Chapter 1: Objects in the Mirror are Closer than They Appear

OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR

"It was basically like he died fifty years ago," Calvin said, looking up at the flickering puke-yellow sign of the pawn shop. The glass was tinted heavily, the insides a mystery.

"It's Thursday," Johnathan "John' D'Iver said, pushing past him and grabbing the handle. "Let's put off conversations we can have tomorrow."

"Just imagining him waking up every morning and saying, 'Time to go to the place where'll die someday.' "

John kept his mouth pursed.. In fact, he was already inside. The guts of the pawnshop were a stark contrast to the outside. No flickering lights, no jaundice coloring. It was white, too white, austere and sanitary white. And yet through the rows of shelves and furniture, dark shadows formed in unnatural ways.

A whimpering chime pinged as Calvin joined him. The door wooshed shut softly behind them. ""No promotion. No big salary bumps. Just a man rotting away at his desk doing the same thing every day." Calvin only stopped to look around skeptically at the store, one eyebrow raised. "I know it's on the way home, but really?"

Engaging with Calvin would result in more chatter, as impossible as it seemed. John learned the day they started together. Calvin was a little guy at war with his diet. Too much fat around the neck and arms, too scrawny fingers with big fat balloon tips that were now reaching out and poking at. . . an egg shell in a vice? John worked with spreadsheets.

In fact, the selection at this shop was confused. Rusted metal trinkets lining tall gray shelves of cork. Lots of self-made furniture with rot. All in shadow with the hum of the lights over them. At least there were no dolls.

"So where do you see yourself in five years, old chap?"

The hair on John's neck stood on end at that. Was he being punished? He lugged this guy back and forth from the office every day. The second he tried to cash in and get some help and buy a new mirror for his apartment, Calvin started talking about the damn office. About their newly deceased coworker. Poor bastard had a massive carotid clot and died gurgling only yesterday.

"Can we just find a mirror and get out? The last thing I want to talk about is work." John nodded to the non-nondescript anchorite of a man sitting at the cash register, staring at the opposite wall with religious fixation. The man didn't nod back or even seem to acknowledge them, the gold glint of jewelry cast a gleam on his face as if distorted by water. He just sat straight and stared at the far wall, doubt counting down the minutes to close. It was lonelier work than John's, but at least he could look down and pretend he was rich.

"I'm not talking about work," Calvin pressed, "I'm talking about life." If he was waiting for an answer, it was unclear as Calvin disappeared behind a row of tall shelves cluttered with old vacuum parts with– something sticky poked out from one of the nozzles, and dusty, moldy Bibles on the other.

"Thank God," John said without seeing the Bibles.

He pushed ahead past the piss stained couches and a shiny chrome fridge with smudgy finger prints on the outside. He strode to the back of the store past many items too boring or too impossible to describe. Right up to a mirror.

It would have been perfect if it wasn't shattered into a hundred razors still enameled onto the wood.

He wasn't even in the room when it happened.

He had been standing there in his kitchen, scrubbing some guff off a plate with a fork as his dinner hummed the sweet tune of radiation. Next thing he knew it was all, crash, boom, scree. The worst part was that initial jolt in his belly, hearing something you don't normally do and breaking out in sweat. Two seconds later, his heart descended out of his neck and John started that dreaded walk to the bathroom. Knowing he was about to be out a day's salary.

Never even found out why the thing fell down. Gumming up the sink with little shreds of glass. Leaving a couple slices on the toiler seat as a surprise. The clean up had only been as bad as dreading the very moment he was now in, having to waste time buying a new one.

Truth was, he had been at this job for five years. Same amount of time he had lived at the apartment. It was about time for things to start breaking. That was life. Things just started going if you didn't make a change. Or at least didn't put some work into them. Looking around, he felt that the room would agree– would be easier to have a conversation with the shelf of dolls or chandelier of knives. John made a personal note to not walk under those, even if it wasn't a place like this he would never do that.

"Entropy!" John started back to reality as Calvin rounded the corner, toying with wooden puzzle box, prattling away to himself. "A place like this is all entropy," Calvin continued. "It's a cosmic landfill of everything lost or discarded, wasting away until the heat death of the universe."

John said, "I get that Walter's death is taking a toll on you, but can you get back to talking like a human being. For just three minutes?" John held his hands out, palms up– a veritable beg.

Calvin whistled. "Do you see how the Raider's are doing this year?" John shrugged. "Same as last year, just shitter. I blame the offense." His eyes had apparently caught something, because that younger version of Danny DeVito was already plotsing down the aisle. He was waving for John to follow who did so with a sigh.

Calvin's existence was a good argument for the existence of fate. How else could anyone explain John carpooling with him for the last five years. Couldn't even say how it started.

"A mirror. Shieet, the only one too." Let's grab it and go.

They stood before a large mirror approximately the right size, but attached to some bastardized amalgamation of a desk and a drawer. It was the only part of the store that seemed to be properly lit. If John believed in nonsense, it would have been a sign.

John rubbed his hands together and approached, looking at the joints that hung the mirror in it's frame. "Yeah, this will come off; let's see if we can sneak it through without buying the entire thing." The clerk was obscured with that maze of trash between them, a twisting underground of shadow and mystery. There'd be a better chance of being caught by the Minotaur than the cashier seeing. The only issue was the lack of price on the mirror itself.

"Say Cal," John began slowly, giving him the warning that what would come next would be unscrupulous. "Would you say you're a stand up guy?"

Calvin licked his lips and blinked a couple times. "As much as anyone?"

"Oh that's good news." John walked through the clutter, squinting at each yellow price stamp. Calvin followed behind, watching him with the utmost interest. Quiet, believe it or not. Finally. John stooped down at a shelf and pulled up a toaster. Not one of those neet chrome editions, but some retro kitsch mess that looked right out of the seventies with some frayed wiring uncomfortably close to the female end of a plug.

"Twenty sounds good for a mirror right?"

Calvin shrugged. "Cheap in some ways, expensive in others. It's just sand which is pretty much free. But you're paying for the know-how. How many people would know how to make a mirror if you gave them a bucket of sand? It'd be like doing your own dental work."

John only shook his head and let out air as he took the tip of his finger nail and slowly rocked it back and forth at the edge of the price tag. Suckers would break easy. Had to be gentle. Had to be delicate. Little by little the little bastard detached. It didn't curl on its end though, and that was the real trick.

In just under a minute, John had the entire stub off the blue and white spackled toaster and stretched his back. He certainly would need to think twice about squatting like that in five years, but something told him that wasn't the kind of answer Cal was looking for.

Speaking of Calvin, that squirrel of a human being was back at the mirror. John watched wearily as he approached. His coworker was just standing there, head cocked. He spoke up when he heard John on his heels though.

"Weird ain't it? How so many people have mirrors."

"You're saying you don't?" John pushed past him and slowly reapplied the price tag. Licking a finger and running it over the mirror for good measure.

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"Course I do– everyone does. Even native Americans at those reservations do. Or at least I'm assuming so. It's just there's so many stories about mirrors being creepy and not even the crazies mind them."

John got to work unhinging the mirror from it's joints. "It's normal people who should have a problem with them. Who wants to see themselves like that? I have a pretty good imagination; I can close my eyes and see my entire apartment. You know what I can't see?"

"Mirrors?"

John sighed and grunted at the same time, lifting the mirror from it's perch on one side. "You have to be trying sometimes. No, I can't see myself. I know what I look like, but I just can't picture my face, you know?"

"Don't know. Not a visual person. Seen myself in a dream though, guess that's the same? Here let me help you with that." Cal cut in and forced the mirror over as they held it, face down. "With all this talk, figured neither of us wanted to look at it. You're ashamed of your own face and I don't want to see everything else. Lot of the stuff here might look awfully different backwards."

"I'm not ashamed of myself. I have a decent job. A nice place. Family and friends. And you know what else?" Cal looked up quizzically. "I neither look nor sound like you."

The two men huffed under the stress of cooperation. The mirror was too ungainly to carry by one person, but too light for two people. This meant each man was at the mercy of the other as they moved around and Cal seemed to take John's comments as an excuse. He jostled and bumped John walking backwards,

A black paperweight fell of the shelf as John's shoulder got rammed into it, but he didn't hear it break so they kept moving. Would have kept moving anyway.

As they arrived at the cashier's counter with its assortment of pipes and bongs underneath, the teenage girl there looked shocked. "Don't recognize that at all," she said. "and I price everything. Does it got one?"

John side stepped and tilted his arms to show off the $20 tag licked masterfully onto the mirror's frame. She looked content so John shimmied the corners onto the ground and dug for his wallet. The person behind the front desk. (Not a man, not a woman, just a human being like any of the other seven billion.)

The mirror fit into the back seat snugly. The corners biting into the black carpet of the 2007 Nissan. John needed a new car anyway. Maybe next year.

As the engine revved, John looked over to Calvin and said, "Can you also help me get it up to my apartment, I'm cutting it close here."

"You got somewhere to be?"

"I have a date tonight. And if you really want me to bear my soul, a job interview first thing in the morning, so I want to keep things moving." Calvin leaned back, a single finger rubbing his lips, doing a poor job to hide a grin. "What?" John asked sheepishly, "I would literally die right now if I thought I'd be doing the same exact thing I'm doing now in five years."

▼▼▼

Later that night and back from his date, John finished setting the mirror, freshly degloved from its frame, onto the bathroom wall. Steam filled the room and John relaxed with a hot shower. Normally the highlight of his day and the premier place for relaxation, the shower seemed as much a nuisance as anything. As each drop pelted him, he could only think more and more about his life now with a thin snarl creeping across his face.
The date did not go well.

Tomorrow. He could turn it all around then. One big job interview and he could be a new man. Not the same thing ad nauseam. Always the same exact thing. But maybe it wouldn't be forever.

John "Joe" D'Iver stepped out of the shower and tentatively placed a wet foot on the slick tile. The towels had to be in the laundry basket outside. He took a deep breath of the steam-soaked air. Maintenance still hadn't fixed the damn vent.

If anything, it was pleasant. Like a sauna. Why did he ever use the vent fan in the first place?

As the lights flickered, he noted that maybe they could fix that too when they finally came by.

John shrugged as he went about his nightly routine. He brushed his teeth and the heat evaporated. He flossed his teeth in front of his new mirror and the fog dimmed. All that remained from his shower was the spray of opaque caked to the mirror.

That was going to bother him. With no towel or rag in sight, he used his slightly hairy forearm to wipe a sweaty, smoggy smear over the mirror. Just enough to see a blurry reflection looking back.

Only. . . . Only it wasn't. As John stared squarely into that blurry mirror, his reflection looked around the room.

John's breath quickened and his heart skipped. He too peered around the room.

What was here? Was he seeing things?

Of course he was. The mirror was foggy. He looked back and it had cleared– just an image of John gazing back. A dent in his forehead where he fell off a swing in the third grade. Two days of beard stubble. Completely normal.

But it was off. How was it off? How could it be off?

John stared at the mirror mouth agape and realized: the image of John in the mirror was standing a step or two back. John could barely breathe now. His instincts took over and he stepped back, from this. . . thing. This illusion. This not-him, not-John.

And as the real John stared it down, the image's own bulging eyes and agape mouth became clearer and clearer, the water evaporating away. He almost jumped as the image vaulted to the side, but not out of view. Whatever was on the other side of the mirror flung itself backwards onto the floor. There was a horrible crunch and he listened in abject horror as a voice, his voice but not his voice screamed in agony, a sound worse than anything John had ever made in his life.

He had to leave. He had to get out of here. It was just this mirror. He had to get away from the mirror.

John's wet toes dug into the divets of the square tile only long enough for his feet to slip out from under him. His head hit the ground head first and his neck coiled and crunched. John screamed. he screamed like the mirror screamed. He screamed a bloody, gurgling, death-beckoning scream– the kind which a human can only do once in their lives.

The same scream from the mirror– seconds before.

And then, with one last whimper, he was quiet.

John and the John in the mirror matched perfectly now.

It was John's own fault really. He should have paid attention to what he was seeing. Mirrors never lie.

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