The Rose Window
You approach the rose window with careful footing, doing your best to avoid sinking your feet into the pink, fiberglass insulation. The window is beautiful, a stained glass reproduction of a searching eye. Although the design is peculiar, you can’t help but admire the craftsmanship.
Leaning forward until your forehead is a breath away from the glass, you look out of the window and down towards the ground. You see someone approaching the house. You see yourself approaching the house.
Incredulous, you push your hand against the glass to lean in closer, try and get a better view. As you watch yourself approach, you see a ripple across the window and suddenly several of you seem to branch out in a blur of motion from the singular you who gawks up at the house. Each of the blurred bodies moves in different pathways around the grounds. You press your other hand to the window frame to see if you can’t get an even better look but the motionless you stares up at the window. The other bodies fall away.
You hear a crack. Something in your stomach flips, and you experience the vertiginous notion of falling. You lean back and glance at your hands. The lead soldering from the rose window is winding its way up your wrist like blackened veins. The hand against the frame of the window is sinking into the wood. You look down. Your knees have been enveloped in the plywood walkway. As you watch on, your whole body becomes melded with the house.