Windows Left Unopened

Somewhere far, far away from here, in the depths of the night, a frozen field lay just before the entrance of a boundless labyrinth of cold, cloying trees and wintertime darkness that were so common in the North of most places. In this field, past the growing shadow of the snow drifts and the needy absence of the moon, there is a raccoon pacing a circle around a stump. This, in and of itself, is not unusual as the forest is often fraught with creatures sniffing free of the safety of their homes in search of food or foe, but this one is…discontent. Its movements are erratic and confused, arching back and forth and around, and sometimes back again, never moving further from the stump than a quick sprint, but sweeping outwards at times as if it wants to go further. The raccoon is looking for someone. It is looking for someone desperately. The heavy snow makes everything look the same. When the raccoon came home an hour earlier, there was one less set of eyes in the den than there should’ve been. It would’ve gone out and searched farther—it would have scoured the entire forest if it needed to—but the snowstorm swept in much faster than its nose could’ve detected. By the time it was done counting and recounting and investigating the deepest crevices of its den just in case, the snow had already formed a pile by front of the door. Digging out was all it could do. Its baby couldn’t have traveled far, surely, it couldn’t have– the raccoon couldn’t imagine it. The little one, confused and alone, its tracks covered by the snow, frost clutching at the tips of its fur. It couldn’t imagine how quickly the cold bit into the baby’s paws and whipped its face, confounding the north and the south and the way home. These things were unthinkable to a panicked mother. 

So, the raccoon continues around in circles, its footprints visible for only a moment before being covered by the blowing snow. It cries out into the dark night; its voice is drowned out by the snarling storm. Fur congealing with the wet and bitter frost of the encasing snow; cold breathing so fast it hurts to simply move, around and around it goes, a hopeless mission for something it’s lost. 

Around and around and around. 

Beside this field, marring the stark quiet of the landscape before it, stands a twenty-four-hour gas stop like an unwelcome pockmark. Truckers and strays alike flush in and out of its doors at all hours in search of replenishment and warmth. Some are in search of trouble, and some may even find it, but it remains a beacon of both rest and restlessness in the cold winter night. 

Parked on the fringes of the parking lot hulks an ancient red semi-truck. It is driven by an old salt-and-pepper man who believes the best judge of character is between those who have the gall to be a trucker, and those who do not. He needs food, a bathroom, a cup of coffee; he is in need of those things that keep his character clean. He doesn’t see the raccoon from his seat upon the faded blue upholstery of the booth inside the gas stop. A double-paned window yawns out into the darkness beside him, but he sees nothing past the corpses of old ladybugs and crushed mosquitos that wither on the windowsill. 

 Back outside, nestled comfortably beside the handle of the shipping container door of that old truck’s trailer, is a little square camera. It is the type of camera built for hard wear and tear and extensive exposure to the grit that lonely highways tended to spit up at visitors. By way of the trucker’s classification, this camera is in the first camp of society right alongside of him; it endures the open roads and lonely nights better than most could. Sometimes, it does it better than the trucker himself. The camera doesn’t need pit stops every few hours and doesn’t run the risk of falling asleep at the wheel. It has one sturdy black cable connecting it to the power of the truck to keep it resolute in its station, and resolute it is. 

The camera stares unblinkingly at the road behind the truck wherever it goes. Some nights are better than others in terms of what it can see. Most of its stimulus is the repetitive passing of the yellow lines as the truck moves on, straight and unwavering under all manner of landscape. The camera finds it almost hypnotic— if a camera could perceive the world as such a thing. It has no other option than to lose track of how many dashes they drive over and wonder if there is any point in keeping count in the first place. Is that why it has been placed on the back end of this vehicle? The driver hadn’t exactly shown it an employment agreement the day it’d first been mounted. The only direction it knows it is going was wherever the truck decided to turn. That did nothing for the aimless feeling that aches deep within its inner parts. For now, the camera can only sit and hope that counting the yellow lines was the job it’d been given, while simultaneously praying it isn’t. The numbers got lost miles ago, and should it need to report its findings to the trucker, it fears it would have nothing to give. 

The truck driver finds a man he recognizes just before he gets back into the cab of his car to leave. They’d met at a bygone shipment they’d hauled some months back. The man is shorter and heavier than the truck driver. His hair glints blue-black under the harsh lights of the parking lot. The truck driver touches the other man’s hair as if he has a feather between his fingers; his face scrunches in a way that makes him look like he has feathers in his mouth, too. They speak in sporadic rhythm, raucous laughter turning soft and sympathetic at the turn of a head, then right back again. The camera can’t help but wish it was on the back of a different truck, pointing towards the gas station or the forest instead. Something about knowing that this scene would be pressed into its film forever made it feel sick in a way it couldn’t quite describe. 

The camera gets its wish. The trucker moves his truck to be parked beside the other man’s truck, the back now facing the empty field. The two men follow one another back into the gas stop, and the world falls quiet for the camera once again. 

Tonight is bitterly cold. Their path takes them to the northernmost edges of Minnesota, and this year’s winter has not been kind to all the warm-blooded creatures that inhabit the area. Snow at least two meters high flanks the edge of every street they pass for the first three hours, and more begins to fall. Frost clings stubbornly to the edges of the truck’s bumper and to the tips of the truck driver’s fingers and toes. For him, that gas stop was necessary to continue. 

The camera saw the raccoon in the field. It watched the raccoon run around the stump like a dog with rabies might stalk the yard of its forgotten owner. The camera has never found animals more interesting to watch insofar as they provide more stimulation than passing road lines, but that raccoon was different. It looked…. sad. Frightened. Forsaken, in some way. The camera was not aware that animals could feel that way. It found itself transfixed on the noises the racoon made. Its voice seemed to bend and waver erratically in the wind, much louder than any call the camera had heard before; it sounded like……screaming. The camera had once witnessed the aftermath of a car crash in which both vehicles had collided at 60 miles an hour and rolled within five feet of the truck. It’d been close enough to the closest car to hear crying coming from the inside. The driver had survived unharmed, but the passenger hadn’t been so lucky. No one heard the crying over the sound of sirens and the voices of onlookers, but the camera did. In that moment, it’d decided it would never hear a more mournful sound than that. 

The call from the racoon was almost identical. The camera sometimes caught snippets of the radio from inside the cab of the truck, and it couldn’t help but compare the sound to a discordant violin. More than pity or sadness, the camera felt… uncomfortable. It had the brief notion that later, when the truck was off and it had time to think about something other than the road, it should go back to observe this moment. Perhaps there was something to learn there. It had precious few opportunities to make its own decisions about what it saw and what it all meant in the larger frame of the world, but it tried when it could.  

Their sojourn into the safety of the truck stop hadn’t lasted long, even with the trucker’s occupation with the other man. Eventually, the trucker returned, the wheels started to turn, and together they returned to their single mission down the lonesome highway, leaving the stark neon lighting and the forlorn raccoon far behind them. 

The snow slows them considerably. There are no streetlights this far north, but the camera has a state-of-the-art night vision mode that, if it is truly able to feel, it would feel quite proud of. The world rolls by more clearly at their strolling pace. The camera can make out individual branches on the trees that shrouded the road. It follows the rise and fall of the snow drifts that seem to be in constant movement with the wind, the fluid movements of a snake in the water; it spies the shining eyes of the deer on the edges of the trees that watch the truck as it passes. On occasion, they slow suddenly, and the camera suspects that the truck driver has caught a brief glimpse of these deer, too. Their eyes twinkle much like stars. Even in the face of a road-smearing death, the deer reflect starlight. 

The road drags out beyond the camera’s field of vision. The circle of light that it reflects down at it only reaches so far; beyond that, it stretches out into the inky blackness outside of its little world. Something about this is somehow comforting to the camera in the same way that a weighted blanket might comfort someone, or in the way that the confines of a small room can be reassuring to place oneself in. Even amidst the bite of the winter winds and the never-ending night, the camera can only process as much as it can see, and the restriction of the world into one innocuous circle of consciousness serves to soothe its whirring film. 

More than anything else, the camera takes comfort in one immutable fact of trucking; the truck is always moving. If it was not, the camera wouldn’t be looking anyway. The constant movement means that anything disturbing would be gone before anything can reach it. The camera knows sudden death and the smooth crunch of clean-torn metal more intimately than it knows the touch of another, but no matter what sort of bone-wrenching accident it witnesses, it is always gone within seconds. Any scene of pain it endures can bother it no more than it can count the individual feathers on a passing bird. 

Perhaps this is not conducive to the camera’s desire to learn, but it doesn’t really care. It wants to know things other than death and lonely endings. It can afford the sacrifice.  

Some way down the road, they stop. It takes the camera a moment to realize they aren’t moving anymore. This happens, sometimes, when the truck driver takes a moment to check his phone, or if he feels he needs to pull over for a short nap. There can be any number of reasons that the driver stops briefly and leaves the engine running—and therefore the camera on—so it does no good to fear.  

In the place of the empty road the camera expects to see behind them, there is…. a window. Pale robin’s-egg blue panes keep the glass encased in the space it holds. It is suspended in the air in the middle of the camera’s vision some five feet back. It isn’t lying face down on the snow, nor is it attached to anything that could’ve suspended it; it is just……there. Its yawning face stares blankly at the camera’s lens, as if it too has no other duty than to keep watch on the ever-expanding road.  

The camera can’t immediately see what lies beyond the window. There is a light behind the foggy surface of the glass— ever so faint and waning, a melancholic blue sort of glow that dances between seen and unseen. The camera tries to focus in on this blue and peer deep into its heart, past the fog and into the space that the night no longer reaches. 

To its surprise, it does see something inside. Now, in the previously unoccupied space behind it, is a child. The camera can’t see much beyond the outline of the figure, but it seems to be a boy. In his hand he grasps a foggy lump with two ears and two beady eyes close to his chest. His eyes are only faintly visible, but he is looking out, right into the lens of the camera. 

The camera does not like being watched. More than that, it does not like the stillness. The boy doesn’t move any more than what it takes him to breathe. It feels as if the child is looking past its lens and into its film. It feels like he is watching its memories, analyzing its thoughts. The boy is looking for something. The camera almost expects a noise when the boy raises his hand and starts to write on the fog of the glass, but nothing comes. He draws as silently as the snow screams when crashing to the ground. 

 

Where am I? 

 

The camera has no mouth to answer. It sits still and continues to watch. The window and the boy trapped—or, perhaps, housed within—stares back. After a long moment, he begins to write again. 

 

Where are you? 

 

Still, the camera cannot reply. It does not want to. It feels that same sickly discomfort that it’d felt when watching the men at the gas station, or when it watched the raccoon march itself to a frozen death outside of its own home. It does not like the life it observes outside of itself, but it has no other choice. It has no one to turn to. 

The truck engine springs to life, sending a puff of warm air at the window and causing it to fog back over. The boy behind the window starts to move quickly, writing on the glass hurriedly despite the fact that they had yet to move. On the glass, over and over, the boy writes: 

 

Don’t leave, please don’t le 

Come back come back come back com 

e back come back co 

 

The truck starts to roll forward. The trucker hasn’t left the cab. The camera is forced to be the sole witness to the world behind it; the camera is the sole being with this ever-burgeoning burden to bear. 

The window is slowly creeping away. The boy suddenly ceases his writing and throws himself against the window, his shoulder hitting it with an audible crack. A hairline fracture appears in the glass, but the boy doesn’t seem to notice, or at least doesn’t care. He keeps slamming his body against it, pound after pound after pound, with any part of his body he can. Shoulder, shoulder, fist, elbow, skull, skull—blood smears the once legible words on the foggy pane. He is moving fast, the camera realizes, much too fast for a little boy. The sound of his flesh against the glass and the cracking of glass seems to mimic the boy’s written message in a horrific cacophony of sound.  

Too fast. He is moving too fast. The window can’t hold much more. The cracks shoot outwards and hold desperately to the windowpane, but it isn’t enough. It is going to break. It is going to shatter, and then the cold air will rush in, and the boy—the boy—he— 

He is gone. 

With a puff of exhaust, the window disappears from the camera’s little bubble of the universe. The truck speeds up and its’ night vision can only reach so far. All at once, the snow and the pervasive stillness of the forest is the only thing it can see once more. 

The camera’s film continues to whirr. The very edge of its lens is mottled with fog and a few stubborn icicles. The road passes on, revealing nothing but the frigid midnight ideal of Minnesota winter. 

The snow keeps falling. Minutes pass, then hours. The camera’s gaze falls, tracing the road in search of those passing yellow lines. The cold December wind passes through its empty metal frame as the world rolls on.