The Face That Smiled From Outside The Cottage

On a night of cold October, in a little cottage shined a fireplace, mildewed and gloomy, but we thanked for it hid our expressions. They weren’t of fear, but pray explain how you feel when your hand is held to a tight whiteness on a deathbed. Ron’s almost lifeless eyes stared at me till no end, while helplessness striped me by the minute.

All hope was lost, and we knew it. He knew it. He didn’t smile. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. The drunken years, which flew by him, had taken their toll. He accepted it. But he wasn’t unsatisfied. He had nothing to lose. He lived his life by his hand. But his patterns of embracing his death had slipped his fingers. And every attempt to speak, which he made, was as if he was looking through me, to the cottage window, staring out, in the blank black.

His time was done and I knew it, but misery was then a heavy crown I wore, I waited for his end. I knew he’d be looking into my eyes till the last breath is drawn from within him, and I dreaded, I contemplated and it drained my mind of anything else. I occasionally checked his pulse and I think he knew that I was checking if he’s still alive. I cannot and I don’t want to imagine what he must’ve thought when he felt me feel his wrist on my fingertips. My eyes closed on the advent of my inevitable slumber, and a whisper woke me up. “I think it’s time.” Ron said.

The fire still cracked.

My dreams hadn’t completely lost their grip.

Through a daze, Ron pointed a pale, weakened finger towards the window, “My time has come, my friend.” His whispers were heavier than a scream. I turned half asleep, and saw it. The face outside the cottage, its placid smiles sent shivers. It was beautiful, of a little girl lost in the forest, but pale, its eyes looked through me. It was of a widow smiling at its four-year old son, smiles devoid of hope. The host of the light on its face was something, which I failed to pinpoint on. It smiled and smiled, endlessly. Calm haunting grew by the inch on my skin, and I tried to rid of it as I stumbled from my stool to the farthest corner of the cottage, Ron still pointing the finger, as if begging for another moment of wait. But the face smiled, as it looked at me. My screams were silent in their shock, my limbs, numb in their coldness, and my heart froze at the smiles of melancholy. Ron dropped had his lifeless hand as the face smiled its last.

An envelope of broken dreams had me in the corner before I realized that in the little cottage where I fell into my night, lay a friend. With a lifeless spark of smile on his lips, blank eyes wide towards the window.

Inspired by "Windowpane" by Opeth