Flash! Fiction by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

63

Looking Out

Inside the frame there is always movement, something to watch: this time of year, a leaf skittering down the street, naked tree branches bouncing around in the wind. At certain times of day, lots of people pass through my frame. When they walk from right to left, they always walk faster. It doesn't matter from which direction the weather is coming. The run-down row houses are mostly dark and empty during the day. Diagonally across the way, there is one however, 704, that always has someone home, sitting by the living room window, just a shadow behind the white sheers. So even when there is nothing to look at on the street or on the sidewalk or in the trees or on the utility lines, there is always 704. Apart from repositioning to get a better look at someone or something passing by, the shadow shifts around only very rarely. And it never leaves.

It's incredible that it stays there, more or less stationary, for hours at a time ... until yesterday.

Shortly after midnight, the shadow disappeared, and within what seemed like a matter of seconds, I heard sirens ... very close. It became very dark and quiet, like during a blackout. Even so, I'm pretty sure I could still make things out. When it got light, that's when I saw the difference. My frame had been moved. The street was still there, but the view wasn't the same. Now, outside my window, in a courtyard, was the lonely statue of Our Lady of Perpetual something or otherthe one I used to walk past every day for 37 years as I rushed by to catch the subway downtown or trudged home at night.

The nurse who just came by to check up on me is someone I recognized right away. I'd watched her walk by in front of my window every day for I don't know how long, and I remembered that she sometimes looked up and waved. Edith, she introduced herself as, told me that I was very lucky to have such a good neighbour. She 64

said I'd had a seizure and that the old man across the way had called 911 after he had seen me disappear from view.

First published in Eunoia Review, December 26, 2011.