A book about this guy lives alone on a back woods off the grid mountain in Appalachia. He is a writer in his retirement at his desk by the window. He searches for stories, sometimes late into the night - out the window. Always looking. Searching. Always The Window.
He occasionally peers out the window as he’s writing. Pre-twilight one night, he peers out the window and instead of the normal mountain scene, the hills, the sky the stars, darkness with moon above, he begins to see a totally different scene. What? How could it be that such different scenes begin then to appear, pop up, propagate the old weather-worn window, as if magic?
WOW! It is a plethora, a godsend of stories and books and books and poems and stories and books. I’II BE FAMOUS! He writes feverishly from one story, one scene, to the next! His dream come true! Articles begging to be written, story after scene after story. His imagination overwhelmed, his books become, WOW! prolificated. Writer’s block defeated, he has exceeded his wildest dream. His creative genius, his error, is now his fame.
Various stories, various mysteries, various details crowd The Magic Window. He engulfs himself in the window’s magic, oblivious to all else. Working feverishly throughout nights, untiring in his newfound delight.
The Magic Window, his genius, his fame; change after change after scene change, but then suddenly, subtlety the window scenes seem to get real, reality begins to set in. Although the man is writing about The Window themes, there seems a riff between what’s real, what’s not real and what’s fiction and not? Confusing? Confounding!
In the final scene the man sees this dimly lit face glowing out the dark shrouded window, coming closer and closer, ever so closer to him. “It is I in the window,” he mutters, “me.” “My last window story is me!” A chill engulfs him as he sees his breath. With numb fingers the man traces his final story, facing death out the Magic Window.
As it were, they found him among unfinished writings and a plethora of paper strewn all about.
Author’s Notes: Oh my? What? What happened? Is fact reality? Is non-fiction real or not? Is magic dangerously death close? Did time speed up? Was it a lifetime? Or the opposite? A moment. A passage perhaps? A death knell? What then? When? How? Why? Or not. Did he tesser away in the end? Or die or not. Was the twilight zone out that window? Oh what tricks do a spirations and life and life-after-life play upon us.
And for those who wonder how I write, well I am still tweaking this flash fiction poetic prose piece a dozen times yet, not three days, even Six months hence, whence it first appeared - as I stare out my mirror-dark window at me and eternity.
tom tenbrunsel
A Carl Sandburg Writer
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