The Gremlin's Wings

With a start, James woke up in a cold sweat, eyes blinking at the cool twilight light of the morning around him. A shiver ran down his spine as the cool air of the room mixed with the liquid sweat over his body served to chill his already aching body, telltale signs of the dreams he was having the night before; the nightmares had consumed him in fear, as he could tell by the thumping sound of his heart bouncing around his chest.

He was upright in bed, and not to disturb his wife, he cautiously slipped out of the covers and walked quietly into the dim hallway that led to the living room. They were not rich, but the apartment suited their needs… and the large bay window in the front gave them a great view of the city lights. It was among these that he began gazing, eyes falling on the numerous lights that he could see just from his window, trying to clear his head of the terror that befell him just moments ago.

Dreams were always hard on him, he had to admit to himself. Tonight he had dreamed about some creature trying to eat him, chasing him around and around the city in his car. He had awoken when in the dream he was about to crash the vehicle into a concrete barrier. It wasn’t there one moment, and then it was.His mind raced over the dream and kept trying to decide whether it was a mistake or not on his part. Dream or not, in his solitary contemplation staring out that bay window, he was going to arrive at the truth.

Observing the world at six in the morning had some unexpected results. As James’ brain came to its own conclusions, his eye wandered over the windows that he could see. Not being a voyeur, just curious about his surroundings and the people he hadn’t met (and probably never would). Are their lives better than his? Are they worse? It somehow calmed him to do so. Maybe it was the constant digest of tabloids in supermarket lineups or newsstands that got him into this habit, but he would do this every once in a while.

In one, he could see a person, what he assumed to be a female from the colors the person was wearing, was busy in the kitchen preparing herself for the day. He couldn’t see the fine details, but the way she moved around the kitchen, she looked like she was experienced with it. Whether this woman was happy or not in her daily routine or not, James didn’t know.

James’ eye wandered to another window, where a man sat at a table with food and reading a paper. He was quite still, and James could tell that he was particularly engrossed in the subject on the paper. James couldn’t tell what he was reading, of course, but the act of reading the paper must have been particularly interesting: the entire time James watched, which was less than a minute, he hadn’t moved or changed the page.

After a brief glance around, James’ eyes came across another window, where he saw two people embracing in their living room. They looked like they were dressed up, maybe just getting home from a night of partying, James guessed. Whatever it was, he didn’t know. Suddenly, they separated, and one led the other away to another room and the lights shut off. James just smirked for a moment and then looked around again, looking for the next moment of humanity he could see.

The next one was dark save for the eerie light of a television casting shadows across a room, playing across the face of the person watching, who James could barely see. Perhaps this person was a little too engrossed in his show, or not, he couldn’t tell. It made James think of his own television, sitting on the stand facing the couch in the living room. How many hours had he wasted away just watching the device, or thinking about what was on it.

As James’ mind wandered, so did his eyes, eventually to another window with a curious sight there: a man was standing there, dressed much like himself, and he was looking out the window at other places around that he could see. James’ heart raced as he saw this man, thinking he might just be like him. In his mind, the man was trying to search for peace himself, taking comfort in the surroundings of concrete, metal and glass that made up the city, and searching for signs of life to affirm his own is not alone in the world.

“James?”

The voice startled James out of his thoughts and he turned to face his wife. “It’s early, and you don’t have to be up,” he replied in a cracking voice. His vocal chords hadn’t woken up with him, it seemed, and he cleared his throat.

His wife shook her head. “I felt you get up, and I came out to see if there was a problem,” she explained, followed by a yawn.

“I…” James started, glancing back out the window again and trying to find the man that he was looking at not a few seconds before, but James couldn’t locate him, lost in the sea of glass and concrete set before him. “I was just…”

“You had a bad dream again?” his wife asked.

James’ only reply was a nod.

He felt a hand touch his back. “Come back to bed, and let’s talk about it,” she was saying, gently guiding him back to the bedroom.

With a last glance out the window, James nodded and allowed himself to be led away. He threw one last look out the window at the coming day, and then came with his wife into the bedroom.

“What were you looking at, love?” his wife asked, curious at the glance

James paused for a moment, then smiled. “Just looking through windows at big city life,” he said. “And realizing you can be surrounded by people and not know a thing about them.”