The Majesties Watch Over You

Craning your neck out, you can see flecks of light in the thin gap between your building and the one next to you. The towers reach into the darkness above and below. Days earlier you accidentally broke the window while exercising. Since then, you’ve come home every night to stare up at the Majesties and their beauty. You have to stick your head out to see them, and it’s a long way down, but their twinkle locks your gaze upward.

The education videos they showed you as a kid never mentioned their existence. It didn’t explain the light blue canvas that replaces them in the morning either. The entertainment videos, which you’ve replaced with the Majesties, don’t mention anything like it. Before you could put your head out, the window only showed the blank bricks of the opposing building. The building is so close you could almost reach out and touch it. But your focus is on the Majesties and their slow journey across the gap.

You know you should call the maintenance staff and report the broken window. If your supervisor inspected your room and saw the white bed sheet hanging like a curtain and what it hid, she would fine you for the malcompliance and demote you three positions back on the conveyor belt that you’ve spent countless pay cycles working your way up. But your chest twists in protest every time you imagine betraying the Majesties.

Above you, a new pinprick of light appears. It begins its voyage across the finger-width gap. There are only a few hundred Majesties above you, and if you focus, you could tally them all. Unfortunately, they disappear from your view and behind the opposing building. Quickly, a Majesty flicks across the gap leaving a streak of light behind as it vanishes. Your gaze returns to the previous one as it moves slowly above you.

Your stomach groans, and your eyelids feel heavy. You should be unfolding your bed from the wall of the small apartment right now. The ration you received from your work on the assembly line today grew cold hours ago. But the Majesty you’re watching is only a few hair lengths away from hiding behind the blackness of your neighboring building. You fight to keep your eyes open as it leaves your line of sight.

You crane your head out to see if you can get one last glimpse of it before it disappears for good. This is the most you’ve ever left the building. It’s been a wonderful evening with these beauties and you can’t bear its ending. 

Holding the window sill you lean out to prolong your view. Greedy for a final peek, you stretch your chest out further. Your feet slip. Your grip isn’t as tight as it should be. The majority of your body was hanging out the window. It drags the minority out to join it.

There’s no longer anything solid around you. Your guts feel like they’re lurching from your stomach. The pulling feeling is tenfold mightier than the elevators that take you to and from the assembly lines. Your shoulder scratches a wall on one side, and you tumble to hit the opposite building. It feels like someone’s placed an orbital sander against your shoulder. But you look up and see the comforting Majesties shining down on you. The few hundred watch you fall just as you watched them cross the gap. Your body reconnects with something solid, and the lurching sensation stops. The Majesties watch over you, alone in the alley between the buildings, as you cross over into the darkness.