"The Black Window" by Brett Pribble

It hovers in the sky like a baby killer whale. I avoid day light because at night it’s harder to make out, but it’s still unmistakable. Starless and shiny, an obsidian square. It calls to me as I traipse down the main strip of El Poblado, the street burning with salsa and motorcycles. Overhead, the black window creeps after me and I duck into a steak restaurant.  A half-naked woman dangles from the ceiling on a hula-hoop. I ask the waitress to be seated in the back, far from my stalker. Techno pounds my ears and basketball plays on televisions—lots of tourists. I devour liquor and ribs, hoping for a reprieve. No luck. The black window opens on the restaurant wall.

I voyaged to Medellin to escape the nights back home in Orlando where it lives on my ceiling—calling for me to climb up through it and vanquish the surging anxiety in my muscles. I engulf my face in my pillow. Looking up, it demands me to let go, grant it to crucify every throbbing image. Once I cross through, there’ll be no more good days but no bads ones equally. I left the country to evade the window, but it followed me to Colombia. It follows me everywhere. Shutting my eyes, it unlocks inside me, floats in my blood.

I traverse past neon lights and drug dealers. Rain drizzles onto my leather jacket. It’s rainy season in Medellin. Long mirrors line the walls of the elevator in my hotel. Idling at my reflection, the mirrors turn black. The window found me. A depiction of me shunned by friends appears, which morphs into one of me in a prison cell. An inmate shoves his heel into my mouth. It transmutes again. I’m in a hospital bed, breathing into a mask. The elevator opens and I bolt to my room. Inside, I sit on the balcony, the black window back in the sky. I would go to bed, but I worry the black window is me.

Brett Pribble’s work has appeared in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, decomP, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Saw Palm, The Molotov Cocktail, Five on the Fifth, Maudlin House, Bending Genres, Bright Flash Literary Review, and other places. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ghost Parachute. Follow him on Instagram/X/Bluesky @brettpribble.