A carpenter and a painter drank together all night, their laughter echoing until the last drop was gone. As dawn broke and the bar ran dry, they begged the bartender for more. With a wry smile, he leaned in and said, “I’ll pour you another, but first, answer me this: Who paints the windows?”Who knows but through the half-open perfectly centered window on the stark white wall, only a flawless sea of blue sky stretched endlessly. It was so clear that the eye wandered, searching for even a single imperfection, but there was none. Not a wisp of cloud marred its surface, and not a whisper of gradient disturbed its unwavering hue. The slender, silvered frames of the window, stood alone in their rigid, almost clinical, appearance; sharp against the flat vastness beyond. No birds punctuated its loneliness, no airplane sliced through the stillness, and no rooftops or treetops broke the unending emptiness. It was a view devoid of context, so barren of life that it could have easily been mistaken for a painting—a minimalist composition, abstract and unresolved, or perhaps a neo-expressionist’s cold rebuttal to sentimentality. A muted defiance, a plain anger frozen in pigment. The brisk bleak blue sky beyond the window felt almost tactile, as if the summer had condensed into an endless and unyielding plane—a season caught in time, a fall that never quite descended, like a Rothko canvas caught between breaths. It was serene and unburdened but also lonely; one would think how can an emptiness hum in nothingness? One should take a look at this convergence of empty waves; A delicate scaffolding only to be seen in forgotten architectural thoughts. A solitary tree trunk, if it were there—half-bare, with a few fall leaves clinging to their branches—would have brought too much beauty, spilling over the brim. Maybe the trees inside the window paint them. Yet, none appeared. The emptiness held firm. Any possible wordly object inside it even for a second would have made it an absolute sensation, only for this possibility, he stared into its heart for a minute more. “Break time?” A hand landed gently on his shoulder, jolting him from his quiet reverie. His friend stood there, eyes soft with familiarity, a small smile playing at his lips. “Sure, let’s go,” he replied, his voice cutting through the still air another touch over abstract impressionism. They made their way out through the sterile, echoing corridor of the office, where each step felt like a splash into the sea waves of blue ocean lying just outside of that portal inside the half-open perfectly centered window on the stark white wall, white it could have only been guesssed, by knowing who painted it.
They stepped out of the single-story office building, which squatted like a concrete block, isolated ten kilometers from the city’s beating heart, at the very edge of the province’s last valid postal code. The building, with its dull, featureless facade, looked out of place, almost as if it had been misplaced by an unseen hand. A narrow concrete path, more a scar than a walkway, led away from the entrance. It eventually gave way to a cobblestone pathway, winding and uneven, shaded by the low, knotted branches of old trees that seemed to whisper secrets to those who passed beneath them. The trees cast a mosaic of tattered patterns on the ground, a patchwork of light and shadow that danced with each breeze. They followed this winding path to a granite slab—a forgotten marker now turned into a makeshift bench—where they often came to escape the lifelessness of the office. The granite was worn smooth from years of weather and use, cool to the touch, with a few stray leaves gathered at its base. Here, they would smoke and talk, their voices blending with the rustle of the leaves and the distant hum of the world beyond—a world that, for a moment, seemed far away, just beyond the reach of the silent blue sky.
“I saw you zoning out in there. What’s on your mind?” his friend asked. “Nothing much,” he shrugged. “Boss trouble?” “Nah, not that.” “Come on, spill it.” “It’s… it’s weird. Just in my head.” “Well, speak the hell up then.” “You might think I’m nuts,” he warned. “You are, but tell me anyway.” “Give me a cigarette first; I desperately need it.”
He struck the match with a flick of his wrist, the tiny flame flaring to life on the second try as it slipped from the very edge of the worn matchbox. An invisible ember caught the tip of the cigarette, igniting the tobacco with a quiet hiss. He took two quick, steady drags, the paper crackling softly, and exhaled slowly, releasing a thin, ghostly stream of smoke. The smoke curled up around his face, momentarily haloing his head before rising and dispersing into the air, its last wisps slithering through the tangled splay of short branches and long, sinewy leaves, vanishing into the quiet patterns of light and shadow.
“A few days ago,” he began, “I was doing my usual Sunday routine—running errands, picking up the dry cleaning, buying groceries and the normal. It was a nice day, you know? You couldn’t tell otherwise, the sun was shining bright throughout the day and streets were laying low throughout the afternoon. The evening though brought a chill in the damp air, and the sky was painted in colors at the forming sunset—beautiful clouds and all that. I thought, it’s been a while since I’ve gone up to the terrace, why not spend a few minutes up there, catch the sunset, and that thought just popped in my head. I mean I never go there more than twice a month maybe, it’s five floor of staircase. Just too many stairs, you know right. So I just thought that day, let’s make some tea and enjoy it upstairs under the dying sun. No one really goes up there. It’s quiet. I was just walking around, listening to some old country songs, not a care in the world, this wall to that wall with that black ceramic cup I got from the office.”
“Get to the point,” his friend pressed.
He took another long drag, holding it in as if to gather his thoughts. “I was looking down at the back of my apartment building. There’s a crossroads not far from my place, and the traffic was pretty low. Not a lot of people around. Then I noticed this guy standing under a streetlamp right near the crossroads. At first, nothing unusual—just a guy in a faded striped shirt and dark pants, wearing a crossbody bag. But then I realized—he was staring right at me. Not doing anything, just standing there. People walked by him, cars drove past, but he didn’t move. His round clean-shaven face just kept on staring in a gaudy rhythm. It felt… wrong, you know? Like a prank, maybe? But why would he just stand there like that, looking at me? His bag hung heavy against his hip, it seemed something heavy in there, but he didn’t shift his stance at all, didn’t blink at once. I mean, it was though too far for me to see his eyelids, but whatever. It struck me super odd that no one else seemed to noticing him looking at me. It was odd but at first I thought he had some ear-piece in his ear and was talking on phone, maybe medidating, maybe he is waiting for someone and lost into oblivion, you know, sometimes one keeps on staring at one point without actually looking. I thought of a lot of things but he didn’t move till the sun set completely and all light ceased to exist except his round face with short hair and a mismatched expression of nothingness that glow under that lamp. I got a bit scared to be honest, it creeped me out, so I went back downstairs. Tried to shake it off you know, forget about it, but it stayed with me lingering. I made dinner, cleaned up, tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. I figured, you know it brought a lot of stuff from the past. So I wanted to smoke it off, I know I promised only twice a day, but this was too weird. So I went out to the balcony. It was calm. I thought, why not go back up to the terrace, clear my head, see the moon and verify that he isn’t there, and put this to rest? You know, it’s been 4-5 hours, it was to close to midnight, obviously he wouldn’t be there. So I took the cigarette upstairs climbing those five fucking floors of stairs, and as soon as looked over the wall under that lamppost… there he was. Same guy, same stance, still staring right through at me. It sticked. I don’t know what to think of it,” he spoke. “Can he paint”, he thought to himself.
“What the fuck,” his friend muttered. “Yeah, I know,” his voice tinged with a quiet, unsettling bewilderment. “What the hell was that.”
They both went quiet; his words had a weight which hanged in the air, shadows under the low-hanging branches had grown darker, denser. The granite slab they leaned against, usually just a spot to rest, now seemed like an anchor in the midst of an unsettling sea of thoughts. A light breeze rustled the leaves above, casting jittery, nervous patterns on the ground. At the horizon where there was nothing but endless black desert, one could see a layer of black clouds touching the horizon, forming into maybe some rainclouds. light thunder trumbles could be heard in faint sounds. “So what did you do? Did you call out to him? Go down there?”
…