Staring

That window cut through the atmosphere like a serrated blade. Its dingy age ate the paint in ugly designs and its presence peeled his piece of mind like a sour orange, waiting to burst sharp, scratching, putrid juices under teeth of realization. There it stood gaping out, an unmoving, square block of ice that bit through an old man’s neurons. 

Just an hour ago, soft jazzy tunes had played in the small room as he put down his newest glass of whiskey. Remembrance of the good old days⁠—-if one could call them that⁠—-was always a sure road to the bottom of a bottle or two for him. Reclining in the worn-out chair he had patted 'Bullet', crooked fingers scratching the haggard cat’s white ears, as long lines of scar stretched harshly across his skin. For a long moment, his eyes had lingered on another bottle before he turned away. Creaking bones had pushed out of the chair as drunkenness danced through his posture, in the tremble of his arms, and in his hazy eyes. The worn-out wood had moaned beneath his unsteady feet as he batted away dizziness and walked towards that singular window, intent on suffering the bone-piercing cold air just to clear his head. 

Only to come to an abrupt stop. 

And so now here he was, clutching his fully loaded rifle before him like a talisman, hands and face paling by the second. Cursing. But not loudly, not enough for the words to jump out that wretched hole. 

It was wrong to blame a window he knew. What could it do? Not show what lay beyond? But here they were an old man and an old window. Staring. 

Because beyond that crumbling window was a wild landscape marred only by a single odd object. 

A car. 

A garishly painted rusting blue Cadillac. 

Worse, a familiar garishly painted rusting blue Cadillac. 

There it sat in the snow. As if it belonged there. As if he didn’t live deep in the nowhere. 

Perhaps it wasn’t the window’s fault, after all, it was the porch light that illuminated it, reeling the car in with its golden circular net. He was paying the price for forgetting to turn it off. If it hadn’t been on he could have ignored that, let the cold air punch him, and gone back inside. Cocooned in his peace instead of the freezing air squeezing his body, the window still flung open, left so in his panic to get away. 

The moment before he had recognized that car already shocked him. The possibility of something being there, at midnight, outside his lonely house was so unbelievable that for a second he had just stood there, heart ramming his chest cavity as panic slithered down his spine. Chilled him more than the frigid air. Expecting to find at most a dying or dead frozen animal⁠—-maybe a deer from the surrounding forest⁠—-he had leaned out shaking his head for clarity. 

His home was by all means little more than an abandoned shack. Rundown and creaking, its outside appearance hinting more at being an abandoned house than an occupied one. It was a carefully crafted place suspended in isolation. 

By want and by necessity. 

And that car was here. Parked parallel to his window. 

Exactly the way he used to. 

Tired, his shivering fingers tightened on the rifle. In the dead night that surrounded his home, how did the car appear? He was sure with the certainty that his skills still afforded him⁠—-there had been no sound. But more than the improbability of this situation⁠ he was afraid of the trickle of familiarity that scratched at the back of his mind. 

There were only two options now, he could stay inside till morning hits the house or he can go outside and investigate. 

The former path was hell, to cower inside as both his mind and his pride dissolved into hours of tension. Choosing it was unthinkable. And really why should he hide inside, it was him and he had a gun. He had done worse things once, hadn’t he? Enough that the red sludge still clung to his legs. 

A minute of deep breaths steadied his hands and feet, standing up he aimed the rifle before him as he kicked open his door. The wood banged against the wall like a gunshot into the night. He followed it up with a real one aiming at an old hulking tree. 

A warning. 

The sound pierced through the night, rubbing raw against his strung-up nerves. But he was steady, he had to be, and the fear ebbed and flowed through his body like the peace of meditation. There was no room for mistakes. Not with something this bizarre. Bizarre things happened to those with funny friends or funny enemies and he was well aware which category he had efficiently courted. 

He was old. Worn and torn by his younger self that did deeds spitting on consequences. His hands weren’t what they used to be, neither were his lungs. His time outside needed to be quick, so he hastened towards the car, shining the torch he had grabbed on, around, and, under it. Glancing around he carefully moved closer and peered into the front seat and found the keys dangling from the ignition. 

He fought back his upset and took stock of his surroundings and started shouting looking for a driver. Hurriedly checking around the house, he wandered in the night. There was no person, no clues. No oddities. 

There was nothing 

Just a blue car, its tread marks branching out into the night. 

His breath released ghostly dragons into the air as he came back to the car, trapped in his unease. Looking around again, he fired one more shot into the sky, that was followed only by silence and the sound of his panting. 

That whisper of connection sermonizing in his brain was an unwanted herald. In the arena of his skull, familiarity was another name for terror. Not the fear that rattled the breath momentarily but the freezing ice that sliced through the veins, making home inside the body it had hollowed out. 

It was a confrontation with the willfully forgotten parts. 

Still, as much as he wished to ignore that car and the ghosts of unwanted and erased memories, he could not just leave it be. 

Who knew for what purpose it had been left here. He had to find out. With that resolve in mind, his body aching with the weight of all his 60 years he carefully opened the door. 

The interior proved to be just as garish as he had expected, matching the outside perfectly. Yellow and musty, the inside smelled like too many unwashed clothes. Nose wrinkled, he thoroughly checked everything. The compartments, the seats. The floor. There was nothing except for the incessant itch in his brain that grew stronger and stronger the longer he stayed inside. A rabid animal eating through his skull. 

This wasn’t just familiar, it was the same car. 

He twisted in the front seat, hand gripping the door handle. There it was, his window, exactly where he knew it would be. Parallel to the driver’s window, optimal as always for looking. For staring. Hunting. 

A shudder passed through him as his gaze remained fixed on his window. Observing the warmth spilling from inside, the soft wallpaper, the corner of his desk. For a second he saw himself, face stripped of safety, trembling eyes of a wild animal gazing at the mouth of a gun. Gazing back at him. 

He snapped his neck away, eyes clenched shut, and then sniffed. Troubled. There was something, something so familiar that it hadn’t registered. The smell was unmistakable. 

That odor had simply slid down his throat with the ease of a lifetime of practice. Even identified, it did not make him retch. 

But it did freeze him in place. He breathed through his mouth and counted down the seconds. A last desperate attempt to deny reality. Because he knew that smell and he knew why this car was here if hadn't already the moment he saw it. 

Steadying his innards, gut awfully tight he got out. Sluggish. Shaking with knowledge.

He rested his head on the hood of the trunk. 

He had no right to this earthquake inside. No right to this boiling panic. 

He should have known that he had traded safely away long ago, it seems that somewhere on the bridge between now and then he had forgotten. Like a fool. 

Resignation painted his figure in bold strokes. Alone at midnight, tautness pulled at his muscles as he popped open the trunk. Bracing himself. 

Splayed inside⁠—-by hands of indifference⁠—-was a body. The details of it escaped him. Escaped even reality, mangled as it was. Through the trembling that wrecked him and the choked breath that left his lips, his eyes remained fixed on one thing and one thing only. 

The symbol carved on its back. 

A symbol echoed by his own skin. 

The tattoo on his back throbbed. A living breathing monstrosity of interlocking black lines. 

Accepted once, with confidence. 

A crippling force of terror. 

He slammed the hood down. There was no point in running. Slowly he trudged back into his house, collapsing on the chair he had positioned across the window. Lifting a new glass of whiskey he put Bullet in his lap. 

An old man and an old window.

Staring