slow time, to see what the body was capable of, especially her own. 

At first, I thought it was her fear of aging. She wanted her world to be like the world in my globes. Frozen. On repeat. Not able to advance forward with such ruthlessness, marching all of us toward our graves. As my mom’s face aged over the years, her body retained the form of a forty-year-old woman. Even at fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years old. Time passed through her body in two rhythms, simultaneously.

While I resided in the world of objects, my mom made her body a museum. She inhabited a space not susceptible to ticking; she made her body an object worthy of collection. I would have put it in my globes if I could… a woman with snow falling around her. A never-changing woman. Sometimes, I wondered who would deteriorate first: my mother or my globes? 

But she never shared the secret of how she did it. I spied on her and begged her to tell me, but even on the day she provoked her own death, I never knew how she did it to herself. She decided to die at exactly ninety-seven years old. 

A few days ago, the files for my mom’s life came into the archive. For so many years, before I was transferred here, I dreamed of going up to the tenth floor to accompany her in her experiments. But now, I could be with her. I could discover her secret. As soon as her memory files were delivered by the morgue, I entered the information into the electronic system. I typed: Federica Flores. 

Please wait, the system read. I scanned my identification and the confirmation number for the appointment I booked for myself.  

The lock opened to the Memory Portal. The walls were made of glass and my mother’s name floated in digital cursive; a thousand copies of her signature. The bright backlight of the screen created an aura that transported me to a different time and place. The digital world no longer felt continuous with the physical one. Being in my mother’s files, I was immersed in that immediate sense of comfort, of time slowing. Maybe we were more similar than I wanted to believe. The invisible experiences filled the space like weightless bricks, like invisible mortar. 

“Federica Flores,” said the automated voice. It repeated her name as years appeared on the walls. I touched the year 2035. I wasn’t interested in the other experiences on different dates. I only wanted to go to June 19th, 2035. 

The screen projected my mother’s basement. I watched her in the mirror, her life like a movie on the walls. She was naked, her curly hair cascading down her back. Small, brown freckles decorated her arms and chest. I wanted to look away but I couldn't. She filled a glass bottle with blue liquid, the cap half open, leaning back into a gray, faux leather chair. Green eyes looking at green eyes. The mirror watched her and observed her next steps as I did in the Memory Portal. She raised the liquid to her lips and took a gulp.

She started to cough, losing control. She trembled, fell to the floor. She screamed but I couldn't get to her through the walls. Her face contorted as she thrashed on the ground. The mirror saw her but didn’t do anything to make her feel better; neither could I. The mirror kept her secret.

I touched the screen again. The names returned. I didn’t need to see more. At last, I could witness her final days. I stepped out of the Memory Portal as if I had suffered the effects of the blue liquid myself. I carried my mom’s suffering in my legs, making me walk slower, and the anger lingered in my heart, making it beat harder.

Seeing her trembling on the ground stayed with me. Wherever I went, the mirrors continued to watch me watching her. I ruined her secret. Would she take revenge on me from her grave? 

I returned to my apartment that night with the intention of having dinner and taking a hot shower, hoping the hot steam would extract the fright from my chest. I did these things but did not find relief. I walked to my snow globe room to calm myself down. I would re-organize the globes into sections according to size, theme, and age.

When I opened the door, cold air rushed in and traveled through my body. Instead of dancers, painted houses, or skyscrapers, my mom, lying twisted, was trapped in every snow globe. She screamed at me in silence. I grabbed one and began to shake it, hoping the movement would bring her joy, but she slammed against the glass. She wouldn’t stop trembling.

Knowing my globes, the world inside them would repeat forever, despite the passing of the days. My mother remained suspended in her agitated body, in her desperate cry. I stored her secret in my gaze; I stole it from the mirror. Now it would stay with me, I feared. I had only wanted to collect beautiful things. I had only wanted to see her how she lived and how she died. But now, I collected terror. Now, each globe shook inside me.