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Hi listeners, I'm Michael David Axel, and I have a story I want to tell you.

A story about the secrets left beneath the puzzling bobble.

So gather round and listen.

Close.

It looked innocent.

Guilty as an eye sore maybe, but totally unremarkable.

The porcelain snow globe heart music box sang and danced on a carousel of snow.

Presence of all colors spun around a Christmas tree while a holiday tune twinkled on loop.

Like everything else in the antique store, it belonged to the mismatch of trinkets and junk.

I had been perusing the aisles of tacky treasure mostly out of boredom.

Sean's stable was a one-story shop set up in the husk of an old bookstore.

Most of the antiques were locally sourced, homemade pottery too far for goodwill drop-offs and scavenged scrap from the pawn shop stumps.

Altogether they made for a unique display.

Everywhere you went from the ceiling to your toes there were shelves and hooks packed with clutter.

It was only on my third walkthrough that I noticed the snow globe stuck on a high shelf behind an empty metal tobacco can and a photorealistic painting of a highway culvers.

To be honest, I thought it was ugly. The snow globe, I mean. The painting too, of course, but I was considering the glitter-crusted globe for my cousin Dwayne.

I knew he collected them and thought it would make for a good Christmas gift.

I turned it around looking for a price tag, but found something else.

On the bottom of the snow globe, imprinted like a stamp, was a QR code.

That's pretty high-tech for an antique store, I thought. Do they have all their stuff listed online?

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