The window saw. It saw people come and go. It saw happiness, anger, pain. If you were to look through the window, you could see just about anything.
The window was a gateway. It saw worlds crushed, and worlds built back up. Life, death and destruction. Sometimes it showed things that it was supposed to, like the weed-strewn sidewalk in front of it.
Other times, it showed empty space, sprinkled with stars. A flooded world. A futuristic pet shop. An elephant, silently trumpeting as its herd migrated. A necromancer, bent on power, sending his skeletal armies to conquer anything they could find.
But today, for the first time since its creation, the window showed nothing. An expanse of white, devoid of anything. Passersby wondered at its inherent emptiness. Some fretted, worrying about what the blankness could mean. Children came by to watch the goings on within the window, but quickly became bored.
None owned the window, for it stood free of any barriers or walls. None knew where the window came from, or how it was built. They knew only that one day, it appeared in front of a vacant lot, bolted to a three-legged wooden table. That was all.
Presently, within the white, a dot appeared. It grew closer, becoming less blurry and more pronounced with each step, until it was discernible as a humanoid. It appeared to be calling something undecipherable. Sound does not travel through the window.
The humanoid’s movements became more frantic, panicked, as it searched for something unseeable.
A frequent visitor of the window, bored and requiring entertainment, brought a lawn chair and sat facing the window, watching the humanoid scrabble around. The frequenter was joined by two others, all dissatisfied by their current state of boredom. One coughed.
The humanoid’s head jerked up, and it glanced around. One of the other frequenters laughed. “It heard you.” The person said, jokingly.
The humanoid stood up straight, bones snapping audibly, despite the constant silence of the window and the distance of the humanoid.
One of the frequenters looked at the window oddly. “It’s never made noise before.”
“Yeah, that’s weird.”
The humanoid walked closer to the window, and its features became distinct. It appeared to be a male human, with a sweeping cloak around his shoulders. His eyes were without white, an empty endless black.
He got closer, and closer, still very slowly. The frequenter who had coughed shuffled nervously. “I don’t like this. I’m headed home.”
The frequenter left.
The man in the window did not. He kept walking until his face was directly in front of the glass.
He pulled open the window, a feat no other being had ever accomplished, and stuck his head out. The remaining frequenters screamed.
The man looked directly at them and said seven words in an emotionless voice. “I will be taking my window back.”
He grabbed the sides of the window and pulled it inward. The window popped inside of itself and disappeared. One of the frequenters fainted.
Jack Arnold spends most of his time keeping his three younger brothers wrangled, but when he has time, he writes (or reads, whichever he prefers). Usually about characters he’s created with his brothers, who are an excellent source of inspiration.