Tile floor.
Brown chair.
Large glass door.
No one answered the bell.

It was a small coastal town whose sudden dawn had shifted into a dead silence, a silencing made all the more poignant by the bell.

The disappearance of eye contact and of conversation – which is always the case in these situations – had seeped into the lives of townspeople. And it seemed as though they had inherited everything about their own history and present personas: neither charming nor interesting.