Windows 1

The window.  Not the one on the far right or the left, but the window right in the center of the wall.  This is my window.  Others look through it and see the jagged grey outline of the neighboring apartment building, and if they press close and put cheek to glass they may catch sight of the neighbor of our neighbor another duller less jagged and more rounded apartment building.  I couldn't see from the window before.  It only happened with the help of a friend.  

---

When I arrived at the school I sat tracing the lines of the rows of the windows over and over again.  My father sent me here to inspire a change in my habits.  He expected results.  I used to wonder if my father liked me.  After a while I realized this was largely inconsequential as he had no ability to show it.  When he looks down at me I can sense a certain paternal responsibility.  He seems to see me as a project, or maybe as a kind of structure to be built.  I've never had a chance to be bothered by this.  What you've never had you don't really know how to miss.  Sometimes I think I almost feel a phantom pang of need for fatherly affection.  It wells up when I'm reading about it, but it usually retreats quickly.  When I was younger I would push and struggle to impress him, and if I had success he would pat my head and mumble 'good job,' almost sheepishly.  I suppose my father's father did the same to him and so he does the same to me, and maybe as I dread it I will do the same to my son and he to his.

And so I would sit and trace the lines again and again.  The teacher's voice would drone in the background driving me back over each inch.  In the beginning several of the other students that fulfilled the role of class bullies, harassing others out of a need to draw attention away from their draining, life-sucking insecurities, took a slight interest in me.  They would wait for me after class as I was recalling those painfully uniform lines and corners of each window on the dull gray neighboring apartment building.  The leader was a squeamish boy.  Not surprisingly each time the teacher called on him he sat as if lost at sea.  Gazing at the board as an empty horizon, and looking for the answer as if it would float up to him in some glass bottle sealed with a cork.  The answer rarely came and so he was stupid and everyone knew it.  Every time he caught me he would beat me.  This happened for several days, but I'm quite boring to beat.  I never react to it and so bullies finish with me quickly.  For really the reaction is what feeds their insecurities sort of like a drug, or at least that's how I think of it.  

---

Always with me the lines would go as time floated on by.  Floating in and out of memories and imagination.  A knock comes at my door.  I walk to open it.  My father is standing in the hallway.  He still wears his shirt and tie.  The pasty whiteness of the shirt has invaded his face and the black tie is as lifeless as his dull inky eyes.  "I'm sending you to a new school.  Your grades are unacceptable.  You used to make me proud now..." his voice trails off into nothingness, his last words as devoid of emotion as our relationship has always been.  He walks by me and picks up the solid oak bookshelf that holds my books.  Leaving the room quickly he labors down the stairs and to his study.  I see the fire flickering from the door as I follow silently behind.  

Setting the shelf by the fireplace he sits down with a certain efficiency of movement.  My father moves with a ruthless grace.  All sharp turns and rigid lines, just as the lines of the windows.  "You're always reading these books boy.  Always lost in some story.  You don't have time for this nonsense anymore. You have my name, and you will always have my name, and so you will succeed."  His words dance across the room as if coming from a far off place.  The effect blunts the intensity that I see clearly on his face.  I stand by the door gazing into the fire and it's as if the fire is talking to me.  My father is lost and the fire speaks.  It's flames dancing with the words across the room.  It sways hypnotically consuming the dry wood that lays within and crackling angrily for more.  "These books have ruined you.  You can't escape this life boy.  You must live and work and achieve and struggle, but these books I don't know why it's taken me so long."  The fire pauses and looks into me.  It opens it's mouth to the first of the books.  Greedy flames rise as long withered fingers grasping worn cover and spreading through smudged crinkled paper.  Words, pictures, love, life, me, turning to ash in the flames of the fire.  

Not satisfied by the first the second falls, and as the waves of flames rise a breeze enters the room, ruffles my hair as it passes by, and carries on to the fire.  The breeze hits the flames as they writhe wickedly, and as it meets the wall to disperse and join the still air of the room it catches the remains of the books sending them into the air.  Time stops and ashes stand still like black rain drops,  but without the determination to reach the ground, instead wafting in the air as time starts again.  My eyes blur as a piece of ash comes to rest on the tip of my nose, and then I regain focus and my father is a blur of raging motion.  He is straining wildly against the mass of the bookshelf.  Shoving it violently sideways into the fireplace which isn't nearly big enough to hold it.  As he stands back it shifts at a slant so I can see the rows of books and the fire is momentarily lost.  Then the lines begin to waver as I feel something crunch against my cheek.

"Maybe it's best we stop now Daniel.  I doubt he can even stand up in this state," whispers a boy standing nervously next to the stupid bully from my morning class.

Daniel snickers obnoxiously, "will teach him not to laugh next time I miss an answer."

"Can't wait to see what his face looks like in the morning.  You've beaten it to shit Danny," This other figure is only a shadow.  He stands in admiration one of the blubbering sycophants who serve as Danny's verbal masturbators.

Dropping to a knee Daniel takes my face in his hands and turns it roughly to the shadow, "this is my art work Nick, I don't give bloody fuck who the Spanish masters are."

A smile creeps onto my face as Daniel the stupid bully bends down over to inspect his work.  This breaks my rule of no response, just as my laughing had this morning.  I don't know what got into to me but I couldn't stop after his stuttering stumbling response.  Finally the teacher had me leave the room.  Daniel just stared death after me, but now my smile is inspired by something else completely.  The memory of my father in his only passionate state.  The only instant in my entire life when he was unable to hold control, perfect, flawless control the ash stained his starched white shirt.

I hear a voice growl "he's bloody smiling at me," and then blackness.