The Window That Never Opened

The Window That Never Opened!!

I lived in Apartment 4C for three years before I noticed the window across the alley.

It was small, square, and set into the bricks like it had been forgotten during construction. It faced mine directly, barely eight feet away, just across the narrow breath of the alley that divided our buildings like a secret no one wanted to share.

What struck me most was that it never opened. Not once. Not in the sweltering July heat when my own windows screamed for air. Not during rainstorms when everyone cracked a window to hear the world cry. It stayed shut. Curtains drawn. Still as a tomb.

I didn’t think much of it at first.

But we notice things when we’re lonely.

At night, I started to look for it. Not intentionally at first. Just a glance while brushing my teeth or killing time between reruns. But then I began to look for it deliberately. I watched. I waited.

Once, I thought I saw movement—a flicker of light, maybe. A lamp turning on? Or a reflection from the streetlamp catching a dusty mirror?

I told myself stories. I imagined an old woman living there, her name something like Mabel or Ruth. She’d grown tired of the world and drew her curtains closed twenty years ago. Maybe she didn’t even remember how to open them. Or maybe she did and simply chose not to.

Another time, I decided a writer lived there—reclusive, brilliant, strange. Someone who hated people but loved stories. They wrote longhand in notebooks with spines worn from love. That window? A portal to a thousand unfinished novels.

My curiosity became habit.

I bought binoculars. Not fancy ones. The kind kids get for birdwatching. I used them once, felt ashamed, and shoved them in a drawer. Still, I kept watching, hoping for something. Anything.

I told no one. How do you explain to someone that you're invested in a window?

One night in late autumn, I was up late with insomnia. Rain dripped like slow tears from the roof. I made tea and stood by the glass. I didn’t expect it, but there it was—light.

A faint glow, amber and low, like candlelight. My breath caught. I stepped closer. My window fogged.

The light stayed on for exactly six minutes. Then it went out.

The next morning, I woke up early and stared at the same square of glass. The curtains were parted. Just slightly. Enough to see a sliver of a room—books stacked haphazardly, a dusty chair, a plant long dead.

There was no sign of a person.

I didn’t look away for an hour.

After that, the window became a ritual. I wrote at my desk beside it. I imagined conversations with the ghost across the way. I left my own window cracked, as if in invitation.

Sometimes I dreamed of someone standing on the other side of that glass. A silhouette I couldn’t name, staring back, silently, as if watching me the way I watched them.

Then one day, the window was open.

Just an inch. A breath. A quiet surrender.

I waited for a hand to reach out. A paper airplane. A sign.

Nothing happened. Days passed. The window stayed open.

Then it was closed again.

And this time, the curtains were gone.

I saw the room clearly. Empty. Abandoned. Dust floating like ghosts in morning light. No books. No chair. No one.

Someone had left. Or someone had never been there at all.

I still write by that window. I leave it open, even when it rains.

Sometimes, I look across the alley and think of all the stories we build out of silence.