Outside The Window

His house was filled with warmth, delicate aromas of perfume, and innumerable beautiful things. His dreams and fantasies were tactile illusions, only realised within these rooms and hallways. Eyes closed, he saw nothing and everything all at once as he drifted further into his own intricate world. The colours were vivid - almost tangible - and the sensations of this space were unbearably intense. This was where he belonged. His house may have been made of bricks and mortar but his home was here in the vapors of imagination, swirling like wind, disturbing the dead leaves of thought.

As his eyes opened, they were drawn to the velvet curtains covering the eye through the papered facade. Tentatively, he moved the fabric draped against the dirty glass aside and glanced at the view beyond.

Through the pane he saw a desolate wasteland of grey truth and decimation. Broken bodies and dying embers caught in razed structures. He felt his hands begin to shake and let the soft material drop from them, blocking out the scene once again. He felt familiar pangs of anxious tension building in his rapidly beating heart, overflowing as saline liquid dripped from his eyes. He shut out the dim light of the present, breathed in deeply and let another breeze carry him somewhere else.

Every day since it had happened he had repeated this same routine at the glass. Each time he had hoped that a different scene would greet him, but each time he was devastatingly disappointed. And each time, he took solace in delusional dreams that kept him from the nightmares outside. With futile hopes, he would try again tomorrow, sure that this time his mind would have changed the outcome. Though he knew that outside the window there was only ever death.