The Room with the Yellow Curtains

“Oh, you again,” Margaret whispered, not startled this time.

The shadow lingered near the window, half-hidden by the yellow curtains that swayed even when there was no breeze. She always noticed him most when the nights grew longer, when her own thoughts refused to rest.

“You’re not planning to leave me, are you?” the shadow asked, though she knew he could never speak aloud. It was more of a thought pressed into her mind.

Margaret wanted to laugh at the irony. She had lived in this apartment for almost fifteen years, and the idea of leaving without a word felt like betrayal. Whatever—or whoever—he was, he had been with her since the first night she slept alone in this place. He deserved a goodbye.

“We have to go,” she finally said. Sitting up from her narrow mattress, she pushed the thin quilt to her knees. The radiator clanged and hissed beside her, trying but failing to offer warmth. “I can’t stay here anymore.”

The shadow tilted its head, as if disappointed, as if he had expected her answer all along. He gave her the same look he always did: piercing yet vacant, intimate yet completely removed. And then, as quietly as he appeared, he was gone.

It was never a dream. Margaret had seen him in every corner of the apartment—by the hallway mirror, near the kitchen sink, even once in the stairwell where she carried laundry. Sometimes her son mentioned hearing whispers when he was younger, but only Margaret ever saw the figure clearly.

Oddly, it comforted her. This shadow had been her company through the long unraveling of her marriage. While the building was old and peeling, with creaking pipes and drafty windows, she had come to see it as her sanctuary, her safe place after nights of shouting, after years of waiting for change that never came.

The apartment wasn’t much—one small living room, two cramped bedrooms, and a kitchen barely big enough to hold a table—but it was hers. And yet, she was leaving.

She had been only twenty-two when she met David. He had walked into the diner where she worked, all charm and easy laughter. Within a year she was married, and within two, she had a son. Friends envied her luck, her fast-track to a family life they were still dreaming of. But beneath the surface, cracks formed quickly.

David wanted more—more freedom, more women, more nights out. He had a way of making Margaret feel like she was always asking for too much, when all she wanted was a steady home.

The shadow appeared not long after the first betrayal. Margaret never told anyone; how could she? A ghost, a figment, whatever he was, he became her quiet witness. When David stormed out, when bills piled high, when she tucked her son into bed with promises she wasn’t sure she could keep, the shadow lingered, watching, never judging.

Now, years later, her son was grown and ready to leave for college. David was long gone. And Margaret, exhausted but proud, had finally signed a lease for a new apartment in another town. Fresh walls, clean slate.

Yet leaving meant saying goodbye to this strange companion of hers. The thought twisted inside her. The shadow had seen her at her lowest, had been present when no one else stayed. She knew he would never follow her. He belonged to the yellow-curtained room, not to her.

That morning, as the movers arrived, Margaret stood one last time by the window. The curtains swayed, though the air was still. She didn’t see him, but she felt him.

“I’m going now,” she whispered.

And for the first time in years, she thought she felt something stir in return. Not words, not sound—just a flicker of sadness. Perhaps even jealousy.

She smiled faintly. The shadow was trapped here, in a space of peeling paint and echoes. She had been trapped once, too—bound by a man’s absence, by a town’s judgment, by her own fear of being alone.

But unlike him, she was free to leave.

Margaret turned, shut the door, and walked into her new life.