The Scene

This is another example of my wife’s writing from her college days. I used this one as a “prompt” for a novel I am working on.

The Scene

The girl looked out the window as she had done many times before. The scene that met her eyes was a well-known one. Having only one window in her room allowed that one scene to be firmly imprinted on her brain. She knew every change in the scene through every season. Right now, it was winter. The cold, hard snow and the expressionless buildings matched the weary face that searched their never-changing shapes.

She jumped as a book crashed into a wall. Now, she became conscious of what she had tried to block out. Her parents’ angry voices drifted into her awareness. The sounds grew louder and filled her tiny room until she thought she would scream.

Fear raced through her body, leaving her nervous and trembling. Would this be the time? Would this end as one of her terrible nightmares, with her walking into the room to find her mother cut to bloody pieces? Her head started to swim. Her room danced in front of her eyes. Fear overcame her again. She sat at the edge of her bed, trying to control the thoughts racing through her head. On and on went the screams of hatred in the other room. Thousands of pictures raced, stumbling through the young girl’s brain—picture after picture, flashes of hate, of fear, of the ever-haunting scene out her window.

* * * * *

People tried to talk me out of this apartment when I tried to rent it. They said you can still see the blood splattered on the walls where an insane man killed his wife. He’s locked up now, of course. A crazy man can’t be allowed to roam the streets. They also said the tiny room with one window was haunted, but I didn’t believe them. It is spring, and the scene is striking.