The Window

A Story by Alexandra R

A bed. A table.

A window.

No door.

This is my life. A small room of emptiness, insanity, and memories. A room with no door, with no way in and no way out.

I know. I do. I know what’s in the drawer. But I can’t open it, because once I do, I lose. The window girl tells me not to open it. She tells me I need to win as she stares at me through the window. She scares me. Dark hair tangled and matted, casting shadows against her pale and sunken cheeks. Eyes like black marbles and full lips, cracked and torn. I hate her.

But she is all I have.

She has been here for a long time.

Time in here is different than it is outside. I remember clocks. Their hands, their faces, their heartbeats. I am my own clock now. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

She never smiles, but she laughs incessantly. She never makes a sound, but her whispers echo in my ears.

She will never leave, or so she tells me. “We are one,” she murmurs. Then she laughs.

I want to scream.

I remember sounds. Real sounds. A dog’s bark. A baby’s cry. A wave crashing. A balloon popping.

Now all I hear is her.

I look at her through the window now. In my head, I’m making plans to destroy her. To silence her.

But she can hear my thoughts. She knows I want to open the drawer. “Don’t you want to win?” she says.

No.

I walk to the wooden table, ignoring her pleas, her threats, her cries. I try to open the drawer. It screams with reluctance, but I pull harder.

There it is. The knife. The silencer.

I walk towards the window quietly.

The girl’s face is frantic. I want to laugh at her pitiful appearance. She looks insane. When she opens her mouth to scream, I smash the knife against her face.

The scream. Glass shatters. She is gone.

The window lies in pieces of the floor, leaving behind nothing but more of the endless sea of concrete.

There really is no way out.

I scream.

I see the window girl in the shards of glass. She is still here.

She is me.

I raise the knife once more, placing it near my heart.

I lose.