DYLAN LORING / THE DEFENESTRATION WINDOW
Your new roommate wakes you up having caused a terrible shattering sound, glass all over your blankets, and he’s like What? Then it dawns on him—he forgot to mention something vital when you first moved in regarding the now-broken window.
Your new roommate asks if you understand that this, THIS –> is the defenestration window. You reply that it is technically just a window that can’t be blamed for how someone chooses to use it, and also please let’s not defenestrate anyone from the window. But your roommate says that would be a real waste of a defenestration window, and how else would you propose using the window? You say for breeze and sunlight, and he palms his forehead.
Your roommate points to a square filled with glass on the opposite of the opposite of a sideways ceiling because the situation he explains makes no sense: that this window is a defenestration window that belongs to the two of you. You tell him that defenestration can’t be an adjective since it relies on others’ actions and also that this isn’t how personification works, and your roommate responds that it’s the only window in the house that can be used to defenestrate and that it is to serve no other purpose.
You buy a large trampoline and place it conspicuously directly underneath the defenestration window and where you know a large pool of blood is slowly transforming into a lake. Your roommate is on to your goal. Especially after you have to explain why the trampoline is stacked on ten feet of phone books and surrounded by 99 pillows—you explain this is because the 100th pillow is on backorder.
Your roommate purchases a lion and deftly neglects to put a dog tag or collar around its neck and refuses to buy it shelter, so that, in a pinch, some wild animal can be blamed for killing a small village of people and dragging them into your backyard. Your neighbor just thinks you’re up very late watching MGM films on the Turner Classic Movies channel.
Your roommate crams a corpse through the window, but it’s too heavy to lift by himself, let alone break the glass, and so, as you pretend that your earphones are on, he carries over a second, lighter dead body to use as a ramp and gets the window started with a hammer and chisel before pushing the first body over the second. However the first body gets stuck halfway through. Your roommate commandeers your personal sticks of butter from the fridge, compromising your boxed mac and cheese.
Your roommate switches things up; today’s daily replacement involves stained glass, which is the nicest thing he has done for you. Probably, judging by the blood trails that the Roomba constantly combats, the nicest thing he has done for any body.
Your roommate’s victims start falling on your prized roses. Your roommate argues that they were red to begin with. You suggest buying a weathervane so that he can judge the wind and schedule his dump-throughs accordingly. The overall vibe is Willa-Cather-novel.
You decide to hang a rope from the roof so that it dangles down next to the window in hopes of saving some of the not-quite-all-the-way-deceased defenestration recipients, but you notice the corpses still piled in the backyard, now with added rug burns on their hands.
You and your roommate are very different people. But there’s definitely a feeling of when-in-Rome in the air. So you buy a bowling ball and defenestrate that. Snoozeville.
You are afraid of your roommate for the first week, and by that point, you are legally an accomplice to all the atrocities and, you guessed it, you are still afraid of your roommate long after the first week. You start sleeping underneath your bed and leave a mannequin snuggled under your covers.
Your roommate stares at the blank wall, then turns the double finger-guns into a picture-this square, then pulls out an ornate telescope, a mechanical pencil, and some graph paper. He meditates as he continues to stare. Wouldn’t this, he wonders aloud, make a great defenestration window?
Your roommate isn’t around to let the glass worker inside. The glass worker asks if you want to make the new window hurricane-proof, and you say Whatever. Your roommate won’t let you hear the end of it, as the choice cuts into his bleach budget.
Your roommate grows lazy of having to visit your room for every dead-body-chuckfest. He builds a walk-in closet for storage and a bunk above your bed. Always reckless, he does not apply for a county-issued building permit to do so.
You wake up to noise that isn’t glass breaking. It is two owls trying to communicate with one another. You start to worry that you’re in a dream-within-a-dream about to wake up for real into a nightmare.
You offer your roommate constructive criticism on the defenestration window, noting how it is very narrow. Why not a bigger window? Currently the window needs a bizzaro amusement park’s you-must-be-this-skinny-to-ride sign.
You notice a scratch in your window, so as a sort of power play you ask your roommate to replace it, even though it will only be your window for twelve hours, and the whole thing bungles his routine and, consequently, your sleep schedule.
You have to remind yourself that the apartment has a whole list of pros going for it and that when your roommate is caught he will simultaneously be a con and no longer be a con.
You decide to mess with your roommate by covering every inch of wall with mirrors. Which is the window? Which are the reflected images? Your roommate isn’t fooled, and the glare annoys during daylight.
Your roommate decides to cover the dead body pile with manure so that no one comes near enough to ask questions. Toward the end of each night, the broken-window-and-manure smell gives you a reprieve from the toxic-cleaning-supplies smell.
You ask your roommate why the window in YOUR room is the defenestration window? You compare it to how it would be like having the toilet, laundry room sink, and the more traditional out of the apartment’s two compost piles in your room. You say that he just visits to do his business and you have to live with it, you have to dream with it. Your roommate says he will explain later after just one more round for the night.
Your roommate takes a night off and, feeling the opposite of worried, you can’t find him anywhere the next day. You soon remember the overwhelming amount of DNA evidence in your backyard. You feel the opposite of relieved.
You answer the door to two police officers, mentally preparing for exercising your right to remain silent. The two police officers say that your roommate didn’t show up for his third day of work at the precinct. You invite the officers into your home and onto your couch.
You converse with the police officers and learn that your roommate and his partner had been tasked with hunting down a lion that lifted seven packs of beef jerky from a nearby gas station. You ask the officers if they have seen your roommate’s partner. The officers say that they haven’t. The officers then ask if you have received any anonymous threats from PETA. You say that you haven’t.
You ask the two police officers, as part of a final Hail Mary play, if either of them is allergic to roses or queasy around blood. The answer is no so you start to unlatch the back gate, well on your way to leading the officers to the corpse pile.
Your roommate’s Ford Bronco pulls into the driveway in the nick of time, and all of a sudden everyone jumps at a loud roar. Your roommate exits the driver’s seat wearing a scratched up, bloody lion costume and holding a box of Krispy Kremes.
Your roommate says that sadly his partner didn’t make it as the two officers walk up to the donut box. Your roommate also says that the lion was in the midst of lifting some pickled herring at a grocery store when they attempted the arrest. You ask your roommate if the herring was red. By the time it was all over, he says, the herring was blood-red and covered in glass. The three officers munch away.
Dylan Loring is a poet from Des Moines, Iowa. His poems have been published by New Ohio Review, North American Review, Ninth Letter, Split Lip Magazine, and Forklift, Ohio.