Out the Window

Out the Window

Jane woke to a noise near the window. There was someone there. She screamed!

“It’s me!” Andrew said, quickly.

“Why are you up?” she asked, slowing her racing heart, “You scared me to death!”

“I heard a noise.”

“Outside?”

“Outside... right outside the window, maybe in the tree?”

“That’s a pretty skimpy tree? And the middle of the night? A bat?”

“A bat?”

“Well, they can fly in the dark, I don’t know if they land in trees.”

“I’ll get a flashlight!” off he ran.

Jane heard the noise again, this time tapping the glass. She tiptoed over to see what it was before Andy’s flashlight scared it away.

As she got close to the window, she started to see a shape. Thinking it might be her own reflection, she moved her head to see if it was.

And then giant eyes opened outside the window! Huge eyes, filling the whole window and looking right at her! Jane fainted.

When Andrew got back, the window was immediately forgotten as he found his wife on the floor and revived her. She had no recollection of even getting out of bed. He snuggled her back in, and they both fell asleep quickly.

Up on the spaceship Rad was being scolded, again. “If you go off by yourself you could get caught!” his father said. “And, you’d spoil the whole mission!”

“But it was dark...nobody saw me!” he lied. “Nobody that remembered...” he thought to himself.

After that night, Jane sat at the window for a while every night for the rest of her life. She never knew why, it just seemed important.

Every year or so, Rad stopped by just to check on her. His first success at studying other-worldly creatures, something he became incredibly famous for, later in life, in six-hundred, sixty-two.