I ran out of fiction writing time this week, so I’m re-running a short story I wrote a couple years ago. Hope you enjoy it again, or for the first time if you’ve haven’t read it before. I had written the story to accompany one of my first watercolor paintings from the Watercolor Italy book.
He passed by this window every day at the same time, in the late afternoon when the lowering sun brought deep shadows to the window panes. Normally, he burrowed into whatever book he was listening to and paid no attention to his surroundings, but one day he was arrested by the thought that the window was calling to him. He stopped and looked around – was anybody else similarly affected? People streamed past him, moving out of his way like water rushes around a boulder in the river.
He looked at the window. Nothing special. How very odd, he thought, and went on his way, the boulder becoming part of the river again, the incident forgotten.
But the next day as he walked by the window, it called again. Distinctly. Irresistibly. He stopped and looked at it, carefully this time. The glass panes were dark and nothing could be discerned beyond them. He pressed “pause,” on the book to which he’d been listening and began to listen for something or someone else. Perhaps he had been mistaken.
“What?” he inquired politely, hoping the passers-by would assume he was on the phone.
“I SEE YOU.”
In that moment, the window became a mirror and he knew what it was to be seen, really seen. Guilt and shame flooded his soul as his eyes were opened to the oppressive mysteries of his heart. He felt a nightmarish nakedness, bereft of hiding places. Before him as on a public billboard were all the lies he’d told, people who loved him that he’d ignored and hurt, women he’d used up and discarded, seeds of life that he’d planted, never caring whether they lived or died, those degrading websites he kept visiting, the sheer unremitting self-centeredness of his life. Even the “good” things he’d done were tainted by grimy self-interest. And how had he responded to all of the good fortune that he’d enjoyed,the simple pleasures of his life, and the beauty and wonder of the world around him? He’d been bored and unsatisfied, always wanting more. He tried to find his face in that dreadful mirror, but a skull stared back at him.
This was untenable! He’d always thought himself a fairly good fellow, somewhat innocuous and certainly not evil. (After all, there was always Hitler to compare oneself with when one was in danger of seeing the evil in themselves.) But in this one, awful moment, he knew what he was. He was depraved. He was lost. He was dead.
“Stop!” he cried out, not caring if the world heard him. “I don’t want to be seen!”
The mirror became a window again; the man pressed “play” on his book and went on his way, agitated and stricken. He tried to forget and failing that, tried denial. He found other ways to walk home from work, but the window kept calling his name. One might even say it harassed him. He tried cleaning up his life, but quickly realized that this was easier said than done and the blackness of his soul weighed more heavily on him every day. Finally, he could stand it no longer. He had to go back, to find out what could be done about this predicament in which he’d found himself.
When he came before the window, he couldn’t even look at it. The window beckoned. Sweetly. Irresistibly.
“COME AND BE CLEANSED.”
And this time, when he looked up at the window expecting to see again the dreadful mirror of his life, he saw a cross.
And he was cleansed.
I’ll probably beckon this post to the delete bin in the morning.
Lynniebeemuseoday 