Ava Wagner
Nobody believes me when I tell them this, but I’ll say it anyway.
John Donovan did exist, and something terrible happened to him.
I would have described him as my acquaintance. I didn’t know him all too well, but we were friendly with each other and exchanged small talk occasionally. We spoke about the weather and our pets. I enjoyed showing him pictures of my especially affectionate siamese cat, Rosie. We were both men in our thirties working for a small company. John was the most average man you could ever meet, he wore his dark brown hair neatly parted in the middle. He was always clean shaven and tucked his collared shirt into his pants. You’d never notice him, but as I got to know him better, I could tell his average persona was hiding something.
Defenstraphobia is what I believe he called it, a fear of windows. He refused to look at them, he wouldn’t go within five feet of them. It was a bizarre fear, one that sometimes made working with him difficult, but one I was willing to accept. I liked how average and quiet he was, besides his odd quirk. I could talk to him all day and he would just listen. He rarely ever had anything to say back besides a word or two.
Another thing about John, he was my next door neighbor. I could see him through my window, sometimes I would wave, smile, but of course he never reacted back or looked my way. I could barely see him through all the caution tape plastered all over the windows. Some of his windows even had cardboard placed over them. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he planned to remove the windows entirely at some point.
But one night, I saw something I shouldn’t have seen.
It was about three in the morning, I couldn’t sleep. I had tried several tactics before to alleviate my insomnia, I painted my bedroom a calming blue, I grabbed more pillows for my bed, I painted the ceiling like a starry night sky and placed a fan on my tableside bed for some white noise. None of it seemed to work. Rosie seemed disturbed too, staring at the window with her dark ears pinned back. I shook my medication bottle and the little silica gel packet rattled inside. All empty. Maybe it was the streetlight outside that was bothering me. I sat up to reach for the blinds, but something caught my eye outside on John’s property.
It looked like a man, I thought perhaps it was a burglar, but as my vision adjusted to the dark, I wished that was the case. It was far too lanky, far too emaciated and pale to look human, more like a poor imitation of one. It was hunched over on John’s lawn, its backbone jutting out from its thin flesh. The thing moved, skittering on all fours undetected by the sprinkler system as it started to crawl up the drain pipe to his roof. My heart jumped as I reached for my phone to call the police. An operator responded on the other end, but their words turned to droning noise in my ear when the thing turned to me.
What should have been a face was just a gaping hole, but I swear, I could have seen a pair of eyes staring straight at me somewhere in the cavity of its face. Did it hear me from all the way over there? I hid behind my wall and watched in horror out of the corner of my eye as the thing slowly slid John’s window open, easily tearing through his home’s cardboard defenses and crawling inside. I pressed my hand over my mouth. The neighborhood was quiet other than the buzzing of street lamps.
It felt like an eternity sitting in silence before red and blue flashing lights filled the quiet neighborhood as the police arrived. I heard a knock at my door and it took me a moment to force myself to move and answer. They started to take my statement.
The more I explained, the more confused they looked. I knew it sounded unbelievable, but what they told me just didn’t make sense. They said a “John Donovan” didn’t exist. It had to be a joke, right?. He was right there, sitting across from me at lunch, listening to my stories. Sure, he didn’t say much, but I was looking at his house, wasn’t I?
I went to work the next morning, shaken and paranoid from lack of sleep. I asked my colleagues over and over again about John, but nobody seemed to have a clue. His desk was empty, like he was never there to begin with. I’m the only one who remembers.
I don’t know where John went, but I’ve boarded up the windows facing his house. I don’t want to be forgotten too.
Ava Wagner ‘24 is majoring in art and looking to complete a minor in biology. She enjoys creative writing because she likes to push her creative limits.