The bright ray of light peaked into the darkness. The silence caressed my ears. The soft sheets cocooned me in my emanating heat. The creaking of my joints and stiffness of my eyelids attributed to the notion that, with the sun up, I did not want to follow after it. With a stretch of ecstasy here, and a pop of relief in joints there, the covers shifted. The freshness of the air, it curled up into my nose. I smiled dreamily.
The window was open, and through it wafted the warmth of the cordial weather. Never brash, never abrasive - always content. The rustling of leaves rang out in the comforting silence of the world outside. My four walls, they were all I knew. They kept me leveled when I thought I was going to leap from each and every surface within their grasp, they protected me when I was frightened of all the irrational thoughts swarming my head - they kept me comfortable with who I was meant to be.
I did not pay attention to the mess my hair was in. I vaguely remembered that it was atop my head by the time I had slipped out of the massive bed, body aching with the pleasures of a fantasy and splendid rest. My bare feet were shaped just as I recalled them to be when I closed my eyes, them being the last things I saw at the foot of my bed last night. They carried me without complaint over to the window. Against the bland white of the walls, untainted - the quintessence of purity - a window frame was positioned.
It was my only opening to the rest of the world. It was so much more colorful than my four walls, and as I looked back to compare, the differing levels of comfort I found in my four walls and this open window were immense. I knew everything that was in this room. While I could not see it, I knew what it was and where it was located.
Turning back to the burnt, chestnut-hued pane, I traced it with my fingers. Its smell was intoxicating, the smell just as hypnotizing as its touch. It was my liberty, my gateway. I reached out to touch one of the ferns that dangled mere inches from my windowpane. I could imagine how it felt, how the plant's green would be like velvet and waxy in a rather unorthodox mix. I could imagine how it would bend under my pressure, how the leaf would contort itself in limp cooperation. And, every morning I woke to this, I vowed that I would find a way through this window for good.
Just as I thought that, I took a quick step back, retracting my fingers from the smooth surface to watch the top of the window slam down before me.
It was not a surprise: I had done this before. I did not conclude the reason for its sudden restriction. With the arms of the window barring it with fortification, I could not find a way out. It would not budge - I had tried before and it nearly snipped off my fingers as it hopped and sharply shut with a "thwack!" I couldn't break it because I was afraid its shards would turn on me, that they would harm my bare feet if I stepped upon them, that I would be susceptible to the things it was preventing me from whenever it closed itself.
I was afraid that I would not be able to find my way through the window - find my way to the rest of the world, find my way to freedom.
I paced the undetermined area of my room, subconsciously aware of its ever-changing shape and dimensions. The white was difficult to distinguish, but I did well enough to not knock into my bed, not knock into a wall or two upon my fourth remembering that I had passed a particular point after losing count. My eyes quickly darted to the windowsill.
Upon it, a bug rested. This bug was black, and its features appeared as outlined as though I held some sort of augmenting visionary assistant to inspect it. I held my breath. The bug had been in here before, and it had flown around once before flying back out. This time, it awaited my arrival once over, but only to turn in my direction and watch. To watch intently.
I stalked closer, breathing steadily through my nose and struggling to not fail my perfected, unblinking gaze. The bug twitched, feeling a bit uncomfortable with my advances, but remained upon its perch, nonetheless. This black against the white, it went against everything I knew. I knew my own skin was not the same shade as the walls in my room - a key component in verifying my sanity each time I was on the brink of my mind - and that this bug once before had done the same.
But, this time, with its eyes watching me and mine upon it, I had a feeling things were different.
I stumbled forth as I knocked my foot against a stool. Quickly breaking my focus, I kicked the stool - which I could not see - from my path and lunged forth for the insect. It gave a teasing sizzle of its wings and shot back through the open window before my hands knocked against its then-closed state. Climbing from the ground with as much grace as I did sense of this peculiar window, I pulled myself to my knees, uncomfortable against the sturdy surface beneath me, and stared out at the bug.
It, fluttering its microscopic wings, hovered in the same spot for a second longer than it did before. When it visited me, I would always fail to pursue it, to interrogate it. To ask it how it felt to fly, to ask it what it looked out there.
To understand why I was within my beloved and overbearing four walls, restricted by this lone system of glass and wood.
With a defeated sigh, I resumed my pacing.
I kept count this time, but heard a distant noise each time I attempted to turn and continue. After a few times, I tripped over my rally and lost track, quickly glancing at the sill. The bug had returned.
"You!" I called after it. It was the first time I had addressed it with my voice, something I was startled myself to hear. I had barely recalled my ability to communicate. Before then, I had no reason to. I was simply in my four walls, by my lonesome.
The bug slowly turned on its odd-even number of legs. I realized that it was taunting me. While I didn't let this bother me, it did irk me that an insect had better wit than I at that moment. At the very least, it could escape these four walls. I, on the other hand, could not.
Or, at least, not with this window prohibiting me.
This time, it stopped to turn to the world past the window. The blues in the distance, the sands glittering with the glorious sunshine of the sun dancing across the water in a waving trail of light - they were all more magnificent than I could have ever fathomed. Before I had realized it, however, I had neared the window, this time without any obstacles. I stopped where I was, the black bug twitching twice to turn halfway, glancing at me, before turning back to the outside.
"What is it?" I asked it, wondering how my voice had changed. Had it been like this when I first used it? In fact, when was the last time I had used it? I didn't even recall being anywhere other than these four walls. With my wonder forever unsatisfied, I decided to settle my qualms for the time being. It was this bug who had greater power than I. I watched as a color, similar to that which danced after the sun in the sky, slowly cascaded through the open gaps through the foliage which surrounded my window.
I then noticed the absurdly thin string wrapped about the insect's body and followed its line to the bottom of the floating form.
It looked rather elastic, gleaming with the light of the sun outside and the natural lighting of my four walls. The bug's wings buzzed for a moment, the crackle of their rapid flapping thundering through my silent room. I couldn't hear my own breath, but I could hear this insect's own.
"A balloon?" As the figure came into full form, I took notice that it could fit through the window. The window did not shake, did not tremble as I approached it, and the bug and the yellow balloon did not drift away. I could not see the wire that connected them both, bug and balloon, but I believed that I would grasp it if I simply reached for it. I watched as my slender fingers wrapped about the thin string, and delicately eased it in through the open frame.
My lips curled up into a delighted smile, my teeth shining as radiantly as my walls, alarmingly white. The bug wiggled loose from its makeshift harness, and I watched as it danced in the air, bobbing in its ascent. Its path coiled about my upright forearm and around the larger balloon. I watched as it flew straight upwards, rising as high into the whiteness as my eyes would be able to distinguish the miniscule speck, and then further.
I no longer could hear the insect's wings. I watched the open window. The leaves no longer whispered in their dancing, and the waves no longer lapped against the bank of the sands. I could no longer see the sun from where I stood, but I knew it was out there, shining brightly on everything I could see.
I then understood what I needed to do.
With the fragile and insubstantial thread pinned between my fingers, I watched the balloon. It swayed in its idle presence, in my idle wait. I admired its lively color, how it was filled with air to keep it buoyant, and how it was able to be dangled about, toted around by a string without so much as a care in the world.
As ridiculous as it sounds, it was a balloon - of course it would be carefree.
I smiled. My fingers' grip unraveled from the string, and I watched as it followed the same path as the insect that left me to my own. It was something I would not be able to explain, but the feeling that swelled me in that moment was paramount to the one that would follow right after.
A thunderous roar shook my four walls. The sound of the sky ripping open and all that I knew around me would drown out my ears. But... I simply stood there, still smiling at that balloon until it was out of sight - and then I continued smiling.
When I blinked, I could no longer see it there. When I blinked again, I then realized that the white I was looking at had gone. It was drifting away in the form of a puffy, white cloud against the backdrop of a soft, blue sky. I looked around me, and I found that my four walls were nowhere to be found. Trees and plants of all shapes and sizes watched me. The sunlight bounced off smooth bark and waxy leaves, sending splatters of sunlight onto the patchy grasses beneath my bare feet.
I inhaled. Where the window was before, it no longer was. Before me was only the path to the sands which stretched beyond where I could reach with my arms and further than my feet would take me and to the endless expanse of blue, where no one could fathom swimming out to.
I was free.
<3 ~ Monty
=]
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