Camaraderie

02| The Window Left Open

NOTE: I didn't want to write it as a story, but I can't write narrative poems. (Or rather, I haven't tried it before :')). So enjoy whatever this is ✨

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Do you want to know about a young boy who did everything wrong when his intentions were always right?

Do you want to know about the boy who left a window open and as he ran to that room (scented lily, wafting in from the window), thinking that it was quite quiet for a home with a toddler girl, but when he entered, the silence was stagnant, or rather it became worse.

His heart beat loudly in all that emptiness as he cautiously crept over to the window and baby powder tickled his nose and then he looked down and they were only two floors up but he suddenly wished they were higher so he couldn't see limbs flayed and blood seeping into the brick pavement and then he wished he was never up so high and he had just convinced his parents to let them stay on the ground floor.

But the living had become dead, and wishes couldn't come true.

Do you know what happens next? Do you want part two?

The boy does the opposite of what his sister did; for twenty years he slept and woke and ate on the ground floor (although most buildings did not allow it) and he never opened his windows.

He became a game developer and coded games for little girls, who wanted to play dress up and ninja chase, all in his office — on the ground floor, with windows locked.

So he came home the day he finished a game, excited to share it with the little children who had loved all his games till then (he'd tell them very strictly, never go near a window—not even open ones, for windows are but little devils who promise to show the world to you and end up showing the afterlife as you lean through.)

But what is this? Burnt charcoal, curtains fuming. . . Oh no, everything's burning! He hurried to his kitchen and it was on fire, and he hurried to his room with windows bolted and he knew he had to open them but the blood-on-granite image had buried deep in his heart, cold.

The smoke formed a cage around his lungs, ready to crush it as he struggled to open the window. (It would be better to kill the heart first, he thought.) And he wondered if the smoke would kill him, or reopening a window he had left open long ago. Alas! Misery guided his hand and his fingers pried open the gleaming window.

But time had run out, and ironically he died, unlike his sister, this time because he failed to open the window.