In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Through the Window.”
Through the Window, Darkly … (Short Story Response)
©August 17th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
It was autumn, and the pre-dawn darkness was absolute. A skunk crept on silver-dark feet outside. Looking up from my physics textbook, I stared at it, fascinated, as I always am, by nocturnal creatures.
I left my book and notes, and wandered towards through the window. I’d been up all night, preparing for an exam the next day. One of my failings is that I suffer from insomnia and a hyperactive imagination. This is great for doing work, and for studying when one is on overdrive, as I was, but not quite so nice when one crashes and burns after a binge of sleeplessness three nights in a row, as I’ve done frequently.
So, perhaps that is why I could swear I saw two hands scrabbling about in the grass outside my window — just two pale, expressive hands, decked with gleaming rings and brightly tipped with red-polish, wandering about in the bright light spilling out of my living room into the darkness beyond.
I froze. A scream gathered itself into a tight fist and jammed into my gullet. A strangulated “meep” squeaked out. Momentarily paralyzed, I came to myself, turned, skidded into the kitchen, armed myself with my biggest knife, and returned to the living room. Standing at the French windows which led into the yard, I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a menacing snarl. A horrible, guttural noise emerged from somewhere, and I realized it was from my throat.
The hands scrabbling in the dirt paused. The fingers waved in my direction, then walked crab-wise towards me. The fingers looked … friendly?
My heart, which had been beating one hundred and fifty beats a minute now slowed to a nice, round hundred. Still too fast, but more from adrenaline now, than from fear — still, I didn’t let my guard down. One never knows. Strange hands in one’s yard, glimpsed through a window in the pre-dawn dark, cannot be fully trusted.
I watched them approach me, and unconsciously, my grip on the knife tightened. One cannot undo billennia of fear in the human organism in a matter of minutes — and fear translates into violence, if not into flight. (Perhaps, that’s why aliens leave our planet alone. “Don’t go to Earth. They have humans there, and you know what that means, right?”)
The hands, having found two small July 4th-type American flags on the dirt directly outside my window (How, you ask? Beats me! I had no idea how any of this made sense) semaphored, “We come in peace.”
At least, that’s what I thought it semaphored. How was I to know otherwise? I thought, Perhaps they are aliens. Two of them, by the looks of it. Maybe, they do come in peace.
I patted the area where my heart beat a steady drum, and opened the window …
_______________________________________________________________________________________
*******town Police Bulletin:
A newspaper delivery man found a young man dead at the open door of his house on Main Street. He had appeared to have crawled to the door. His eyes were open. There was no sign of violence. Strangely, there were two small American flags stuck in both his hands, which were clenched shut. Two fingers were found on the scene. Investigation is in progress.