Hey Faith write with me?

Story idea that a friend and I came up with.

I’m a watcher.  Always watching.

My pane of glass ever-changing, entertaining. Clear blue water speckled with diamond toned life.

Robin’s egg.

Ribbons of pale seaweed knot and unravel in front of my view. Fish, like jewels off a necklace, stud the 

Other Places iron, gray walls. 

The building shivers, haunting and unreachable just in sight but just out of my reach. Sunk just enough 

that we can’t connect. Atlantis split. Iron towers thrown into the sea. Separated by literally an ocean. 

And twelve feet. 

I see things, in the Other Place. Flashes of reds, blacks, and pale golds through a window identical to my 

own.  The same circle.

I wish I could visit. Or switch the fates that dragged me into the tower I now reside. 

They look happy. The grins passing their window make me ache for company and curse the pulling 

currents of the sea.  Why alone? All I have is the automated food bots that hover by me when meal time 

arrives. And they don’t make noise. Sometimes I scream and lash against the walls because the cold 

silence of my home is agony.  I revel in the din. Makes me feel alive. Like the Other Place’s smiles. 

After the echoes die I press myself back against my window hoping for a glimpse of color. 

Sometimes the Merfolk tease me. They slap their webby hands against the glass, startling me. Then they 

flutter away hands outstretched, inviting me to dance.  Their billowy hair, peach and mint colored, 

mixing with the passing fish and ship debris. Sometimes I see them attack a passing ship. Over in 

seconds. Their muscled tails whipping for the surface. My water colors red on those days.

But Merfolk bore quickly and I’m left alone with my silent view. A bot zips by and I absentmindedly 

eat, not hungry. Not hungry for this.   It floats away and I kick at it. Missing.

A muffled crack reaches my ears and I rush back to my view. There is a girl and a boy. Young, grinning, 

touching hands and lips. They smash against their window oblivious of anything but each other.  They 

are fire like I haven’t seen in years.  The girl tires, pushing away the laughing boy away.

An opportunity. I scream and pound on the glass, bruising palms and startling fish.  The girl turns. 

Slowly. I nearly sob with the shock of being noticed, eye contact. She is stunning, not beautiful but alive, 

happy. She waves at me like I’ve known her my whole life. She grabs her shirt collar and points at me 

then gives a thumbs up. She likes my shirt. I begin to cry. My shirt is gray, ugly. She is polite. I give her 

thumbs up back, awkwardly. Not sure of what else to mime. She turns her head, bobbing it to an 

unheard beat. Turning back to me she waves good bye.

No. I plaster my face against the glass. Desperate. What’s your name? Pound on glass. What’s your 

name?  Her eyes brighten with realization. She laughs, puts her hand on the window, mirroring mine. 

Ida.

She smiles at her over annunciated vowels. Then she simply turned and danced away. 

My exhaled breath echoes around the iron room expanding and growing with each reverberation as if 

there are many more crushed at her leaving. 

I don’t leave my window now. I just wait, nearly sick with the tension, knowing? hoping? uncertain? 

that she will come back. 

I note the passage of time by the whirring of the food bots, the hard clicks of machinery with in the walls 

and the water slowly dimming to a darker blue.  

The Merfolk come to visit me. They bare their wicked fangs and swim in slow taunting circles. They 

could get me if they wanted to.  They only needed to crack my glass window with a piece of sunken 

metal and reach through with their inhuman, pale hands. But they won’t. I know their cruelty. They 

know keeping me in my iron tower will prolong my suffering. On one occasion they pulled up an iron 

bar from one of their many ship victims, sand shifting off of it like an hour glass. Their ribbon tales 

propelled them over to the Other Place. The other window. I hadn’t been struck but my breath rushed 

out of me. My shrieks of horror echoed around the tower and I slapped the glass in a crazed panic. One 

of them swam up to me, milky eyes widening in a mocking question.  His weirdly jointed finger lazily 

pointed at the source of my panic. 

Please, please, please, please. Don’t.

He just stared, animal eyes. The rest swim with shattering force toward the window then at the last 

minute then let the bar fall, disappearing into the murky depths. 

I cry on those days. Both hands on the window, shaking more from self-pity than from fear. I try not to 

think about what I almost lost. I ignore the food bots on those days. 

After days? Weeks? of waiting, she appears. Suddenly. Banging on her window like the Merfolk bang 

on mine.  

I gasp with joy, all coherent thoughts escaping me. 

Ida laughs. Her dark eyes studying me, like she’s watching an animal at a zoo. Interested. Unemotional. 

No clue that seeing her is the only happy moment I’ve had since the sea swallowed my ship two years 

past.  

We talk. Haltingly. Simple question. Colors. Books. How old she is? Family? We ask everything that 

comes to mind like young children first meeting. Unabashedly nosey. It seemed like hours passed but 

really it had only been minutes, and my new friend bores quickly.  She leaves, onto the next enclosure. 

Exhibit. 

I can’t blame her. I’m about as interesting as a corpse. Metal coffin. Buried at sea. 

But she comes back, again and again. I know her middle name now. And the name of who used to 

captain her ship. And how many friends she’s made in her tower.  She was happy. Her coffin was fun, 

her coffin was populated.  I’ll bet she’d never rubbed her knuckles raw just to feel something. Anything? 

I didn’t hate her. Couldn’t. Only felt some vague sense of….loss. I relished her visits. Needed her visits. 

They added some sort of rhythm to my timeless life. I began to envy, in a calm, placid way, the life she 

led. The colors, the companionship, the interesting things she could do in her half of iron Atlantis. 

But what could I do? Even if I managed to pry open the air locked door to my prison it was impossible 

that I could swim to the Other Place. The pressure would kill me.

So I sat, and watched, grafted into my metal seat.

One day when the Merfolk turned the water scarlet Ida came to her window. Face framed by a metal 

ring. She was livid, almost spitting with the intensity of her words. I couldn’t understand her, tapped 

anxiously on the glass trying to get her to slow down. Annunciate.  She turned her head towards 

something to her right and spoke three words. Clear as day. She said them so that I could understand her. 

Don’t. You. Dare.

When he stabbed her I hardly noticed. The knife went in so easy. And she made no move to stop him. 

The thin trickled of blood sliding down her chin was the only indication that something was wrong.  She 

fell, almost in slow motion. Ida slammed against the window leaving harsh red streaks where she slid. 

She sat, huddled against the window, hands clawing the glass in agony. Her eyes slid shut for a moment 

then they opened, now horribly milky. Merfolk eyes. She tapped on the glass trying to get a sense of 

where she was facing. Then she mouthed.

I’m so sorry

Her back arched in pain and the red streaks were smeared. 

So…so sorry you saw that.

She pulled herself closer to the window, attempting a smile as she wiped some of the blood off the 

window. 

I found I was crying. No sound, silent, almost unnoticeable grief. It was if she knew how much it would 

hurt me, knew how lonely I’d been, and she was sorry for me. Sorry she was going to die in my view. 

My mouth felt sticky, salt filled. I wiped my eyes and mouth, not wanting her last sight to be of me 

sniveling. I tapped on the glass.

Hey.

Her face split into a lopsided smile.

Hey you.

Are you in much pain?

Another drip of blood joined the others that were trailing down her chin. 

Not much.

Liar.

She laughed, more drips. Then she died, laughing, eyes slid shut.

I threw up, physically sick by what I’d seen. But I didn’t move. Hoping that maybe she’d wake up. 

Maybe the wound wasn’t that deep. Maybe she could talk to me again? 

I couldn’t be alone again. Couldn’t go back to smashing the food bots against the walls just to feel 

something.   

So I stayed. And I will. Till Ida wakes up. Till the bots stop coming. Till the Merfolk bore enough  to 

break my window.