Fiction | Autumn 2022

The Invasion

by Jade Oates

I walked home alone late one night after the bars closed. The sidewalk was dark under the shadow of trees; the street lamps were dim. Turning the key, opening the door, walking into my apartment, the cat meowed and brushed against my ankles. Everything was as I left it: the light on in the closet, the bed made, the dresses strewn on the bedroom floor, half-full glass of wine standing on the kitchen counter. Everything as I left it, but changed somehow: I expected a figure might step out of the darkness. 

I thought I would go check around the house, when a gust of wind blew through, colder than the night air. I went to the window to shut it, but when I pulled up the blinds I saw no window there at all. No glass panes, and no frames. The place where the windows had been gaped open, a wide portal between me and the empty street, that seemed to welcome in the void of night that loomed above. The stars shined down silently. I stood there for a while, touching the walls. There was no evidence of the deconstruction. No tools, no sawdust, not even broken plaster around the edges where the windows had been. I almost wondered if they had ever been there at all. But when I reached my hand out through the empty space I could feel the colder night air. And a few blocks away I could hear the drunken screams of two homeless people. I shivered. 

I turned on all the lights, and went to search behind shower curtains and in closets and in every dark crevice I could think of, for some explanation. Nothing in the bathroom. Nothing under the bed. Nothing in the refrigerator. Returning to the living room, I noticed the shouts of the drunkards drawing closer, realized the light in my house would draw more attention to the gaping hole in its front. I quickly turned off all the lights and went to sit guard in the living room.

I huddled under a blanket on the couch, wondering how I was going to explain this to my landlord, thinking what kind of a dent this would make in my security deposit, if she didn’t believe it wasn’t my fault. I stared anxiously at the place where the windows had been, until the sun started to rise. I waited to hear the footsteps of the building manager marching resolutely 

down the hallway, probably headed out for her morning run. I poked my head out and called to her. With a display of bewilderment intended to show her this was not my doing, I brought her into my living room and pulled up the blinds, showing her where the windows had been. We walked around to the front of the building, to look at it from the outside. From that angle, I could see the opening extended past where the windows had been, all the way down to the ground. It was an open doorway, a portal: from the street, you could walk right in. 

The building manager ran her hand along the wall where the window frame used to be. Then she turned and looked at me with surprising confidence.“This has happened to you.” she said it with gravity, then paused. “This has happened to you. It is not the first time it ever happened, and it will not be the last.” She looked out into the blue morning sky then. I felt relieved that she understood it was not my doing. But then I wondered: this happened to me? Had it not in fact happened to the building? Was I not simply an unfortunate bystander of this strange event? This building had been here far longer than I’d been alive. And wasn’t I just a renter?  Surely this event belonged to the place, not to me… 

With sincerest bewilderment now, almost pleading, I looked at her again. The blue sky was welling up in her wide blue eyes, hallowed by her silver hair.

“There are places all over the world where this has happened, throughout human history.” She seemed to be speaking to the birds now. “Doorways open up; empty space comes down from the heavens and asserts itself. A portal will happen to you, like an invasion. You know it is a real doorway, because it stands wide open. It does not close when you feel like it. It may seem unsafe to you now to live with it here. You might stay up all night for years, on guard against intruders. You might become an insomniac. You might put up curtains. You might build walls. You might move into another unit, like the vacant one on the second story. Or you might move out of the building, and find a house far out in the country where a missing wall is less likely to tempt random passersby to wander in. Naturally you will have to do something. After a while people will stop buying tickets to see the space where your window used to be. You will learn to live with it.”

“That’s ridiculous!” my mother said through the phone later that morning, as if simple disbelief could wipe away the whole problem. “You’ll learn to live with it? What does that even mean? Do they really think they can keep charging you rent for a unit without a wall? There are laws against this. You have to get out of there. Don’t worry about breaking the lease. There’s something wrong with that place.” 

I took her advice and stayed on a friend's couch for a week, scouring ads online until I found a new apartment. It was a second floor unit in a gated complex, more expensive than my last place, and not as nice, but they allowed cats and had laundry onsite. It was further from town, so I’d no longer have the luxury of walking to work, but that seemed like a small price to pay for more safety. 

I moved in quickly, fussed over the arrangement of the living room, and hung up picture frames and mirrors and coat racks. The place felt calm and warm and I did not hear the cries of drunken people roaming the streets when I settled into bed at night. I felt safe there. I spent less and less time out with friends, and more time curled up on my couch reading old novels. Eventually I started leaving the window blinds up, figuring no one but the birds could see into my second floor unit. 

Wrapped up in a blanket on the couch one night, an unfamiliar restlessness began to stir in me. I went to the balcony for a cigarette, agitated, and felt relieved by the freezing night air. When I went back inside I pulled the windows wide open and removed the screens. I tried to return to my reading but the words began to blur together, and I found myself staring into the deep blue night pouring in from the wide window. 

My mother told me not to leave the windows open like that in the winter; the place could grow mold. So I stopped inviting her over. The birds became familiar with my window sills, and then with the apartment interior. At first I tried to shoo them out, but the cat never bothered to hunt them; didn’t seem to notice them at all, so after a while I let them be. The window was open for them, whenever they wanted to leave.