Magic IRL

The Rose-Tinted Window

My head hangs low as I walk up the crumbling steps to the abandoned house. I shove the door open—though "door" is a charitable world. It's an old and rotted slab of wood, long removed from its frame. I strain until it budges enough to slip inside.

I remember when I first stumbled—quite literally—across the house. I was on another bender—barely coherent—just a few weeks after they let me out of the hospital. It was late, but I couldn't face Amy, not like that. And so I took refuge in the sad little home. It wasn't much, but I could smoke cigarettes in peace. It was all I needed.

The interior is just as I found it that first night. The commotion of my entrance sends plumes of dust skyward. Remnants of long-neglected furniture are strewn across the floor, and tattered wallpaper lines the walls. Grime covers every surface, save for a single set of footprints leading deeper into the house. I carefully walk along them, my feet fitting perfectly in the imprints.

The stairs creak as I make my way up to the attic.

I could barely make the climb that first night. The booze and pills didn't help the effort. But it was the grief that made everything so hard back then. It sat in my gut, pressing against my insides, holding me down like an anchor. It didn't take much—a sympathetic look, the wrong song, a stray memory—to send me plummeting into the void.

I open the door—a real, proper one—at the top of the stairs. It's the only thing in the house that moves without groaning. The attic is cramped, and—like an oasis among the chaos—it is pristine.

It wasn't always this way. After that first night, I came back armed with soap and water. When I left, the attic was my refuge within the refuge. The wooden floors gleamed, even if they were rotted through. The walls bore a fresh coat of paint, even if they still smelled of mildew.  The only part of the room I dared not touch was the window.

It sits in the dead center of the back wall. Octagonal and framed by smooth wooden paneling, I assume it is an artifact of the 70's. The glass is rose-tinted, the pink hue an aggressive riposte to the gray house. The window should look out onto the street—a quiet suburban road—but it doesn't.

That first night I peered through it, I thought I was hallucinating. Grief, drugs, sleep deprivation—it wasn't like my grasp on reality was particularly strong at the time. But it was the same the next night. And the night after that. And every night since for the last year and half.

I pull a cigarette from my jacket and fight the urge to look through the rose-tinted glass. Craving one last hit of nicotine, I flick my lighter, casting an orange glow over the room. I pull hard, and the tobacco crackles. I immediately feel better, more alert.

I glance at the inscription scribbled on the wall next to the window. To my love, so that you may always remember our happiest moment. I don't know who wrote it, but given the state of the house, the author is probably long dead. But perhaps not. Perhaps someone capable of creating this window isn't bound by little things like life and death.

When I first found this place—before I knew what it was—I felt like I was at the bottom of a cold, dark pit. It was just after the accident. My life—my perfect life—had just been snatched from me. Screeching tires, a ball of flame, worried nurses, a long slumber—a single night that defined all the years before and after.

When I woke up, I knew it was bad. It wasn't the pain or the chirping machines. It was the doctors' refusal to let me look in the mirror.

Amy was there. She always was. But I knew what she was thinking. Her big, sad eyes dripped with sympathy. I was disfigured and broken, a husk of the man she once loved. I knew she wouldn't stay long after I "recovered"—a word the doctors threw around often but left intentionally vague.