A Girl Called Lucky

Law #1: Glass houses

Law #1: Glass houses

I woke up lying in broken glass. Above me was the sky; it was that wishy-washy kind of blue mixed with clouds. Like smoked filled the air. Around and underneath me the sharp edges of the shards cut through my shirt.  At first I thought the fragments were a broken mirror, after I sat up, I saw it was a broken wall.

The gaping hole of the glass wall zigzagged at me like an angry mouth. Its teeth were the jagged bits. A few seconds later, two people emerge from its mouth.  Plastic, black masks with nothing but eye holes cover their faces. Not even a mouth or nose was visible, and I was unnerved that I couldn’t see their facial expressions. They stepped across the glass in leather boots and it crunched under their feet as they came towards me. I shuffled backwards, little pieces of the glass pressed against the palm of my hands.

“Don’t move Lucky” a muffled voice says from underneath his mask “there’s no running now. We’ve got you.”

I was surprised that he knew my name. Yet, what surprised me even more was that I knew my name. It was when he said Lucky, I realized I didn’t know anything – where I was, who they were, but most importantly, who I was. Except my name: Lucky. It was the only familiarity that I recognised. “Who are you?” I say “Where am I?”

I was hoping that if he gave me the answers to these questions too, everything else would fall back into place. I was wrong.

“We’re moderators. They alerted us that a law was broken here today – by you. You have violated your rights. You are under arrest.”

I move backwards but they are too quick for me. In seconds, they have me by the arms and secure the handcuffs. I am hauled upwards and I see where I am for the first time. A glass building, no, a glass house surrounds me. CCTV cameras were fitted into every corner of the room. The house is nicely decorated; a fabric sofa with a patchwork quilt slung over it sits in front of the television.  A digital frame hung on the wall, one of the images in the slideshow caught my eye; it was me, huddled between a man and a woman with the same dark hair that fell about my own face now. We were all wearing bathing suits; a vast green sea was behind us.

“Was this my house?” I say as I am lead out of the jagged mouth, away from the image. The two men ignore me but I see them glance at each other; I imagine underneath their masks their faces share a look of puzzlement but they choose not to answer. As I am lead across a stony pathway I am surprised by the heat of the sun; inside, it was much cooler. I look up and see identical glass houses dotted along the street. I look into the crystal-clear glass of the one nearest to us; a woman chops idly at a cucumber and then adds the pieces to a bowl of salad on the cream-coloured worktop. She looks out at us, watching me as I am lead to a black, sleek car. One of the moderators opens the door of the car whilst the other one pushes my head down and ducks me inside. I turn awkwardly with my hands still tied behind my back, to look out of the window of the car. The woman in house continues to stare out at me. As we move along the wide empty road I see that she is not alone in the audience. Passing other houses, their glass substance offers a window for me to see into other lives; A man with his children, an old woman with long white hair, a young couple in the bedroom: Each and every one of them, my neighbours, were staring back at me.