When the daylight has faded

The cracked mirror (#slip)

Her hug is a little lopsided as she is trying desperately to get her tiny arms around my midsection. With an exaggerated sigh, I swoop Dinky Devil up into my arms and squeeze tightly.

"I love you, mummy," she giggles into my ears, just as Malcolm, our driver, pulls up in our Tesla, shiny and waxed.

"I love you, too, sweetheart!"

My words have just left my mouth when my baby's face changes into a grimace of hate, her sparkly dress now dirty and ripped.

With a jolt, I slip back into reality. I find myself staring into the cracked and smudgy mirror of the fine establishment I call my home every Friday and Saturday night. Not that the mirrors I stare into on any other given day haven't seen better days, but this one is particularly disgusting. I cannot explain it myself, but I keep coming back here, despite the dirt and the smell and the lust-driven lads. Hell, it's the lust-driven lads that lure me back every weekend with their false promise of salvation.

Aunt Cindy told me with glee how my mother sat on the toilet seat 19 years ago, nearly crushing that little white stick she was holding and producing a terrible keening sound at the very first announcement of my impending dive into human life. Mother was sixteen at the time and resented me since the moment I was born for spoiling her youth, her relationship with her parents and the brilliant career as a rocket scientist that, to hear her talk, she had been mere moments away from when I weaselled my way into her life.

I feel the white stick I'm holding burning a hole into my left palm. Result within one minute, the instructions said. Even sticks you pee on are digital these days and guarantee instant gratification, unless the result is not exactly the desired one. Then it's still instant, but gratification is debatable.

So now I'm standing here, trying to get a glimpse of my future that is displayed on this high-tech pee-stick, but my body is frozen. Even I myself cannot explain this reaction. This could be it. All I ever wanted. Finally, it might have happened. I should be overjoyed. A little bundle to call my own, a small creature that will love me unconditionally. Redemption, acceptance, bliss.

But this is not what I feel at the moment. All I feel is terror, a mixture of stark desperation and an inkling of what is to come. Indigence instead of innovative mobility solutions, dysfunction instead of domestic delight.

I squeeze my eyes shut and drop the pregnancy test into the bin without looking at it first. The result does not matter anymore.

Half an hour later, having spent the last of my money on the purest powder the market offers these days, I'm back here. With one last look into the broken mirror, I press the plunger of the syringe hard. Slipping down the dirty tiles, I sacrifice the only thing I actually own to the Poppy God, hoping for acceptance in the afterlife.