The air that day carried the scent of raked autumn grass. Dorothy took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The metallic creak of the gate welcomed her onto the porch. The house stood by the forest, beyond a vast, undulating wasteland. Softly outlined by the overcast light, it seemed to cast no shadow.
She had bought it through an agent, authorized by the heirs—heirs she had never met, but she remembered the name: Heisenberg. It struck her as mysterious, tied to an intriguing, perhaps ambiguous history.
The threshold of the study creaked beneath her step. The room was empty, with only faint marks on the floor indicating where a desk had once stood. In the corner, she noticed a cardboard box. She stepped towards it and crouched down. She was fascinated by old objects—or rather, by the stories they could provoke in her mind. What mattered was examining the scratches, the scuffs, the traces of human touch, and then allowing her imagination to weave a story full of twists—sometimes magical, sometimes tragic. And though she was always the main character, these stories didn’t always have happy endings. The only link between them and the tangible world were the objects she found—sources of inspiration.
Reality was secondary to Dorothy. After all, what even is reality? It didn't matter - she never told anyone those stories anyway.
Inside the box were a few black bottles, a plastic container, and three film rolls labeled exposed.
