Through His Bedroom Window

The storm rumbled against the thin panes of glass encasing the young boy. He shivered as I thought of foreign droplets raining down on him from the ceiling as he slept. A short sigh left his hanging jaws, lips thick with chap. A small fan in the corner of his room swayed blissfully, with a short stir on its axis. And all was quiet. 

My palms felt cool against the wet glass. A wisp of condensation sprouted from the window, as my heated breath hit the pane. His right leg stirred, and a closet door was left slightly ajar. I kept myself crouched just beneath the sill, quietly steeping in pallid moonlight and rain. He was fast asleep by now. I wondered what little dreams pervaded that child’s mind. It seemed as though his siblings excluded him. Just in the other room, before bedtime, I saw a pair of twins pushing him aside for a toy. He had so many keepsakes displayed on his nightstand. A snowglobe rested at his closest vicinity. I think it comforted him when he had nightmares. A few stuffed animals, all representing the various predators from the wild. Lions, and tigers, and bears. The boy’s wallpaper appeared a dull green in the darkness of his room, illuminated dimly by the encroaching moonlight. The shadows on the floor stretched thin to the bed frame, running along the comforter, caressing his cheek in the twilight. The sheets rose and fell in staccato inclines, as tranquil trickles of rain lulled the household into deep slumber. Only when they reached the deepest of sleep would I allow myself to venture closer, silently searching the anonymous shrubbery planted against the side of the house. 

I tugged at my sleeves, stretched and soaking in the wetness of the night. His hair hung loosely across his wrinkled pillow, curling slightly at the tips. The collar of his pajamas were decorated with dinosaur emblems, and miniature volcanos. I wondered why boys his age were so enticed with natural disasters, when he surrounded himself with gentle beasts at the same time. Perhaps the contrast was enough to put his mind at ease for the moment. One last alert going off in the brain before turning out the lights. The mental security of those bolted doors and battened shutters, fading away as the night ushers in the mind’s imagination, with nothing but a plush T-Rex for protection. 

The family’s front porch was a comfortable reprieve from the downpour, and the bolt in the doorknob clicked as I rattled it carefully. Two white security cameras hung loosely above the house’s front archway, pointed downward and clearly deactivated. People should be more inconspicuous with their ADT cancellations. The rain in my hair ran down the bones in my nose, pooling around my nostrils. Each drop wetting their welcome mat. I peered past the thin panes of glass on opposite sides of the doorframe. Tall shadows hunched over the small yellow glow of a kitchen light, illuminating an empty set of dining room chairs and table. If I pressed my ear against the cold window, I could even hear the spritely chime of their grandfather clock, positioned about ten feet from where I was standing. I remember thinking maybe one day soon I should properly inspect that clock, retracing the chips in its paint with my fingers. 

I would silently step into each little room, breathing their air, sensing their presence. Noticing things only I could see: a contorted mumble amidst a terrible dream, the slightest flinching of a limb. It's a very personal thing, knowing the temperature at which another person prefers to sleep at. And maybe it's my fascination with the time humanity wastes in dormancy, or maybe it's more. Regardless, all was quiet that night. No monsters lurked in closet corners or beneath the bed. Just a symphony of rainfall and the sticky fog that grows in the new morning dew from an evening’s storm. And as the family’s house shrunk in the vision of my rearview mirror, I remembered the first time I had visited them. Conditions were much the same. I thought of that young boy’s snowglobe. Tomorrow night will be his parents’ window.