Mirror Image

Untitled Part 1

Mirror Image

Ryan Griffith

The mirror wasn't an antique. It wasn't framed with elderberry or bedazzled with opals or scratched with eldritch designs. It was just a simple mirror like you see in most middle class suburban bathrooms. Nothing fancy, just a thing to stare at while you brush your teeth. It had been bought at a Home Depot, for crying out loud.

Later Andrew would come to believe it wasn't the mirror, or the wall behind the mirror, or even the little duplex where this was all located. It was the pairing of them, he thought, of certain angles and materials sliding together, completely by accident, but in such a way as to create something out of nothing.  Something incredible. Something damn near miraculous.

Something life changing.

He'd been living in the house for two months when the old mirror fell off the wall and smashed against the cheap linoleum of the bathroom floor. It happened in the middle of the night and he'd woken him with a start. His first thought was that the damned cat had knocked something off his dresser again, but no, Franklin was lying across his feet, eyes wide, looking as startled as he felt. So he rolled out of bed, cursing his suddenly cold feet, and stumbled, disoriented, out of his bedroom and into the living room of the little house where he lived alone. The room was a mess as usual, magazines and books strewn about, his sneakers flopped where he had kicked them off upon arriving home, but nothing that could have made that crash. He glanced into the kitchen, which was in a similar state of disorder. That only left one more room.

The mirror had seemingly just peeled off the wall, studs having giving up the ghost, slammed into the sink and broken all over the floor. It was a mess, and one he didn't feel like dealing with at the time. He'd pick it up in the morning, or maybe tomorrow when he got home from work.

There was another thud, this time on the wall in the living room, the flimsy wall which he shared with his neighbor.

"For Christ's sake Andy, what the hell you doing over there?" It was the voice of Kenny, the once welder, who lived in the adjoining duplex. Not a bad guy, if a little nosy. Sorry to rouse you out of your armchair, Andrew thought. What episode of Family Feud are you missing?

"Sorry, Kenny. Mirror fell off the wall. Everything's fine though."

There was a snort that Andrew could hear through the wall. "Damn cheap ass construction if you asked me." Andrew had not. "You should complain. Someone could have gotten hurt." He snorted again and Andrew did as well. Both men knew that complaining to this landlord was akin to squeezing blood from a stone.

"Right," Andrew said dryly. "My oven hasn't worked since I moved in." Not that he was a big cooker. The microwave tended to suit all his cuisine.

"We should grill out sometime," Kenny said.

"Talk about it tomorrow," Andrew said.

"Sure. Tomorrow. Night." Andrew couldn't quite hear the beer can popping open and the recliner settle back, but he knew it had happened just the same.

 The adrenaline was fading, he rubbed his eyes and failed to stifle a yawn. Bed, he thought, but before he shuffled back down the hallway something made him glance into the mirror. For a moment he stared, unable to process what he was seeing. The empty space where the mirror had been there was now a hole, a space in the wall where colors swirled. And they didn't just swirl, they seemed to move toward him, then away, a three-dimensional vortex. It made him queasy, like he was seeing something his brain wasn't wired to process, and he shut his eyes again. Counting to five, he opened them back up. Bare plaster, a rectangular shape a shade lighter color than the surrounding wall, stared back at him. His stomach rumbled uneasily, then settled.