The Window

It was cold. Far below freezing. It was much colder this year than last, and although most people were unaware, it was colder than it had ever been in the city of Marion, Massachusetts. Known only to a handful of individuals, there was a place in Washburn park right in between two spindly branches of a grey birch where the spiders loved to make their homes. This time of year, after the first few rushes of heavy rains and snows had fallen on the town, the spider’s webs were decorated with frozen dewdrops. Perfect miniature ornamentation that glimmered and glistened with the slightest rays of sunshine. Even the spiders seemed to be celebrating. 

The intricately woven and delicately jeweled webs could not be seen at this time of night, however, despite the biting clarity of the Winter air. It was odd. Of all the years he had spent in Marion, the Man couldn’t remember a Winter when the skies weren’t heavy with foul weather. And yet the cold seemed to seep right through his overcoat as if he weren’t wearing one. For a split second, it crossed his mind that the cold was sentient. That it was trying to overtake his body, infiltrate the warmth of his skin and make him as miserable and lonely as the dewdrops that hang on spider’s webs. 

The thought passed. 

The Man continued to walk. To an onlooker, he was just a man strolling down the sidewalk of an otherwise empty street, hands in the pockets of his overcoat. Nothing special, really. And in truth, he wasn’t particularly special in any way. In essence, he was a normal man. That same onlooker might assume that the man was heading to a New Year’s Eve party at the house of a friend, or that he was walking back home after a few hours of celebration. In actuality, the Man was doing neither of these things. He was not walking back to his house after a tiresome night, and he was most certainly not heading to a party. The Man hated parties, especially holiday parties. In his opinion, parties were silly and bothersome, and he considered them a waste of his precious time. And anyways, even if he had wanted to attend any kind of New Year’s Eve celebration on this particular night, he simply would not have the time. The task at hand bore too great an importance. 

He hurried his pace slightly, took his frozen and hurting hand out of his barely-warm jacket pocket, glanced at the watch on his wrist. Twenty minutes until midnight. He accelerated his pace further. Not only was he very, very cold, but he was also now slightly concerned about reaching his destination at the designated time. Rarely was the Man ever tardy, and he would not allow for tardiness tonight, especially considering the gravity of his objective. He most certainly could not be late. 

I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date! The Man grimaced. The animated image of the White Rabbit’s annoyingly fluffy figure had somehow managed to worm its way out of a mental storage bin, slip in between the cracks of his consciousness, and was now jumping and bumbling comically across the forefront of his mind. Alice In Wonderland had been one of his favorite movies as a child, but he most definitely could not afford himself this lack of focus now. He forcefully shoved the image out of his brain. He withdrew his hands from his jacket pockets once more and began to rub them together in the hopes of making them at least a little less freezing, though there wasn’t much of an impact that could be made at this point; he could barely feel his hands at all. He checked his watch again. Seventeen minutes. No time to say hello, Goodbye! I’m late, I’m late, I’m late! The White Rabbit peeked out from behind the Man’s ruby red curtain of focus. The Man sighed. 

Just four or five more minutes and he would be there. He quickened his pace further, now walking rather briskly. It would only take a few minutes to get to the house, but he needed time to prepare mentally. These things were never easy, no matter what or who the objective was, but he would need more time on this one to accommodate for his lack of attention. 

The Man didn’t know why he was so nervous. Maybe it was because he had never had an assignment in Marion, let alone this close to his childhood home. Maybe it was because he would much rather be at home in his apartment in Boston, however sleepless and miserable he might be in his own bed. Maybe because it was New Year’s Eve, and someone would see him leaving the house after the job was done. No, no, that wasn’t going to be a problem. There were loads of people leaving houses all across town, and no one would be looking outside during the countdown anyways. Right?

“Papers for a dollar.” 

The Man started with a jump. His thoughts of the assignment had been interrupted by the rather raggedy-looking fellow who was now leaning casually against a street post with a stack of newspapers bundled under one arm. Before the Man could process what was happening, he found himself speaking.

“What?” It was more of an exclamation of surprise rather than an actual question, but the newspaper man answered anyways.

“Newspapers,” the newspaper man said, “One for a dollar.” 

The raggedy newspaper man looked at the face of the bewildered figure before him. He would never say it aloud, let alone to his face, but the Man looked somewhat sickly. Pale as snow, and far more gaunt than he had ever hoped to see anyone to be. The sallow depths of his face that descended back into his skull underneath where the cheekbone ended seemed to scream that the young Man standing before him had not eaten in days. His nose was long and bold, but not offensive to the eye. His light eyes gaped like those of a fish who had not seen the light of day in a very long while, almost childlike. Once upon a time, that face might’ve been noble, handsome even. 

“You alright, kid?”

It was a genuine question. At the sight of the person before him, the raggedy newspaper man became rather concerned. The bewilderment and surprise on the face of the Man before him did not fade. Before the raggedy newspaper man could say anything else, the Man continued walking along the sidewalk, as if he hadn’t heard the newspaper man’s question. The raggedy newspaper man looked at him for a bit as he resumed his path. It was bad enough that the raggedy newspaper man was forced to sell newspapers on New Year’s Eve at this time of night, but seeing that young Man’s face had made him feel even colder and more desperate than he had felt even just a few minutes earlier. He hugged the stack of newspapers under his arm tighter and tried to push the Man’s face out of his mind. He found that he could not. 

While the interaction with the raggedy newspaper fellow had only lasted about thirty seconds, the Man felt that it had thrown off his timeline. He could feel the eyes of the newspaper man following him down the sidewalk. He checked his watch again. Thirteen minutes. Shit. He could almost see the house in his mind’s eye. Just a few more seconds and he would be there, and this uncomfortable ordeal would be done and over with. Down the street, to the left, near the bushes… 

He had to stop himself from running. If the raggedy newspaper man (or anybody else, for that matter) was still watching him, he couldn’t run. Not because it would look suspicious, that boat had already sailed, but because they might see it. Walking, the Man could conceal it well enough under his winter coat, but he didn’t know if he could hide the outline of it while he ran. If anyone got their hands on it, all the Man’s efforts up until this point would go to hell. His employers would be after him, civilization would be after him, and the already wretched Man would have nowhere to hide. Just a few more minutes, and he wouldn’t have to worry about it any longer. 

The Man turned left. If his memory served him correctly, it was the fourth house down from the corner. He glanced cautiously at the windows of the houses on either side of the street. Luckily for him, the first six houses on both sides of the street had their curtains drawn. In the windows of the second house down, opposite to where he stood, the Man could see a string of lights that sat gently against the fabric of the curtains. The sounds of a lively party filled the background, chatter and apparent merriment that streamed from one of the other houses. The Man could no longer feel himself walking. He looked down for a moment and saw that his feet were moving, but the movements that normally jolted through his slim body as he walked, the thud of his shoes on the ground with each step, was not there. Instead, he found himself gliding. Although he didn’t know it, the raggedy newspaper fellow was right, the Man hadn’t eaten in ages. Maybe the hunger was finally getting to his head, and his body was finally slowing. In any case, it didn’t matter now. The Man needed to do this. If not for his employers and for the money, then for the girl.  

The fourth house down from the corner was the same as he had left it nearly a decade previously. The brush on the two sides of the house was perhaps more neatly manicured than he remembered, and the fence leading to the back yard had been replaced with a wooden gated trellis, but it was otherwise the same. The Man scanned his surroundings one last time. God, he wished that no one saw. Such a reprimand he would get. Hands still numb, he unlocked the gate without so much as a squeak. Somehow, he felt a slight swell of pride at this. Despite the fact that no one paid any attention to them when he was in public, the Man had very delicate and elegant hands. When he was young, his mother had once said that he had the hands of a musician. He exhaled slightly with what would have been a chuckle if he wasn’t trying to be quiet. Look what my hands are doing now, Mom. 

He slipped into the backyard of the property, silently closing the gate behind him. Hugging the brush and trimmed hedges, he prayed that the new family living there hadn’t installed one of those new security systems or a set of automatic lights. He looked at his wrist. Seven minutes. 

Still hugging the hedges, he looked up at the balcony. The curtains were only partially drawn, disclosing what would have been a heart-warming scene to anyone else. The Man gazed up through the balcony door windows at the plain but homey living room, with lights strung up against the spotless glass. A small girl, maybe five or six, sat at a wooden table, giggling in fits as her mother tickled her sides from behind the chair in which she sat. The two were very obviously mother and daughter; the same shining auburn hair, emerald eyes, button noses that were just slightly too small for their faces. The Man did not find the scene heartwarming, in the same way that he did not find parties enjoyable. Knowing the girl’s fate had he not been sent there, he hated the situation all the more. At least it would be fixed by the end of the night. 

Despite the cold, he unzipped his coat. The parcel he had been carrying underneath his jacket was wrapped in brown paper. Ironic, the Man thought. A late Christmas present. He dropped to his knees, and with his delicate hands, gently placed the package underneath one of the trimmed hedges as he had been instructed. He had been told by his employers that it would help him on assignments like this, but he never noticed any difference. It had crossed his mind before that the packages were a way through which they could track the individuals. Whatever the purpose of the whatever-it-was wrapped in brown paper, he was still as wretched and low-spirited after the assignments as he was before them. At this point, it all felt the same to him.  

The Man checked his watch one last time. Four minutes. 

The Man had done this many times before, and yet it still remained one of the most difficult tasks he’d ever done in his life. Sometimes he used his abilities for good causes, and other times not. Most of the time, he would come away from assignments with tears all down his face. Tonight, at least, he was doing something noble. Small, but honorable. Not that it hurt any less afterwards, but the Man at least felt a little better doing it. 

He centered his focus. No more White Rabbits peeking out from behind red curtains. He turned from the hedge and looked up at the small child inside the house. Now, the mother was fixing the lights outlining the windows on the other side of the living room. The girl sat joyfully playing with the yellow half-used party streamer roll sitting on the table. The Man sighed. Here goes, he thought. 

All at once, the air seemed to become still. The lively noises of the party in the house across the street that had been excitedly buzzing in the nightly atmosphere suddenly fell to nothingness. This was one of those moments in the universe when everything seemed to grind to a sudden, deafening halt. Unbeknownst to everyone, even the Man, the glistening dewdrops on the spider’s webs in between those two spindly branches of a grey birch in Washburn park stopped glistening. At that same moment, an elderly lady in the house a few blocks down the street teetered on the edge of the top step in a flight of stairs, a horrible sense of dread and fear entering her mind. A young boy in his dark room on the property directly behind where the Man was standing noticed a slight movement out of the corner of his eye; a shadow that inexplicably shifted without warning or reason. For that tiniest moment in the small Massachusetts town of Marion, life’s ever-spinning vinyl record skipped, as if someone had jumped in the next room over. The small girl in the house felt it too. She looked up from the roll of yellow streamer. Through the glass of the balcony doors, across the yard, she stared directly into the light eyes of the Man who, in that split second, had just saved her mother an entire lifetime of despair. 

And then life’s vinyl record resumed spinning. The man, who had not moved from where he stood in the yard, dropped his gaze from the girl’s emerald green eyes, walked back to the trellis, unlocked the gate, and walked off into the night. She would never see him again. What he had done was minute, the smallest of changes, a mere quarter-inch difference that had saved her life. Despite not moving from where he stood, the window to her room was now firmly closed, when it had been just slightly open before. The young girl’s mother would later linger on the fact that she didn’t remember closing the window, and then she would shrug it off, her mind turning to the tasks of tomorrow. 

The Man’s employers hadn’t told him what the purpose of closing the window was, but they conveyed to him the importance of doing so. The Man, after being asked to do despicable things with an ability he didn’t fully understand, did not hesitate to agree when asked if he wanted to save a child’s life. He couldn’t see it, but little girl had smiled as he turned around and walked away. 

As he walked, he felt himself completely drained of energy. Even just moving a window a quarter-inch, he found, took a toll on him. However, the Man’s tiredness was in part lessened by the thought that he had done something good. The cold was still biting, but on that walk back down the road, he didn’t care to put his coat back on. There was no doubt in his mind now. The cold was indeed alive. The jacket was no use now, frost had already overtaken his body, infiltrated the warmth of his skin. However, it wasn’t the cold that made him sad. He was already as miserable and lonely as the dewdrops that hang on spider’s webs even without its help. 

As he passed the house party, he could make out the cheers of party-goers, each second drawing closer to midnight.

 “Nine!… Eight!... Seven!...”

He thought of the little girl again. And of the raggedy newspaper man. The Man pondered what he thought they must be doing at this very moment. 

“Six!... Five!... Four!...”

The world seemed a blur to the Man. Whether from the fatigue of closing the window or from the laziness of his dreary eyes, he could not tell. This town that he had known for all his living years felt suddenly foreign. There was nothing left for him here. And there was nothing he could do to change it. 

“Three!... Two!...” The party-goers grew louder with each passing moment. 

Happy New Year, he thought dimly.

“One!”