
Shrujana Ramalingam
Me and My ghost
8
Prose
We live on the first floor, overlooking another building, its windows directly opposite ours. One look at it and you'll be convinced that you are being watched. Not by the people living on the other side, but by the window itself. Its a structure with a creepy countenance, as if it were made to look like a face rather than for what it was made. It has the perpetual look of a sinner, turned into a window by a deplorable spell, only that it couldn't hold back or hide its bound features.
I'm looking at it from my window, seated on a plastic chair with no arms, the cheap products that are ordered in bulk for temporary residences. The more I look at it, one broken extention of the storm shattered glass pane seems like a mouth, fit between the carved designs of two square eyes. Hollow eyes. An astigmatic person would only see the eyes and not the narrow vertical bars that run parallely from one end to the other. How freaky! Although the window is always open, what is beyond the cage is barely visible. There is no movement, but just the wind to sway the screens draped on either side eternally. There is no stop to this music, no stopping this dance. At night, the dull light flows from inside, but even then, it's a mixture of milky cloudiness. There is a disconnection between this atmos and that pallid place as if it were two different worlds stacked parallely to each other, only with the ability to view it so close but not clearly. Parallel universe! If a parallel universe is existing just outside my window, I'll be damned! Flitting by my thoughts, three pigeons hover above the windowsill of the mysterious structure and playfully poke one another. I can't differentiate the couple from that thirdsome character. Maybe they are friends, not yet married. Maybe they are friends, married but on a little excursion away from their wives or husbands. Maybe they are just a family, roaming in search of a two nights' accommodation just like us. The window looms like a gigantic figure before their tiny bodies and as I expect it to devour those little creatures and spit out their insignificant bones churned in the demonaic glass pane mouth, the birds fly away escaping their fate. What a relief to my nerves! But the window still eyes me with its empty eyes, cataracted by its translucent background. Would it come leaping at me and give life to my doubts, or would it stay there staring into the back of my skull until the next big bang? I don't know. But I sit there and look at it involuntarily until the mist on the other side clears up a bit, just enough to see the outline of objects residing there. Then my heart jumps out from my ribcage, shattering my nerves and flushing bloody veins into my eyes. I see a figure sitting by the windowsill, seated on a chair and looking at me straight. I let out an audible gasp, but I know not how it sounded because the figure that's making my hair bristle on the neck is me.