short fiction · 2026-10-27

The Listener at the Window

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The woman in the third-floor flat does not sleep. She catalogues the silences: the thick wool of 2 a.m. when even the radiators hold their breath; the frayed edge of 4 a.m. where a single bird tests its voice; the sharp, expectant hush between thunderclaps that tastes of ozone and waiting. She has given them names — the held breath, the held door, the held grief — and keeps them in a tin box under the floorboard. Tonight the city offers something new: a silence that does not belong to any hour. No sirens. No distant television. No footsteps. Even the hum of the transformer on the corner has stopped. She presses her palm to the cold glass and feels the vibration of something large and patient moving underground. The silence is not empty. It is full of its own weight, pressing against the window like a hand.