Staring

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. He had been born at the beginning of all this, the same as her. In fact, the same day, in the same hour. One week later, the storms had come. The Mistress treated her as if she had brought them.

The window. The window obsessed her. It was the only one in the manor, and their only view of the world beyond those stone walls. Every day, all day, he sat beside it and just stared. He never spoke; he just stared and stared. She often sat with him and stared, as well. Not that there was anything worth seeing out there, just a long, barren plain that stretched on forever, a field of perpetual tan beneath a sky that was too blue and a sun that was too red - the landscape of a forgotten world.

She didn’t care much to look at it, and she wasn’t allowed the time to, anyway. The Mistress kept her busy with chores. Every day, she scrubbed the manor from top to bottom. At the end of the day, she had to wash the window. It must be kept spotless for him. Afterward, she would sit with him for exactly an hour before the Mistress started screaming at her to attend to some other task. Always an hour, no more, no less. She was forbidden to touch him, but she would speak to him. Any thoughts that came into her head she would share with him, although he never replied. He just stared and stared, never speaking a word. She stared with him, although she never saw anything but vast, empty space. She much preferred to stare at him, with his beautiful, milky skin and his wide blue eyes. Such a perfect profile was not to be found anywhere. She fancied he must look equally nice from the front, but she didn’t know, never having seen him from any other angle. Settled as he was in that little chair in the corner, she could see only one side of him, but that was enough for her.

At the end of the hour, she would always ask him the same question. “What do you see out there? Is there something I’m missing?” He never answered, of course, but she asked him just the same.

~

The Mistress stared at the picture on her wall. She could still remember when the world looked like that. When that field beyond the window was alive with grass and flowers. When butterflies danced over it in the warm summer breezes and young lovers sat together in the shade of friendly trees. She had been young then. She had loved someone. She had been happy, but that girl no longer existed. She was hardly even human now. A soulless being, dead behind the eyes and empty in the soul, she walked the halls of this manor, concerned only that it be always spotless. That she could control, if nothing else. She could crush that girl under her feet and enjoy seeing someone else suffer as she suffered, and as her child suffered. She should sit with him, staring, but she couldn’t bear to look at what her world had become. She preferred to stay here and stare at this picture. It was a window to the world she used to know - a world of happiness and love and laughter.

She could still remember the night the storm came. The girl was just a baby, born a week before. The mother was dead, worn out from birthing the child, and she had been left with her. The sparrows were flying in from the south. It was the first day of spring, and the flowers were beginning to grow in the field beyond the manor. Her dress was tied up with ribbons, and she ran through the tall grass barefoot, gathering blossoms to wear in her hair. He was coming that day. They were to be married. Her life was just beginning.

To her dying day, she would never forget the moment it began. All around her were the soft sounds of spring - the drone of bees, the rustle of leaves, the soft whispers of wind-blown grass, and the ripple of a nearby brook. Then, all in a moment, the earth was deadly still, as if time had stopped. Suddenly, the sky was rent apart with a horrible, unearthly scream, loud enough to echo around the whole world. It was as if all the tormented souls of the underworld had gathered together in one, awful voice.

She looked across the field, and, in the distance, she saw him. Her beloved had been coming to meet her. But she saw something else, beyond him, low on the horizon. A great host of blood red clouds, rushing across the sky like an army of stallions, stealing away every sign of blue before she could blink. Then, from those clouds came one great bolt of red lightning, and it struck the very spot where he stood. Her own scream rivaled the one that had hailed the storm.

She ran. She could remember nothing but the howling and screaming of wind in her ears, the slashing of hard rain, and the blinding flashes of red light as she ran and ran, back to the manor. She never knew how she reached the door. She should have been dead before she got halfway, but, somehow, she survived. Shuddering and sobbing, she shut the large door behind her and bolted it. She ran to her own small room and rushed to the window.

The sight before her was blazoned in her memory. The grass and trees were gone. There was nothing but red everywhere she looked. The angry red clouds covered the low-hanging sky; flashes of red lightning fell mercilessly on the field, destroying everything they touched. Then, the most horrible noise erupted as hail began to fall from the sky. Could it be called hail? It seemed that red stones were raining down. How the manor survived, she could not say. The rocks were large and hard enough to destroy the roof, but it held.

For hours it went on. Perhaps it was days. She knew not. She had collapsed in a chair and watched, in a numb sort of shock, as the world around her was destroyed. Then, all at once, it was over. The red clouds just seemed to vanish, and the chaos had ended. That door she had bolted behind her was gone, as was every other way out. Nothing was left but the window, and beyond it was the picture that remained there to this day. A long, empty field of nothingness, and over it, that too blue sky and that huge red sun, burning endlessly in the sky, never changing. And so it had stayed for fifteen years.

~

“Girl, if those carpets aren’t on the floor, cleaned, you’ll sorely regret it!”

The girl cringed. The Mistress was always a terror, but she had never seen her in such bad temper before. Thankfully for her, she had gotten an early start today, and the carpets had been laid out for the past two hours. The Mistress stepped into the hallway and surveyed it with a critical eye. The carpets were laid out and, when she felt them, quite dry. She looked closer, searching for something to criticize. However, to her disappointment, there was nothing. Then, she spotted the girl cowering in the corner.

“Why are you lurking in the shadows over there, girl?!” she snapped.

The girl quickly scuttled out of the shadows. “I didn’t want to be in your way, Mistress,” she replied, dropping a curtsy.

“Well, don’t loiter like that. It makes you look like you’re up to something!”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl replied.

“Have you attended to all your other chores?” the Mistress demanded.

“Yes, Mistress,” she replied quickly. “All is taken care of.”

“And have you cleaned the window?” she asked.

The girl trembled. “I… I was just going to do it now.”

“Well, do it then!” the Mistress barked. “And be quick about it!”

“Yes, Mistress,” the girl said again before scuttling away.

The Mistress huffed and walked back into her room to gaze at her picture again. That was all she really cared to do.

~

The last speck was gone, and the window was once again a perfect pane of crystal-clear glass. He could see every dismal detail of that awful expanse now. She set her towel down with a sigh and sank to the floor. Crossing her legs in front of her, she looked up at his perfect, nearly-porcelain face.

“I would so like someone to talk to,” she said. “Someone who would answer, I mean. Not that I don’t enjoy talking to you, but it would be so nice to speak with someone. To actually have a conversation. Something other than just talking at you or being yelled at by her. Nothing against her, of course. I know she’s your mother, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I just wish she could lower her voice once in a while, or at least say something to me that wasn’t an order or a complaint. She needn’t treat me as if I caused this. I wonder what did cause it. Do you know? – You probably do. No one could possibly be so quiet if he didn’t know absolutely everything there is to know. I’ll bet you hold all the secrets of the world behind those empty eyes of yours…. Oh, why won’t you answer me?!” With this last question, she jumped to her feet in frustration. Her eyes blazed with fifteen years of frustration and loneliness.

“Fifteen years I’ve done this! Fifteen years! Why do I bother to come in here and tell you all the thoughts in my poor little head? You don’t care! You don’t care for anything but that window! Staring, staring, staring! Never a thing but staring out that window! There’s nothing to look at! It’s gone! There is no world anymore! How can you bear to stare out at that nothingness? You never move! You never speak! You hardly seem to breathe! What does it all mean?! I’m sick and tired of it!”

She paused in her rant, red in the face and breathing hard. Then, she slowly raised her hand before her face and looked at it. “And why am I forbidden to touch you? What would happen if I did? Would that get a reaction out of you, you soulless creature? Would that waken you from this trance? After all, why shouldn’t I? Why should I do anything I’m told? So what if she kills me! I’ve nothing to look forward to! Nothing but this life of nothingness. No tomorrow, no yesterday, scarcely a now! It’s all the same, so why should I care?”

Haltingly, she reached toward those smooth, white hands, perfectly folded in his lap. “If I touch you, will you see me? Will you finally turn your head and let me look into those beautiful eyes of yours? Surely you must know I’m in love with you!” The words were out of her mouth before she even knew what they meant. Had she said those words? She, herself? Poor little nobody, cleaning the halls of this manor, day after day? Had she told him she loved him? Did she even know what love was? She didn’t know, but she felt it, and the words just came. She closed her eyes and took a long, shuddering breath. “Now or never,” she whispered to herself. Then, she stretched out her hand and clasped it over his.

Her breath caught. There was no warmth in this hand. It was cold and smooth and… strangely inhuman. She could have sworn her heart didn’t beat as she slowly ran her hand over his. Why, this wasn’t even skin! It felt like…. She couldn’t say what it felt like, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t human. The blood rushed to her head, and tiny spots danced in front of her eyes, but her body could not or would not allow her to faint. Mind racing, she grabbed the back of the chair and turned it to face her. She stumbled back, pressing her hands to her mouth. The eyes staring into hers were empty. Empty as the glass beads in that vase in the Mistress’s room. Her breath failed her. She could hardly think, then a voice sounded from the other side of the room.

“So, now you know.”

She whirled around to find the Mistress standing in the doorway. “You have discovered the truth about my child.”

The girl’s voice caught in her throat. “It… it… it’s not real,” she faltered. “It’s only… a doll.”

“He is not!” the Mistress hissed, crossing the room and grabbing the girl’s arm. “He is my child, my soul, my all. The likeness of the man I loved. The man who was my whole existence. The man who was destroyed by that first bolt of lightning. I told you not to touch him! I told you not to disturb his rest! Do you realize what you have done?! You have destroyed everything! He was the last link to the outside world. As long as you believed there was another, there was hope. Hope for you and hope for the world! Now you know, and your last link with the outside world has been severed. Now you will never look on that world again.”

She shoved the girl’s arm away and swept from the room. The door shut behind her with a sickening bang. Frightened by her words, the girl grabbed his chair and turned it back to the window. What had the Mistress meant? She didn’t know, but she felt a desperate need to put things back as they were. She had to put him back where he could look to the outside world, but in a moment, she saw it was too late.

The window was changing. The glass was growing dark and cloudy. Suddenly, it rapidly began to shrink, as though the wall were eating it up. In the blink of an eye, it was down to almost nothing. With a strangled cry, the girl threw herself at the wall and desperately scrabbled at the tiny square of window that was left. That view she had hated so much before was now the most important thing in the world to her, but her efforts were to no avail. The last bit of light died scarcely a moment after her fingers reached the wall. Then all was darkness. Fruitlessly, she beat her fists against the stone wall, her agonized cries echoing around the room. Finally, the lost child sank to the floor, defeated….

And the boy just stared and stared.