Writing Challenge - Through the Window

[ElBell]

Windows are a standard part of most any building you come across, even within roleplays. From space stations to the second story window of a family's summer house, windows are everywhere. However, what is around and through said window can vary drastically, just as the size and shape and style of the window itself can change for many various reasons.

For this challenge, try to write from a character's perspective as they look through a window at whatever is on the other side, be it the family of their target, or some birds chirping in a tree. It could be any sort of window, any sort of landscape, and any sort of setting on the other side. Whatever your creativity calls you to do!

 

[Arcadia]

21:00
Hollywood Boulevard
The Redbury Hotel
Wind Speed: 30 knots
Target: Giovanni Di Firenze

The Target is Piza-born Mafioso Giovanni Di Firenze. He will be dining at a restaurant across from your vantage point, with mafia boss Ezio Del Toro. You must assassinate Giovanni before he can deliver the payment of $90,000 to his boss. There must be no discrepancies and no prejudice. Failure is not an option.

He read his briefing one last time, his sniper's nest perched and at the ready. His target had just arrived, in a limo with blacked out windows. As always. He took one deep breath in, and use his first few minutes to scan the environment for anything to cause an "accidental" death to the Mafioso. The mafiaso was talking happily to the limo driver, so he had some time. There was a streetlight the Mafioso was standing under, but some shattered glass and a minor spark wasn't going to cut it. He would need to eliminate the man the old fashioned way. Aiming down the sights, his target and the Mafia Don sat together, welcoming each other as brothers. They relieved each other of their coats, and then sat down, as a waitress came to serve them. Walking down the aisle she was, and he breathed in, his finger pressing against the trigger. His aim was directly at the man's jugular. One shot, and he'd be spraying worse than a bleeding victim in a Hitchock film. The waitress lifted up her pad and pen. And he took the shot. The bullet shot forward, pierced the glass barrier between him and Giovanni, and pierced right through his jugular, blood spraying out in all directions. His job was done. Now he had to escape. Looking out the window, one final time, he fled.

 

[MST3K 4ever]

Rick Burnett stood in an apartment loft that he called home for the last 5 years. He looked out at the city that he served for so many years as an undercover cop. This apartment, the contents, and the car he drove all of it belonged to the NYPD.

Though at times the job could be a pain in his neck with the ups and downs, the politics of it all, and leading a double life working undercover Rick loved the perks that came with it. One of them was living in this stylish uptown loft with a killer view of the city. He couldn't begin to count the number of times he stood at this window looking out at the lights. Wondering what people were doing, who would need his help, were there families enjoying their time together Rick loved thinking of all the possibilities.

Whether it was having a drink, throwing a party for some of the worst scum of the city, trying to crack a case, or just enjoying the view looking out this window gave Rick a sense of peace he couldn't find anywhere else. There weren't too many things Rick was gonna miss about this job more than the view he enjoyed.

Just then there was a knock on his door. Rick said without looking back, "It's open."

Two plain clothes gentlemen entered the apartment and one of them said, "Hello Detective Burnett, we're Officers Stanley and Charles here from disbursing. Just doing our final check over of the loft and the contents sir. We did the check over on your car and everything is fine with it. We'll be done in a few moments. "

Rick replied without looking back, "Go ahead guys. Take care of your business."

Rick's cell phone rang and he saw that it was the number of his former partner Nate Cooper. Rick answered it with a smile and said, "I thought you'd be half-way to Texas by now."

Cooper replied, "I had some last minute details to take care of. If I know you you're looking out the window one last time."

Rick said, "Been here for the last twenty minutes. Still can't believe we're done man."


Cooper replied, "Yeah we went against department regs and the Feds, and once we did that our fates were sealed."

Rick said, "You know what though partner. If I had to do it all over again I'd do the same thing. We saved a young mother and her daughter. We did the right thing."

Cooper replied, "Yes we did. We had a one helluva great run. I'm gonna miss you bro."

Rick said, "I'll miss you too bro." Rick began scanning out the window and saw Nate on the corner on his phone looking up at Rick. Rick said, "You stay safe down there in Texas."

Coop replied, "I will take care of yourself Rick and enjoy the islands."

The two men smiled at one another and gave a nod as they hung up at the same time. Rick watched out the window as his friend hailed a cab and was gone in a matter of seconds.

Officer Charles said, "Excuse me Detective." He shook his head and said, "I mean Mr. Burnett. We took our final walk through and everything seems to be in order. If you can sign the forms where I indicated, and give us your keys you'll be free to go."

For the first time Rick finally looked away from the window and took a clipboard from Charles. He signed the forms as quickly as he could and dropped his keys on the clipboard.

Officer Stanley said, "Sir we know you enjoy the view from here, but you need to leave first so we can lock everything up."

Rick nodded and said, "Sure." Rick started to take one last look, but when he saw the officers standing there in the reflection Rick knew it was time to go.

Rick exited the apartment building and stood on the corner across from the loft. He saw the lights go out in the loft and Rick bowed his head as he walked away.

 

[OlympusBlood]

Rae looked through the window. There are so many windows, but this window was not the kind of window people normally classed as a window, though it did provide importance. She looked straight into her nemesis' eyes, and deep into their souls, the window to who a person is. She watched Hell's fire burn and Heaven's Angels sing. She saw fireworks and bombs exploding and happiness drowned by tears. She saw food and water and beer and she saw her own face, staring back at her like a reflection in a mirror. She saw these windows everywhere. She couldn't escape them. She lived in a world of glass.

 

[souleaterfan320]

"...fuck..."

Carlos whispered, as an ash from his lit Cuban cigar dropped from the burning cherry onto his hand. He put the cigar to his lips, and gripped it with his teeth, as he wiped the burnt hand with his other hand, in an attempt to knock the ash out of the window. Sitting in his glossy black, '78 camaro, he glanced out the window, into the void of the night. His client was late, as usual. This was becoming a habit that he was determined to put a stop to. He pulled out his phone, and texted the client.

'Hey, where the hell are you? This is the third time! Damn NYPD has cops all over my apartment, you better hurry up before they check here as well.'

He locked his phone, and looked out through the window port, as his gaze turned to a loud noise to the building on the left. A posse of thugs, dragging what seemed like a woman by her arms out of the complex, forced her to kneel.

Moments later, a fairly dressed man, mid-20's with slicked back hair, presumably Italian, carrying a pistol with a silencer attached to the barrel, approached the girl, pulling a sack that was placed over her head off, and looked at her with such an intent to kill, that anyone watching this would be paralyzed in fear, as Carlos was.

A few seconds after, a crying child ran out from the building, a girl no older than 13, hugged her mother, both of them covered with bruises and cuts. The thugs separated them, as the Italian man placed the gun barrel to the mother's forehead. All Carlos could hear was the child's useless cries, as the man pulled the trigger.

Blood splattered the pavement, as the daughter cried out in emotionally induced agony, as she watched her mother die. The thugs then placed the girl on her knees, and the Italian man placed the gun at point blank range toward her face,and pulled the trigger.

Carlos let out a whimper, seeing this horrible act of sin unfold in front of him.
He quickly became enraged at this act of murder. Anger resonated in him, as he reached for his glove compartment and opened it, revealing a fully automatic Tec-9 machine pistol.

He called his client's number, as ringing could be heard from across the parking lot. The Italian man picked the phone from the dead woman's purse, and answered it.

"Who the fuck is this?"

Carlos replied with a dark tone, enough to frighten even the devil himself,

"The motherfucker who's gonna put you in a coffin."

Carlos revved his engine, putting it into drive. He put his left arm and head out the window, and began firing at the group. Two of them dropped dead, while the Italian man and his lackey ducked, avoiding the gunfire. Carlos drove towards the group at top speed, slamming the Italian man between the wall and his car. The man's lower half crumpled and split under theforce of the impact, dying immediately. Carlos was ejected from the car, and flung through the windshield, breaking his back against the wall.

As Carlos took in his final breaths, he smiled, knowing that he at least did something right in his god forsaken life, by avenging the mother and her daughter. He looked back to his car, seeing the windows and windshield were shattered into pieces...

 

[Val]

When the windows opened, He squinted, shuffled forward and peered through. Allconsuming blue blunted him initially, the color splinted, gradated from dark to light, from cool to full and neutral. And when at last the barrier plates of the physical blue opened, He saw Her. It was not the first time: He'd peered at these windows countless times before, had seen Her in them before, but today it was different; she was different. The blue became a sky that lit up the beds upon which She sat, beds of blue and black and meekly green grass. She sat against a tree in a dress of white, her head tipped back, a hand cupping her chin. A ribbon of wind dropped down onto the bladed beds and moved the grass, moved Her hair, moved Her lips to a reflective smile.
She was younger now, and He didn't dispute it: it was not a matter of invention or desire, it was instead she in truth, she pristine, she at the beginning. The sight of this genesis brought Him closer, to the very edge of his seat; His nose nearly pressed into the pair of moist windows. He saw Her stand, place her hand against the stern bark of the poorly rendered tree and turn her head away so that she faced the pair of clean, irregular black suns that hung in tandem within this scape of azure like tuft-less buttons squarely sewn side-by-side upon a vest of blue velvet. Slowly, the curtains fell over the windows; smiling somberly, He slid back in his chair. ​

Lids of wrinkled of ivory and lavish-of-lash snapped closed then opened again, revealing again those windows of blue. Although she was old, she was pretty, was built of grace and meticulous femininity. Just like the younger girl He'd found in her eyes, she lifted her chin and took it in her hand. "Just what was it?" she asked. "What did you see?"
With his own windows closed, He lowered his head; his smile, quiet and satisfied, remained. "A Beauty," He said. "Like none-other I've seen before."
"Like you've never seen before?" she queried, her head canted quizzically, feistily.
"Never."
"Well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hurt."
"The day I met you," He said. "I thought to myself, 'I've never seen anything as beautiful as Her, and I never will again.' " He opened his eyes; through his smile he exclaimed, "But I was only lying to myself; I was a fool."
Her eyes lit up, then, her face bright with curiosity and perhaps embarrassment, she asked, "How were you a fool?"​

"I saw you the next day; you were more beautiful then. And you were more beautiful the day after that, and the month after that, and the years and years that followed. In your eyes just-now I saw you the day we met, and although you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, I, again, was a fool---because right now I'm staring at the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."​

 

[April Showers]

"Dolphins, Daddy! I can see dolphins!"

"Can you?" asked her father.

Sasha nodded vigorously, which caused her Curly Sue pigtails to bounce vigorously about her head. She spun around, grinning ear to ear. Her father would be beaming, she knew for a fact. He'd be radiating giddy delight, just as Sasha was. "What keen eyes, you have," he'd say. And Sasha would swell with pride. She'd have to ask him what keen meant, but even without knowing its definition she could tell from his tone that it was a good thing.

But there was no smile upon his lips, no light in his eyes. In fact, he wasn't even looking. He was frowning at his newspaper. But he could do that any old day, thought Sasha. Here they were, a million feet in the air, soaring through the clouds at a thousand miles per hour above the Pacific Ocean. And she could see dolphins through her window! Thousands of them! She could see them, little white specks breaking through the blue water. How was her father not amazed? How could he resist the chance to see such wonderful animals? This wasn't at all like the aquarium because these dolphins were wild. And that made them far more special.

"Daddy," said Sasha. She tugged his jacket sleeve. "You're not looking."

He sighed. "Not looking at what?"

"The dolphins. There are dolphins down there." Sasha pressed her finger to the oblong window. "Look!"

She stared at her father expectantly, unblinkingly. She refused to look away until he saw the dolphins. She inhaled, exhaled, and then breathed in and out once more. Finally, he unbuckled his seat belt, leaned over his armrest, and raised his eyebrows at the view outside the plane. A moment later he relaxed back into his chair, clicking his buckle back into place.

He mustn't have seen them. "Did you see them?" she asked.

"No, honey, I didn't."

"But they're everywhere! Look again. I'll let you sit in my seat if you want."

"Sasha," said her father, "those aren't dolphins." What? Sasha's smiled faded. "They're whitecaps."

What was he saying? They were dolphins, surely. She had seen them with her own eyes. "What's a white cap?" She didn't know why she asked. She didn't care.

"It's the foaming crest of a wave caused by high winds." Sasha's father rustled his newspaper, settling his eyes on it once more. "Those aren't dolphins. They're waves."

Waves. Sasha furrowed her brow. She pressed her forehead against the window and narrowed her eyes. Even while squinting she couldn't see plain old waves. And she knew what those looked like. Those white things leaped and arced. They wove their way across the ocean surface like a needle sewing through fabric. Over, under, over, under. They were too graceful, too full of movement, to be simple waves.

Sasha stared out the window, standing between the edge of her seat and the chair in front of hers, as fixated on the view out her window as her father was on his newspaper.

A soft ping chimed through the cabin.

"Put on your seat belt, Sasha," said her father.

She sat, buckled up, but never took her eyes away from the water. Her father was mistaken. Those were definitely dolphins.

Or maybe they were mermaids.

---

What a fun challenge! Thanks for hosting it, @ElBell!

 

[Sarahonfire333]

Ben stared out the window. If he was seriously looking through it, he would see a yard encased with a tall fence. Beyond the fence were rows of trees making up a forest. Further still, there would be a lake and then eventually a town full of people enjoying their lives. However, Ben was not seeing the real world, he was seeing the past.

A man stood over his wife with a smoking gun. The blood was pooling at Ben's feet as he watched helplessly. The man laughed through the dead of night. He was clearly a lunatic. The stranger lunged toward Ben and Ben found himself wrestling him for the weapon. The steel of the .45 felt cold in Ben's hand as he turned to see his wife. Her eyes were open and her tears were drying along with the crimson liquid that spilled from her chest. The rage filled Ben as he faced the assailant. Shots echoed through the dark alley once again. He emptied the remainder of the clip in the man's chest and then walked to his wife. He cradled her lifeless body in his arms until the police arrived.

Ben shook his head chasing the past away. The bars on his window came back into focus as he looked at the yard. It was filled with men in matching orange jumpsuits. The electrified fence buzzed with power. The jury said guilty based on a faulty eye witness. Not that it mattered. As soon as the first shot rang out that night, Ben's life had already become a prison. And he would be suffering, trapped in this sentence until the day he died.

 

[SlamifiedBuddafied]

Stunning clouds stretching for many thousands of miles, green and pink intertwined against the cold dark of space. Illuminated by their own inner workings far far away from here. Drifting across the pond of time, searching the vast universe on our vessel for questions we cannot truly understand without first knowing we know nothing. For from this window of the U.N. Margo 2, a deep space exploration fitted with the top grade of nano technology fitted with artificial organisms. One could say this very ship is a living thing as far as we define life. Breathing, living and thinking and capable of travelling the void of space long after its inhabitants suffer the cruel passage of time. Yet we too have become more than the frail bodies we had so long ago during the first days of our travels. I said a final goodbye to Earth from this window, gazed upon the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn in those first few months.

That was many centuries ago and yet of all the wonders I have witnessed that this infinite universe has granted, I always keep a sense of nostalgia for this window. For it is my window, or at least I playfully would deem it such. Oh I once saw the fungal blooms of Alpha Centauri Bd and the vast garden worlds deep within the Orion belt. Through this window I was the first to see civilized alien life sprawling in great cities on a planet with radiant blue fauna, deep emerald oceans and the most uncanny sky of green which reminded me of the forests of Earth. It was at this window I pondered the questions of life and existence, finding myself pressed against it, looking deep into the abyssal sanctum of the universe.

But it is here I cry with tears of absolute joy, for I have seen what I could only describe as a tree of life. A great structure of nature which resembled the willow tree sprung out of a gargantuan planet. Its roots the size of many worlds alone sprawled across the expanse. A dance of flickering yellows and blues emanated from the tree like manifestation, like an orchestra made manifest so the eyes to may feast upon the spectacle. I spied through my visors and saw flora and fauna creep across the planet, great structures built by the hands of alien creatures seemed endless. Its great red sun shined with joy on its child as it too drift through the never ending symphony, forever a ballet only Gods may view and for us to discover.