The Woman in the Windowsill
Twelve

~~~

I wake up from the sunlight penetrating my eyelids. I slowly open my eyes and and my room is brightly lit with morning sunshine. It’s the best way to wake up. But my bedroom window doesn’t face the east. Therefore my room doesn’t fill with light like this in the mornings. My eyes are wide open now and I take a look at my room. My surroundings don’t register to me. This isn’t my room. The floors are wood, the room is painted a neat tan color. I’ve been sleeping on an antique twin sized bed. The rest of the room is entirely empty except for an old brown dresser across the room from me near the bedroom door.

“Where am I”, I say out loud.

My first instinct is to panic. How did I get here? Where the hell am I? But I don’t panic. The room is too serene to feel fear. In an odd sort of way, I’m glad I woke up here. While I do enjoy the positive energy of the sun filled room I’ve woken up in, I do begin to concern where I’m at and how I got here.

I throw the blankets off of me and stand atop the wood floor. I make my way over to the dresser and throw on some slippers I find on the bottom drawer. The room is filled with a cedar smell. I make my way over to the window and take a look outside. I’m on the second floor of a rather large house. It’s quiet, there doesn’t sound like there’s anything going on in the neighborhood. I across the room and slowly open the door and find a hallway.

I keep my footsteps light as I try to match the silence of the house. There’s a room with the door shut directly across the hall from my room, and the hallway leads to stairs heading downstairs. There’s a few paintings in the hallway. They aren’t professional, but they’re nice, as if they were created by an art pupil of some sort.

I walk across the hall and stand before the opposite door heading into the other room. Quietly I turn the knob and stroll in. It’s still bright in here, but not as bright as the room I woke up in. There’s another painting above a larger, queen bed. It’s nicer than the ones in the hallway. It’s of a waterfall in a lush forest or jungle. This room isn’t completely empty like the one I woke up in. Someone lives in here. It’s mostly well kept. Where is the person who lives in this room though?

I exit the room and slowly make my way down the stairs. I don’t make any noise though, the stairs are in good condition and not rickety. On the first floor there’s the kitchen to the right. I decide to check it out later and head left. I’m led through a foyer which extends to the living room. There’s a large window on one side of the living room. A sort of observation glass, but on the other side is just the main road which the house is set on. But there’s nothing going on outside. It’s calm, quiet, empty. There’s a large windowpane that extends outward from the class. It’s large enough to sit on as one looks out the window.

On the right side of the window there’s a figure. The hairs on the back of my neck raise. It’s a woman. She has light brown skin and black hair. She’s calmly sitting on the windowpane gazing out onto the empty street.The house is dim but she’s near the window so she is engulfed in sunlight. For a moment I’m scared, but the ambience she gives off is calming.

She turns around to look in the living room, and she sees me standing at the entrance of the living room. I can’t speak. I can’t even move. Neither can she, we are both petrified in this moment. I try to speak, but I can’t. I try to move my legs but they stay planted into the carpet.

“Brett?”, she asks. She squints. She is slightly wrinkled around the eyes as she tries to see me in the dim midsection of the house. I’m finally able to make use of my legs and slowly walk towards her, and now the sunlight allows her to see my entire detail.

She’s beautiful. But she looks somewhat different. She looks as if she’s aged. But I don’t care. I race toward her as fast as I can and embrace her.

“Camila!”, I cry as I hold her tightly in my arms. She begins to weep.

“I thought you’d never find me”, she cries. “I thought I was going to be here forever!”

“I’m right here”, I tell her. “I’m right here sweetheart, I missed you so much.” I hold her tight. For minutes we’re there, in each other’s arms in front of the large window. I still can’t believe she’s here, in front of me at this moment.

Finally, I release her to see her aged eyes slightly swollen. She tries to speak, but just the sound of sobs come out at first. But then she finally says it. “I missed you.”

I hug her again, even tighter. I release her but still keep my hands on her shoulders as I look into her eyes. She smiles at me, but I can tell she’s just as puzzled about how I look as well. She has laugh lines, and the onset of forehead wrinkles are beginning to show. She touches my youthful face and begins to wonder.

“Where are we?”, I ask.

Her smile fades. I repeat the question.

“Is this some kind of joke?”, she asks.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not him. You wouldn’t look like this it’s been much too long”.

“Camila”, is all I can say. She’s confused.

“This isn’t right”, she says. “This is all wrong. You aren’t him!”, she snaps.

“It’s me!”, I tell her. I put my hands on her cheeks to comfort her. I can tell she is ready to struggle away but she looks at my wrist and sees the bracelet. Her rhinestone bracelet.

“How’d you get here?”, she asks. She begins to calm down, but she is still on edge.

“I was hoping you’d tell me. I woke up here.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs. In the twin bed.”

“How?”, she asks.

It kills me to tell her. “I have no idea. I wish I did, I really do.”

She stands there in silence, thinking, trying to understand. It almost makes me forget that I am just as confused.

“Where are we, Camila?”

“This is my house, this is where I’ve lived.”

“You live here?”

“I woke up here too. Well not exactly here, in another part of town. I just picked this house to live in.”

“You just picked it? This isn’t making sense Camila”

“It’s empty here. The town is empty. I’ve been all alone. I haven’t seen anyone else in so long!”. A tear begins to run down her cheek and I quickly wipe it away.

“I’m here now”, I tell her. “I, I just don’t know how.”

“What took you so long?”, she asks. “What took you so long to get here?”

“None of this is making any sense”, I tell her. “I didn’t know you were here. I just woke up here, I swear, that’s all I know. How long have you been here? The entire nine months?”

“Nine months?” she’s bewildered. “Brett, I’ve been here for almost ten years!”

I want to tell here that’s impossible. She must have been mistaken. But I look at her face, and yes, she has aged a decade.

“You’ve only been gone for nine months, Camila.”

“What do you mean I’ve been gone. When did I leave? How did I leave?”

“Camila… you’ve been gone for nine months.”

“It’s been a lot longer than nine months Brett take a look at me! I’ve gone crazy here. There’s nobody else here, I’m all alone. Always.”

“Time is relative”, I begin. “Time must pass at a different speed here, than-”

“Than where?”, she asks.

“Than… than the real world?”

“What do you mean real world Brett?”

“You’re not real”, I tell her.

“Brett what are you saying?”

“This is something else”. At this point I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around all this. I reach out and touch her arm. I can feel her. I’m expecting myself to wake up, and realize this is all just my imagination. But it feels so real, this feels like it’s her, like it’s Camila.

“How did I end up here?”, she asks again as if I knew the answer.

Before we talked any further, we decide to go for a walk around the neighborhood. Everything is empty, the houses, the streets. Camila has been in the ghost town for 9 years. The houses and streets aren’t foliaged or worn away, everything looks as if everyone in town decided to leave an hour ago. There are cars parked in the street, doors to houses left open. And the silence. Our footsteps are loud and they echo the quiet neighborhood as the only sounds in the world.

“It’s a decent sized town”, Camila says. “It’s a lot like my hometown. But once you get out of the town, it’s just fields. Fields that go on forever. I’ve driven out of town. I drove on and on until the car ran out of gas. I kept going. I kept walking. Nothing. Nothing outside of this town Brett.”

Chills run down my spine. “What do you do for food?”

“I don’t eat”, she tells me. “Why, are you hungry?”

“Come to think of it. I’m not”

“You want to know what’s weirder?”, she baits.

“What?”

“When’s the last time you took a breath?”

She’s right. I haven’t taken a breath since I saw her in the living room. I breathe in now. Air rushes through my lungs, but I don’t feel the sensation and satisfaction of taking in a deep breathe. I try again. And again.

Camila giggles. “It took me a while to get used to it too.”

It’s a weird feeling when I’m with her. I know she isn’t lying. She truly believes that it has been 9 years that she’s been here. It’s even evident on her face. I know that she sees me as an old friend. An old and distant friend. I can tell I almost feel as a stranger to her as she once again tries to get to know me after so long.

I try to take in a deep breath one more time to get a giggle out of her and she does.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t come here sooner. I’m so sorry you’ve been here for so long alone. But I’m here now”.

“Don’t leave me again”, she says.

“I don’t plan on it”, I tell her. “But I need to figure out what’s going on. I have a feeling you don’t know something I feel you should”.

“What’s that?”

“Camila. I love you. But you’ve been dead for about nine months now.”

“What are you talking about?”, she scoffs. “I’m talking to you aren’t I? I’m no corpse!”

“I know you’re not. I’m just saying. Maybe I’m dead, maybe I’m on drugs or something, but this isn’t real. It can’t be.”

“Am I not real enough for you Brett?”, she asks. “I’ve waited to see you for nine years and I’m not real enough for you?”

“I didn’t know you were waiting!”, I snap. “I didn’t know.”

She sighs. “It’s okay. I wasn’t waiting. Well, I was. But not just for you, for anything. Anything at all to make this damn quiet go away. Do you understand what it’s like Brett? To be here doing nothing except look out that fucking window all day, just waiting for something? Anything?”

I continue walking in silence as I let her vent. We’ve been walking around town for hours now. I don’t feel tired at all though. It’s midday now.

“Camila, I know you’re strong. You’re the strongest, most resilient woman I’ve ever met. But how did you do it? How did you do this for so long?”

“I’ve tried to end it, you know”. Her words are like knives in my heart. “I’ve tried jumping off of the highest roof in town. I’ve stabbed myself. I’ve taken every damn pill I’ve found in this godforsaken town. But nothing does it. I can’t die.” My heart breaks for the loneliness she has endured. “But there are some things we can do here that we can’t in. Well the real world, I suppose.”

“Like what?”

“Think of something, anything”, she says. I think of a dalmatian puppy. “Close your eyes”, she instructs. I close my eyes. “Open them”, she says.

In front of me there’s a dalmatian puppy, exactly as I imagined.

“A puppy, huh?” she smiles.

“Yeah”, I tell her. The puppy doesn’t move or bark. It’s static. I reach forward and pick it up. It’s warm, like a real puppy, but it doesn’t move. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, you did perfect.”

“But the puppy doesn’t move?”

“Oh yeah”, Camila sighs. “I forgot, it’s been so long.” I can tell she seems embarrassed. “That’s the thing about generating real creatures here. You have to think of it’s movements and they’ll happen.”

I put the puppy back onto the the sidewalk and begin to picture it moving around, straddling through the sidewalk. The puppy in front of me does exactly as I instruct in my mind.

“Whoa”

“It’s cool huh?”

“Weird. But interesting.” I imagine the puppy doing a stand and looking up at Camila. It does it verbatim. “Cute huh?”

“Very”, she laughs. My new skill amuses her. She closes her eyes now and opens them. She now has a glass of ice water in her hands and she takes a sip.

“I thought you don’t eat, or, well drink?”

“I don’t need to”, she tells me. “But I can.”

“So, if you’re here all alone. Why haven’t you imagined company? People, or puppies even?”

“Look at your puppy?” she motions her free hand toward it.

The puppy is still. It’s in the same standing pose it was earlier, but now static. It hasn’t moved a bit, just frozen like a statue.

“You have to keep on imagining everything you want something to perform. I made you, when I first got here, you know. My Mom even, and my Dad. That’s why I thought it was a trick when you first got here. I figured maybe I accidentally imagined you or something.” Her voice doesn’t sound cheery at all anymore, now just disappointed. “The You I imagined would do everything I thought. We would talk about things sure, but you’d only reply what I expected you to reply.What I scripted you to reply. I couldn’t do it, it was like you were a robot programmed to do anything I wanted whenever I wanted. I got rid of you within an hour. I was basically talking to myself, using whatever person I generated as just a placeholder to speak whatever I was saying in my head. It was terrible.”

I creeped me out, the thought of a manifestation of me walking around Camila, doing anything she could think of… but only what she could think of. My attention turned back to the static puppy. I began to imagine it chasing after a ball, which it does. But when I stopped thinking and imagining, it goes back to being static.

“I see”, I tell her.

“Because of that, I just stick to imagining material objects. Like clothes, purses, that kind of stuff. I even reimagined our apartment across town. I’ll show it to you sometime.”

The puppy is now frozen trying to chase the ball. “It’s as if it isn’t even alive. Just a toy, huh?”

“It’s terrible, isn’t it?”, Camila says as she takes a drink of her water.

“How do I get rid of it?”

“Just imagine it’s gone”.

Before I even registered the thought the puppy was already gone.

“So how old are you, again?” Camila asked. It was an odd question. But I could understand given the situation. We’re now walking back to the house.

“I just turned twenty-eight last month”, I tell her.

“So you were twenty-seven when I left?” she asks.

“Yeah”

“Which made me twenty-six. So now I’m thirty-five. Wow”

“You’re still as beautiful as the last time I saw you though Camila.” I can tell she feels a little uncomfortable. It’s been almost a decade since she’s heard a compliment from me.

“Hold on”, she tells me. She closes her eyes. For the sake of it, I decide to join her and close my eyes as well. I open them. She’s twenty-five again. She looks exactly like she did when we were last together.

“You didn’t have to do that”, I tell her. “You were great the way you were”.

“Oh stop”, she says. We reach the front door of the house and we head in. “I just never really had a reason I suppose. Don’t let the look fool you though. I’m still a middle aged woman inside”, she laughs. My how I missed that laugh.

The rest of the day we spend laughing and catching up. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have too much to tell, and for me it has only been nine months of tragedy. Neither of us care too much to share. But we do have one thing in common we loved to tell each. That we both missed each other so much.

Although we never got hungry we decided to make lunch. There was nothing in the fridge, but we were easily able to imagine what we wanted to eat. Before I could dig in the meal of spaghetti I imagined, it disappeared.

“What did I do wrong?”, I say as I look up at her. Her gorgeous laugh returns. Next to her appears a package of spaghetti noodles, tomatoes, basil, and many other ingredients for making spaghetti. Before I know it pots and pans are now produced throughout the kitchen.

“You’re ruining the fun!”, she says as we begin to cook together. It had been a decade for her, but she picked up on our old routine pretty quick. We always made a great cooking team back in our apartment. I would laugh at her as she struggled to open the bag of pasta and she would giggle at me when she splattered tomato sauce all over me. Before long we were having a food fight, as we playfully toss ingredients at each other, laughing until our lungs almost burst. In the fiasco I shift my weight back to avoid a spoonful of sauce. I accidently place my hand onto a still hot pan and it scalds my palm. I decide not to fuss about it, nothing could ruin this moment. The entire kitchen becomes a mess. However the mess is, quite literally, cleaned up in the blink of an eye. Before long were enjoying our signature burnt spaghetti together like we were meant to.

Camila brought up the fact that we could instead be eating five star pasta by simply imagining it. Instead I tell her that I missed her burnt cooking more than anything in the world. She responds my lightly swatting me with a wooden spoon. She tells me all about how she just stopped eating because she didn’t need to, and she’d forgotten the joy and peasantry of sharing a meal with someone.

After our messy lunch and a change of clothes Camila shows me her prized backyard, adorned with flowers and plants.

“I’m not sure if they’re actually alive”, she admits. “But they grow, and I take care of them. It gives me something to do.”

“It’s amazing”, I tell her. Camila was never a gardener before. It was interesting to see how she had developed from her decade in solitude. She shows me her rose bushes, ivy plants that ran across the wall of the house, and her lilies which she claimed to be her favorite.

It felt like an instant but the day was already over. I look outside and the sun has gone down.

I begin to yawn. Camila smiles at me across the dinner table.

“Are you tired?” she asks me.

“Yeah, you aren’t?”

“I don’t sleep.”

“That’s weird”, I ponder. “So I don’t need to eat, or breath, and neither do you?”

“Well we can, but yeah it’s not necessary.”

“But I still get tired, and you don’t?”

“That is weird”, she agrees.

“Maybe because I’m still getting used to this place?”

“I was never tired, even when I got here”, she claims.

“Interesting”.

Then the thought hits me, I had been enjoying my time with Camila so much I hadn’t even thought about it.

“You think I’m going to be stuck here forever too?”, I ask

Camila shows mixed emotion. “I’m not sure”, she admits. “I’ve never left”.

The idea is daunting. “So this is how it’s to be, forever then.”

“You’re not happy here, are you?”, Camila asks.

“I’ve wanted nothing more the past nine months than to see you”, I tell her. She smiles.

“I think I’ve got to get some sleep”, I tell her.

“Me too”, she says.

“But you don’t sleep.”

“No, I don’t, you’re right. But I like to lay down, and close my eyes. It makes me feel, well it makes me feel like how I used to. If that makes sense.”

“It does”

“Brett?”

“Yes Camila?”

“Why do you think we’re here? Why did this happen?”

I think hard for a second before deciding whether or not to tell her what I think.

“I think we’re dead Camila. And for whatever reason, we’ve been brought back here together. I don’t remember dying though”.

“Neither do I”, she agrees.

I take a deep breath (unnecessarily) before I dive into the next topic.

“You did die, sweetheart”.

“What do you mean?”. She’s puzzled.

“The cancer, in your lungs”

“I forgot”, she tells me. “It’s been so long, and this new way of life, I forgot I had cancer at all.” She’s shocked. “I’m dead then?”

I fight back tears. “Yeah. You passed away about nine months ago.”

“I always had a feeling”. Neither of us know how to react. “How was it?”

“How was what?”

“Everything. Me being gone.”

“Terrible.” She begins to tear up. “Every day, I wished I was dead. You not being there, it left a void in my heart. David actually recently moved in to help me get over everything. “

“He always pissed me off. But I knew he cared about you. I know he was a good friend to you.”

“I want you to know that I missed you Camila. That you were my everything.”

“I’m sorry”, she tells me.

“For what?”

“For leaving you”. Her face writhes with emotional pain.

“It wasn’t your fault. You know that.” I reach out and put my hand over hers.

“It’s all still fresh to you, isn’t it? Me dying. Never seeing me again.”

“Well yeah, it hasn’t even been a year.”

“I’ve gotten over it”, she admits. “I just accepted it, after a few years. I accepted that I’d never see you again. And now I have you back after I’d given up all hope.”

“I love you”, I tell her again. She smiles at me. “I guess I’ll be heading to bed. You want me to take the bed in my room?” She hesitates. “Of course, what am I thinking right? I’ll see you in the morning.”

Quickly she gets up and grabs my hand. This time she kisses me. She leads us up the stairs to her room….

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