Asa is an unwilling sensitive with a fear of mirrors and anything reflective.
Amy is an unwitting empath.
Together they are responsible for murder.
THE SHIPPY SIBLINGS are rarely alone, despite living as secluded orphans on the remains of...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
BLACK PAINT SPAT ON the floorboards, speckling the aged, varnished wood like the outside of a child's Easter egg. I dragged the wet paintbrush against the mucky lip of the paint can. Relieving the thread-thin drizzles that followed my hand motion, I swiped a thick, black line across the mirror. My sneakered feet rocked with my shifting, eliciting a squeak as my weight tweaked the penny nails in their beds.
Funny. Anything could be normal if you did it long enough. From the outside, I imagined the scene: A guy, skinnier than a goddamn knife edge, half-hidden in a baggy red T-shirt, hunches in front of a large, ancient mirror. A pair of faded blue jeans grab at his bony hips. One ripped back pocket begs for someone to decide its fate to the tune of Should I Stay or Should I Go. From the side, he's stern-faced, but in frontal reflection, he looks much younger than his nineteen years. Vulnerable is the word. He looks vulnerable. Too many freckles chart his exposed skin. Even the fingers curling around the paintbrush have spots. Methodically, he dips and swipes, blacking out the two reflections in the mirror—
a nightly ritual.
As I said, funny how some stuff was considered normal to certain people. For instance, the idea of getting gussied up once a week—nice pants, button-downs, and sharp collars—to sit for the high side of an hour on a hardback bench, listening to a sweaty-faced-starch-collar rattle falsifiable rhetoric about sex, drugs, and rock n' roll like he knew his ass from his elbow boggled my mind. God wanted a miserable flock, I think. It made Heaven infinitely more desirable.
Sadly, shit only got worse after you died. These were the things people who liked sex, drugs, and rock n' roll were hip to. I knew this more intimately than most, except maybe my sister, but she'd shut that knowledge out to keep her frayed sanity intact for the both of us. I didn't blame her. I worried because I saw how the spirits trailed her and how tired they made her. Tired and torn up. The two weren't mutually exclusive, despite her denial. And ignoring the tangible or intangible didn't help you prepare for the inevitable. I should know.
I dipped the brush again and covered the last section of glass in paint, my eyes avoiding the reflection that watched me as I erased him. He (I guessed he was male, but I didn't know why) was a massive black shape that snagged light like a Venus flytrap, digesting it into nothingness. He had no facial features, no definitive limbs, only a vaguely human outline. He was a malignant shadow. Not my shadow. I already had one that slunk after me, folding dormant when the light shone too bright. This shadow was different. He stood over my left shoulder, unflinching, scaling my height by a foot or two. I was permanently numb on that side, thanks to him. My left shoulder and upper arm were pins and needles.
Sometimes, the cold crept to my neck. A quick, sentient finger-flick to remind me I wasn't alone. But the real kick in the nuts? Only I could see him.
The paintbrush dropped into the water bucket at my feet, released from my freckled grip. The brush broke the grey film on top, and the grimy wood handle settled cockeyed against the plastic side. Stepping back, I surveyed my handiwork for the thousandth time. The naked lightbulb dangling from the plaster ceiling overhead flickered as the fat body of a moth pip, pip, pipped against the hot glass with zero care, setting up the rest of the odd scene:
