Stories to Remember: Collection of Short Stories

A Window of Opportunity

She was a fucking window Nazi! It never failed that when I get in the car with her she has to dictate whether the window can be let down. I don’t care that it’s her car, if I want the window down, why the hell does she let it back up. I’m not a child; I won’t throw things out of it. I just want a slightly cool breeze on my face.

When she rolls the window up after I roll it down, I ask her, “Why can’t I have the window down?” By this time I’m pissed from playing freeze tag with the window. She’d push the button to make the window go up and I’d push the button to make the window freeze. We’d done this for a few seconds before I let the damn button go and it rolled all the way up.

“Because I don’t want it down,” she said snidely. I wanted to reach across the console and wrap my fingers around her neck. But that wouldn’t be wise while she was driving. I didn’t want to be dead alongside her. Maybe if I got her to pull over somewhere, like the forest preserve by our house, then I could get rid of her there. There was plenty of land to hide a body. Then after I was done, I could drive around all day with all the damn windows down. Yeah, I could feel the breeze now.

I’m suddenly hit with a gust of cold air. I snap my head to the console where the temperature device is. This crazy lady has it on sixty degrees with that fucking snow flake symbol that makes it feel like it’s thirty below in the Arctic. I grit my teeth and push the vent up so the air is mostly off me.

“I thought you said you were so hot?” she asks. I slowly turn my head towards her, and for a minute I’m not sure if it’s not going to keep going around like the exorcist; I’m just that pissed.

“I’m not ‘so hot’ as you put it. I’d just like a nice breeze of slightly cool air. I don’t, however, want to feel like when I turn around I’m going to see Eskimos and igloos because it’s so cold,” I said incredulously.

“Well I don’t know what to tell you,” she responded. I rolled my eyes at her and pushed the air off.

“Just forget about it,” I muttered.

The car is extremely quiet because she doesn’t like the music on. I’m used to it now, but when I was kid it used to drive me nuts. I’d sing or hum to fill the silence, and of course, it would drive her crazy. I finally learned to sing or hum in my head. That’s what I was doing now. I was singing “Window Seat” by Erika Badu, symbolic I know, in my head.

I sometimes wonder if music has some kind of subliminal calming message in the lyrics, because they always bring me back from the deep end. I guess that would depend on the song as well. I’m bet “Psychosocial” by Slipknot wouldn’t calm be nearly as much as say a Michael Jackson song. I’m going to have to test that one day. I could find two people who are pissed and put one in a room with Slipknot and the other in the room with MJ and see who got calm faster.

I was calm now. I was just residually pissed now. We were almost at our destination and I would be happy to get out of this car. I was staring out the windshield thinking more about my music experiment, when my window started to go down.

I looked at the window first and then to the woman sitting next to me. My mouth was wide open and I was flabbergasted. I didn’t know whether I should be pissed or happy that I had won. Had I won? No, I don’t think I did. I was suddenly un-excusably angry. Why the hell did she roll the window down now? We were five minutes away from the store. Not only that, but she had damn near snapped my hand off when I’d tried to roll the window down.

“Son of a…” I said as I looked out the window that had a fresh breeze coming through it. The idea of going to a secluded area and killing her again sprang to mind; so very appealing. Not that I could do it now. Since she’d given in, I’d be wrong if I killed her for not rolling the window down. Maybe I could do it for rolling it down way after the fact. No, that was petty. I was stuck.

We reached the store and she parked. I rolled the window up and it felt like I’d taken one step forward to take ten back. I knew that I’d have to do the same window dance with her on the ride home. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but it was life with the window Nazi.

“So grandma, what do we need again?” I asked as she we started to walk towards the store.