Creative Writing Collection

The Open Window

Nicolas Iya/ Canceled/ 17 years old

Glancing to his side was a wall. To his opposite, another. Before and behind him - walls. A closed space of solitude. Home.

He stood from his metal seat and collapsed on his bed not two feet away. It was about nine o'clock at night. Curfew had been called - he could hear the guard shouting this command.

Laying there, he didn't even change into his night attire, which hung lonesomely in the closet.

Eyes finding their way to the ceiling. The small foot-by-foot window relaxed him. Eased the tension within. The window was open, but far enough that he couldn't reach, and small enough that he couldn't get out.

"This is home. I am safe...," this boy murmured to himself. Small shreds of memories sped before him - bright lights, soft voices, an awful lot of pain, and the rest seemed gone. And here he laid, pretending as if he knew what was going on but the truth of the matter was that he knew nothing. He had been told so little, and, therefore, understood as little.

'Those voices, I've heard them before,' he thought. His own consciousness, the little voice in his head, was faint.

Concentrating more on the window above, clouds passed by, but not a single star nor piece of night sky showed through. Nothing he knew about, of course. Clouds of smog and pollution, alien to his torn mind.

He remembered, this thing from school... a small, light - no, lights, that hung in the sky.

'What were they called again?'

"Stars," he said. "Balls of... gas... and, chemicals. Far away..." His wording was slow, and it took a while for him to piece things together. But he made the connection, and decided he liked stars.

"S-someday... I want to see... stars."

And with this declaration, he turned in bed, resting his stitched and stapled head gingerly on the soft pillow. He laid there for moments before falling asleep. His dreams were plagued by lights of all kinds, but mostly, he would wake up before the clouds fully disappear.