The Window

A Not-So-Short Story

It’s night on the other side of the Window, and I’ve never seen that before. Somewhere a mourning dove cries her sad story of lost love, a haunting song that drifts through the night and lands softly on the sill, ruffling the curtains and cooling the room. A dog barks determinedly in the distance and I can feel the faint rumble of thunder echoing across some long forgotten plain like a discontented dream. The stars are out, shining in unfamiliar constellations – southern hemisphere, would be my guess. It could be a whole ’nother world for all I know, I was never that good at mapping the night sky. I can usually find the Big Dipper, but Orion or Pisces or or anything other than the moon remains a celestial mystery. They all look like shiny points of random light to me. Still, there’s something slightly off about these particular stars, though I’ll be damned if I can say exactly what it is.

But that’s the way it’s been lately.

Never quite real, never quite solid.

I walk to the Window (taking care to avoid the dead cat) and look out at the current version of the world. Everything’s changed and nothing’s changed. It’s still my building, of course. It’s always my building. My room is on the 19th of 27 floors, number 1956 to be exact. In fact, they’re all number 1956. Sixty doors in my hallway, every one displaying the same shiny brass number. 27 buttons on the elevator, and you guessed it, every floor is number 19. But more about that later. Right now I want to survey the landscape, because I still haven’t given up hope that there might be someone out there.

I can see quite a distance from 19 stories up. Today, the Outside features a fairly large city with gently rolling hills humping across the horizon a couple of miles away. A river runs kitty-corner through a park seven blocks to my right, and there are swing sets and a jungle gym next to a softball diamond. As I watch, a dust devil twirls erratically across the infield, stirring up memories of sweaty summer games and sweeping Baby Ruth wrappers under the bleachers; a pint-sized tornado wanna-be. The houses look about 1920’s vintage, a lot of story-and-a-half working class residences, nicely painted with freshly manicured lawns and well-kept gardens. I can make out the main street, looks like three blocks long with a handful of one and two-story buildings squatting along the sidewalk like so many brick and mortar sumo wrestlers. They’re too far away to tell what businesses occupy
the storefronts but they look like your run-of-the-mill hardware, grocery and dry goods stores with maybe a bank or two thrown in for good measure. Cars are parked sporadically along my street, but
I can’t discern makes or models because they’re not quite like any cars I’ve ever seen before, and their colors aren’t quite like any colors I’ve seen before. I can’t put it into words, how do you describe a color that isn’t?

Mostly though, I see the emptiness.

In a city that should boast a population of seven or eight thousand people, the only thing moving is the wind-blown litter. The houses are all dark, almost as if the night sky had drained down their chimneys and covered their lamps with a velvety blanket of ink. I’ve watched, ’cause all I can do is watch, but I’ve yet to catch a glimpse of another living soul. And even though I’ve heard dogs bark and cats yowl and owls hoot, I’ve never actually seen them. Never seen that mourning dove either.

So, tell me this. Who is it that’s emptying the garbage cans and cleaning up the fallen branches after the storms? Who moves the cars to new parking spaces while I’m not looking?

They’re there, but they’re not.

All right, I’ve seen enough. I know better than to do anything futile like scream at the streets. When I first arrived, I did enough shouting and crying and banging on walls to last for the rest of my life, and all it got me was a three day case of laryngitis and a throbbing set of bloody knuckles. If people are out there, they sure as hell don’t want to talk to me.

Their loss.

’Cause I’m a damn fine conversationalist.

OK, let’s see what’s in the refrigerator, anybody here want a beer? That’s an inside joke, I say that’s a joke, son. I know what’s in the refrigerator. The same thing that was in the refrigerator the last two hundred times I looked. A Braunschweiger sandwich, a Tupperware container full of parsnips, a can of Fresca and a tin of pickled herring. Whoever’s running this joint has got one twisted sense of humor. The fascinating thing is, if I take the Fresca out and drink it, the next time I open the ’fridge, it’s been replaced by a brand new can. Same goes for the rest of the food. I apparently have stumbled onto a self-replenishing lifetime supply of parsnips and pickled herring and who wouldn’t be thrilled about good fortune like that?

Now, if you think that sounds like a little slice of Heaven, let’s take a look at the rest of the palace. My room is exactly twelve feet by thirteen feet (I know, because I measured it with my own feet) and is a showcase of understated design. The aforementioned refrigerator occupies a place of honor in one corner, diagonally across the room from a lovely paisley sofa bed. That’s the tour folks, my world in a nutshell. Oh, sorry, I forgot. Through door number one, we have the bathroom. One toilet, one sink, one shower, and the seemingly obligatory supply of self-replenishing toothpaste and toilet paper. I think the pièce de résistance, though, would have to be the painting on the living room wall. A true French masterpiece. That is, if the French Masters ever painted dogs playing poker.

Directly opposite the Window lies door number two, and this is where the real weirdness begins.

Follow me into the hall, if you will. My building is constructed in a square shape, probably with a courtyard in the center, although I can’t say for sure. Along the four hallways (for the sake of argument we’ll call them north, south, east and west) are an equal number of rooms. Eight on the outside wall, seven on the inside, and an elevator centered on the inside of each hall.

Let’s take that elevator. The interior is mirrored on three sides, which gives the interesting effect of thousands of images of me ever diminishing into infinity. Sometimes I get a little flash of someone, or something else sharing the space with me. Always out of the corner of my eye, always forty or fifty reflections in. Never anything concrete, always on the edge of reality.

I think the elevator, with its endless levels of reflections is a metaphor for this whole
damn place.

As I mentioned before, the panel looks like this.

I’ve started to conduct a systematic search of every room on every floor, and have x-ed off the floors I think I have finished. That’s 360 rooms so far, and another sixteen on the next “19” floor in the series. This hasn’t been as easy as you might think. I enter the elevator and press the “19” button third from the bottom in the left hand row. The doors close, the elevator seems to drop and the buttons illuminate in descending order. When I get off the elevator the hall looks exactly like the hall I just left. Exiting, I turn left and choose the seventeenth door on my left hand side.

Number 1956, naturally.

Now the magic happens.

My key works in every door, and when I enter the room, it’s my room. They’re all my room. I’m now back on the 19th floor (the one I’ve marked with an arrow) and the room is exactly as I left it, shirt on the floor, half-consumed Fresca by the chair...whatever. To return to the floor I just left, I’ll have to go back down the hall, take the elevator to the third left “19” floor, and repeat the whole process. Now you know why only six floors are x-ed off – the bleepin’ elevators in this place are so slow they make John Goodman look like an Olympic sprinter.

So, if every door leads to an exact duplicate of what I’ll call the Master Room does that mean there are 1620 versions of me in this building? If I open the door and throw my shirt out, do 1620 doors open and 1620 shirts sail into the hall?

The answer is no, and here is my theory. There obviously are other rooms, but none so far that I can enter. Although I can see one entire side of the building with 216 separate windows when I look Outside, on the Inside the doorways seem to operate as some kind of portal to the Master Room, always bringing me home as I cross the threshold. It makes for some major league weirdness. If leave my door open, walk across the hall and open the door directly across from mine, I can look through both doors and see two identical rooms with two identical views out two identical Windows.

Therein lies the trap, but it also just might be the means of my salvation.

If you can have one portal, might you also have two?

I have no memory of time prior to waking up here some 20 odd days (emphasis on the word odd) ago. It’s as if my mind is one of those magic slates that kids play with and someone has lifted the writing sheet and erased my life. But, somehow I came to be in the Room, so it stands to reason that somehow I can get out. Starting tomorrow, I’ll begin the process of walking through every door in
the building.

Because maybe one is the way home.

I return to my Room to prepare for the search and flop down on the sofa while cracking open a nice, cold Fresca. I’m pretty sure my mind is beginning to rot away, because God help me, this stuff is starting to taste pretty good. When I look through the Window I see mountains. Outside, snow is falling in thick curtains of icy whiteness, and all traces of civilization have disappeared. This would be a heck of a place for a ski resort, the slopes are glistening powder, and the air is crisp and clean. I lean out and catch a few flakes on my tongue, and nothing has ever tasted so pure and sweet. As my breath paints dancing clouds that swirl off with the wind, I swear I can hear a baby crying.

I won’t bore you with the details of the search. Suffice it to say that I walked through every blessed door of 1,243 rooms, and every time I ended up right back where I started. Figuring it took me six minutes for each trip, and I worked ten hour days, this tour of the joint ate up nearly two weeks of my precious time.

1,243 times I walked into a room and was greeted by the smell of Braunschweiger and parsnips.

Ah, but it’s the 1,244th door makes the story.

The last door I opened was actually on a mid-level floor, ’cause I got bored and started mixing up the order. I’d long since given up any hope that anything would happen, but kept on going just for the satisfaction of completing the task. “Anything worth doing is worth doing right,” my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Apold would say right before whipping an eraser at Mike Wilkemeyer who was sleeping in the back row. And since the alternative was lounging around my room holding conversations with myself, what did I have to lose?

So, imagine my surprise when I opened that last door and gazed into a completely different room. I about passed out from the shock. The walls were pink instead of light green. The floor had a dingy orange carpet instead of checkerboard tiles, and in place of my beloved poker playing, ramblin’ gamblin’ canines hung a still life painting of a bowl of carrots. Whoever decorates these rooms must be dropping some really good acid. The painting could have been of raw fish, I didn’t care, it looked like freedom to me.

I stepped into this new and exciting land of opportunity, heart hammering, head ringing. Nothing happened. It didn’t flicker and fade away, it was as real as the headache you get after eating ice cream too fast. I looked in the refrigerator. Carrot juice, carrot cake, carrot slices and a tin of pickled carrots. Bugs fricking Bunny must live here. I didn’t care, It wasn’t the Master Room, and that meant I was about to walk out of a nightmare and into a life. I didn’t waste any time, I didn’t even bother to peer out the Window to see where I was, I just headed for the door. As Lynyrd Skynyrd would say, “Gimme two steps mister, and you’ll never see me no more!”

But just as I was about to skip out into the hall I hesitated. There was something itching in the back of my brain, something dark and nasty with two inch claws, and I knew that feeling all too well.

I slowly turned around, afraid to look, but knowing I had to. There, off to the side of the room was a dead cat. Oh, he wasn’t my dead cat, but that was kind of beside the point. Black, brown or calico, long haired or totally bald, it was a bad, bad omen.

Trembling, I walked out into the hall, a different hall, the same hall. The number on the door was 915. The numbers on all the doors were 915. The ringing in my head was getting louder. Quasimodo never had ringing like this, and he lived in a bell tower.

I collapsed on the floor and cried myself to sleep.

It’s hard to say how many days have passed since my little emotional outburst. I’ve stopped checking rooms, and have been spending my time by the Window, a rather fruitless undertaking, I must say. The view hasn’t changed much, and I haven’t seen the sun since I don’t know when. On the floor, the skeleton of the cat grins up at me, and occasionally grinds its teeth, don’t ask me how.

My newest digs are in a desert, and to call it desolate would be the understatement of the year. Miles and miles of scrubby little brush that glows a phosphorescent green in the moonlight and casts an eery light on the sand. But gradually I’ve seen the glow diminish, and two days ago (or maybe I should say two sleeping/waking cycles ago) the brush stopped fluorescing entirely. As I look up at the night sky, the stars are turning off, one by one until a darkness so complete it’s like I’m buried in a cave rains down over the land, a blackness so deep I can’t see my hand two inches in front of my face.

And the wind stops blowing.

And the monsters come out.

I can hear them now, crashing and thrashing around in the underbrush and howling in pain, or at least it sure sounds like pain. They screech and whine like a chainsaw cutting through a sheet of tin. And every now and then something flies by the Window. Something big. Something fast. Something covered in scales and reeking of rotting flesh, something that beats the air with leathery wings. Something that doesn’t have a very good sense of direction, because it slams into the side of the building so hard it makes the floor shake. They’ve been at it for four or five hours, and their blood is starting to run down the side of the building and drip on my windowsill where it forms purple puddles that bubble and froth. I decide enough is enough. I take my blankets and retreat to the hallway where I don’t have to see the carnage. I can’t shut out the sound though, it’s as loud in the hall as it is in my room, and covering my ears only seems to make it worse.

Stop it! Stop it! Oh, God make it stop! I can’t stand to just sit here, I’ve got to do something, so I start to run. Maybe if I can pass through every door in the building the world will change again and it will all go away. Maybe I won’t have to listen to the un-ending sound of breaking teeth and crunching bones.

Maybe I’ll just kill myself and be done with it all.

Or will I end up somewhere even worse than this? Is there anyplace even worse than this?

I’ve gotta run. Running eases the pain. Running holds the screams at arm’s length.

Only twenty six more floors to go.

The terrible noise escalates with every floor I complete, until it’s so loud it becomes something beyond sound. My mind stops processing the audio input, and it’s replaced by some kind of screeching background static. I haven’t stopped running for days, and the hallways are starting to distort, undulating like a serpent as I plod onward toward the next door. Always the next door. Just one more door. I’ve reached the last of the floors, and as I cross the threshold to my Master Room for the thousandth time, I’m so tired I can barely stand up but I can’t give in to the fatigue if I fall asleep here, I don’t think I’ll ever make it out I think this will be my permanent resting place, and for the rest of eternity it will just be me and the monsters I wonder how many times you can be eaten alive in hell I’m at the next to the last door, flipping through the portal for the last time, (I hope) Outside the Window a blood red moon fills the sky displacing the darkness and painting the world with a crimson brush, and I’m into the hall and down the stairs (I gave up on the elevator long ago) and now the hall on the “first” floor one foot in front of the other, one step closer to freedom the hall is shaking, the roaring is so loud its formed a halo of pain around my head turning the corner into the last hallway I can see my destination but with every step doors blow open behind me in a blast of splinters and nails don’t look back don’t look back whatever you do don’t look back I’m at the door oh where’s the goddamn key? footsteps thudding closer plaster falls from the ceiling I can smell its breath I can sense its cavernous mouth and dripping fangs needle sharp as I finally find the key and stumble through the door and pain shoots down my leg as it is raked by something incredibly sharp and the last thing I do before I lose consciousness is catch a glimpse of indescribable evil with burning embers of hate sparking and flashing in its eyes and I wedge the door shut and the noise dies as one last howl of frustration echoes into oblivion and everything is black and everything is black and everything...is...

All right. Everything is all right, although I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep through an entire night again. They say that time heals all wounds, but I’ve got an ache right behind my eyes that hurts so bad it makes me dizzy, and I think it will be with me until I’m lying in a box six feet under.

The running helps. I can almost forget when I run.

I’m on my twenty fourth building now, and they get better every time I flip through that last doorway in the series. The food is even getting tolerable, although I could live without the boiled cabbage this particular refrigerator keeps stocked.

Outside, daylight has returned, with a bright cerulean blue sky and fluffy cotton ball clouds. I can hear birds singing, and off in the distance a merry-go-’round squeaks along to the rhythm of children’s voices. Real voices, and they’re not the only ones. I can’t make out the words, but I can hear the murmur of conversation coming from the rooms all around me. And even though no one answers my calls, I don’t care. I can’t see ’em, and I can’t talk to ’em, but at least I’m not alone anymore. My building sits in a middle-American city, and has for quite a while now. I’ll take these neat rows of little pink houses over the dust of the desert any day. The trees sigh contentedly in the breeze, and every now and then I actually see a real, live bird fly by.

Almost time. I walk to the Window and wait for it.

Off in the distance I can hear the sound of tires on pavement, of wind rushing over the streamlined body of a car. It’s been like this for a few days now. The engine’s whine is joined by a second, and I brace myself for what comes next. Horns blare, tires squeal. I can almost see the rubber smoking as the treads skid across the asphalt, and then the crash comes. It’s louder and more wrenching than I ever could have imagined, metal tearing, glass exploding, and it goes on and on for what seems like forever. I know it’s over in a few seconds, but it feels like the springs have snapped and the clock has stopped. Then merciful silence returns, broken only by the spinning clatter of a hubcap twirling ever slower until even that sound retreats into the back alleys of my mind.

I rest my head in my hands and let my eyes drift over the streets. All is calm, all is bright. And so it will stay for the next few hours. Until the next crash. They’re getting closer now, both in distance and in frequency. Pretty soon it’s going to happen on my street, right in front of this Window, and there’s not one damn thing I can do about it. I turn away from the Window and start to run. I’ve only got seven more rooms in this building, and then it’s on to the next one in this endless series of walls, doors and floors. And Windows. Always the Windows.

Seven rooms fly by in a matter of minutes, it’s amazing what good shape you can get in if all you do is run. All day. Every day. The stairs blur by, the doors fling open, I cross over and it all starts again. It’s actually kind of comforting in a way, the repetition. I imagine a tiger in a cage probably feels the same way as he paces behind the bars.  He likes the motion, he detests the confinement.

And now I’m standing before the last door on the last floor. Same old, same old. Cheap presswood construction, small peephole blinking out like some kind of miniature glass and brass cyclops,
worn carpet.

However, something is different about this door. Something I’ve never encountered before.

There’s a shiny gold plate attached with my name etched on it.

I’m going to have to think a while before I walk through this one.

So, I thought about it. It was a surprisingly hard decision. Things have been pretty good lately, aside from the car crashes, and I’ve been through way too much weirdness to have any faith that this door can lead to anything other than more trials and tribulations. Not that I have any real choice in the matter, things happen around here whether I want them to or not.

So, I take a deep breath, open the door and step through.

Jenna’s looking good tonight, and my spirits are high. After three years, seven months and twenty one days, this building is done. The glass is polished, the floors are waxed and the electricity is on. Tomorrow we cut the ribbon, tonight we celebrate. I’m always amazed by how the final structure rises like a Phoenix from the ashes of the blueprints and the concrete. I marvel at the miles of wiring and tons of steel, and the countless hands that have a part in bringing the building that had previously only existed in my imagination to three dimensional reality. Walking through the door of a finished building is the greatest rush an architect can have.

We take the elevator down to the parking level and I open the car door for Jenna, then cross to the driver’s side. It’s a warm night, so I put the top down. She’s in a good mood as well, we’re both looking forward to the party. The drive over to the restaurant is one of my favorites, a winding
two-laner that twists around a series of small lakes, and as the sun sets the sky lights up like the atmosphere is on fire. The wind rushes through our hair and I wish this night would never end. I glance over at my wife. I want to remember her like this forever. Summer splashed all over her face.

And then, as we round a particularly sharp bend in the road, a cat darts out in front of the car in the opposing lane. It all happens in the slowest of slow motion, and I notice every detail. I can see the cat, an orange tabby sprinting across the highway in full stretch. He’s not going to make it, he waited too long before making his move. I watch in horror as the other driver slams on his brakes, I can see his face, his eyes are wide and white, and I don’t know what the hell possesses him, but he swerves to miss the cat, cranking hard on his steering wheel, and fishtailing his car sharply to the left.

Over the center line, right into our lane.

It all happens in a heartbeat, I never have a chance to react, and then the world explodes in a flash of light and twisting steel, a brilliant burst of stars and finally comforting waves of darkness that wash over me like the tide.

When I wake up, I’m in our home, lying in bed, and Jenna’s sitting at my foot stroking the cat who’s purring contentedly and licking his butt. “Wake up sleepy head,” she says, “just wake up,” and leaning over kisses my forehead. “You’ve had a long, hard night.” “You got that right,” I answer, (she doesn’t know how hard). “You wouldn’t believe the dream I just had.” She just smiles one of her famous smiles and walks over to the window and draws the shades. Brilliant sunlight spills in, brighter than I’ve ever seen before. So bright the whole room is washed out in a white glare. So bright I can’t see her or anything else, I’m floating in a sea of whiteness. So bright...so bright...

“Time to go home, Sweetheart,” she says softly, “I always loved you.”

As the light begins to fade a new room blurrily comes into focus. Not my bedroom. Not the Master Room. I’ve never seen this one before. Normally, I’d say different is good, but that was a whole ’nother life ago. Upon further inspection it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that I’m lying in a hospital bed. The walls are hospital white, and the smell of antiseptic permeates every corner and every fiber in the place. Mix that with the smell of hospital food, and you get an odor that I won’t soon forget. To my left sunshine spills in through the window – that’s window with a small “w” thank you – and an intravenous line snakes up from my left forearm to a bottle hanging from a metal stand. A nurse in pink scrubs gently squeezes my wrist as she takes my pulse. “Welcome back, honey,” she says, “you’ve been out for a long time.”

She’s got that right. After that long, strange trip it’s good to be back in the real world. I savor every sensation. The cotton sheets, the squeaking wheels as an orderly pushes a gurney down the hall, Jerry Springer on the television. OK, there’s a few things I haven’t missed. I drink it all in, lingering on every detail of the room. The beeping heart monitor. The plastic chairs. The fly buzzing crazily through the air like a drunken stunt pilot. Wow, it feels good to be alive. Even the light on the ceiling seems to be a little brighter than normal.

And on the wall near foot of my bed, ensconced in an ornately carved cherrywood frame hangs a beautifully rendered oil painting. A French masterpiece, you might say.

Dogs playing poker.

I wonder if I’m really back.