My eyes can see only red.

Steaming blood splatters from behind me and drives into the ceiling, the tiled walls, the urinals, the stall doors, the lights, my hair, my uniform, my arms, my ears, my eyes, the mirror itself.

The lurch-lurch of the man's still beating heart shoots up rays of wine, drenches my being. He falls backwards, arms still locked around my throat in the once choke-hold; I fall backwards with him.

I have not yet seen with my own eyes what had happened to the man. But I know from the sound, the unequivocal loosening of his grip, and the iron-taste of blood, that he is gone as a person; his head destroyed. A fine red mist begins to descend from the sky.

In my time in North Korea, I had witnessed my fair share of executions, just like the children around me. I know what happens when men and women are hanged, that sickening visage of a neck stretched too far like a giraffe or, if dropped from high enough, no body to call below the head.

But now it was the opposite. Now, there was nothing to call the head. The man's body is still twitching, still twitching on me, making erratic movements like legs of a frog peppered with salt; in a fearful, anguished scream I pry myself free from his arms and fingers and launch myself up from the blood-pooled floor, and huddle myself up to the wall, every fiber of my being shaking with the calamity I’d just met.

I turn slowly to peek at the body of the man with the corner of my eye; and upon sighting the grisly image of a neck missing its companion I, immediately, feel a sickening revulsion gripping and wringing my stomach. I wretch out of instinct, without having had anything to eat the day before; only a caustic, sinuous slime escapes me.

I have barely begun to take fresh breath when someone kicks me into the wall. He takes off his brown overcoat; I recognize from the creases of his eyes, the gruff stubbles on his chin as the murderer that stood over the body of my dead mother, fallen by the blade of two machetes which he holds even now.

I cannot fight; I have neither strength nor wind in me, in this blood-soaked restroom of a crimson haze, where even the stained fluorescent lights bathe the tiled room in eerie-red.

The man rushes towards me. He makes a wild swing with his machete.

I desperately stumble back. The restroom is cramped. The blades slice off the ends of my hair; I find my back to the wall, rolling sideways to hear the blades screech off the tiles where I just was.

The sink presses up against the back of my waist; I glance back in desperation as the man brings down his machete on me. I shield my face with my left arm.

The machete runs clean through my left wrist; it lobs off my hand. Fresh blood – my own – issues forward and out.

I let out an instinctual scream as the machete finishes its swing and lightly slices my cheek. I cannot think of anything to do. I cannot think of anywhere to go. I cannot think. I cannot do. I cannot. I –

The man raises his second machete. He swings down.

And then, time suddenly seems to slow. Out a corner of my eye – too short of a time for me to actually move – I spy the mirror unhinge from its frame. Its silver coat flows and flows down like a river of mercury, down the tiled wall, down the sink handle, down the basin, up the basin again, and splatters onto my left forearm like paint.

It expands, stretches, covers my forearm whole, its silver coat rushing towards the bleeding stump that used to attach my left hand.

It seals the wound shut in a mora of a second.

Something tells me to move my left arm.

The man is in mid-swing. The edge of the machete is just a single feet away. And yet I raise my left arm from its rest. I can somehow do so. The pain squeezes me like lightning, but I feel it driven by an unknown force, a force upwards, until I am once again shielding against the machete's blow with my left forearm, now silver, reflective.

The blade strikes true upon my silver arm, clangs, makes a brief spark.

I hear the sound before I see it.

Squelch, a sound of a blade driving through flesh, organs, guts, like blades in an abattoir, with a speed so mighty droplets of blood first form upon the vertical axis of the man, from the crown of his head to the groin of his pants.

The man's body splits in half. There is no warning, no hesitation, no decorum.

His eyes freeze; his muscles seize; like a block of wood split cleanly by an axe he falls, oh so he falls, in two halves, one to the left and one to the right. My eyes follow each of them, darting back and forth.

A thud, a minute bounce of the two halves from their mass hitting the floor – and it's done.

Agony seizes my chest and heart like fire. My screams are trapped. I can neither mouth a word nor enunciate a syllable; I can only sputter in erratic breaths...

......

.........

............

.......................

In truth, I do not know how long I was in that restroom, doused in crimson light and burgundy haze. I sat huddled, clutching my knees to my chest, weeping, sobbing, for the horror that had transpired escaped the totality of my imaginations.

I could make do with regular means of death. But the manner in which my pursuers and murderers met their ends frightened me beyond anything I'd ever experienced up to that point.

An eternity seems to pass, my eyes in dull focus on the distant tiles of the floor. Flies begin to gather one by one. They buzz, they crawl, they saunter upon the dead men, rubbing their hands together in anticipation for the rich bounty they'll provide for their offspring.

I lie there slumped for so long that even the blood begins to dry. What... am I doing here? Why are these things happening to me?

As I lie there in catatonic stupor something nudges my feet heading towards the remains of the two dead men. It is a mouse – no, a rat. It turns its snout, eyes me up and down with its beady, black eyes, as if I am an incongruous element to the scene.

It begins to nibble and chew upon the various entrails, staring at me all the same. I make no effort to move.

More rats begin to gather. Trickling in one by one, becoming a writhing mass of a dozen. Some are climbing on me. Some crawl up on me. To them, perhaps I seemed dead.

It is only when I feel one of their tiny teeth drive into my flesh that a single flash of memory from my time in the Gobi shocks me awake – fills me with indescribable indignity that --- NO! ---- I holler, and rip the rat off to hurl it across the restroom, shooting to my feet that my head for a moment swims in stars.

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All its comrades stop feasting; they scurry away, hiding in minute corners, some out of the toilet door, I care not where – as I clutch the sink, taking heavy breaths.

I am not yet dead. I am alive.

What am I staying here for rats to feast upon me?

What are you doing, Kang Reza?

A voice from nowhere and everywhere – my voice – surfaces to my consciousness, strikes its surface in a sound like a clarion drum.

Little by little, my memory begins to trickle the events of yesterday and this morning into my understanding.

It dawns on me finally that I had just killed two men.

Wait, no...

I did not kill two men. I did not do anything to kill these men. They themselves – whatever they did – brought that fate upon themselves. But what exactly? What common factor?

And as I ask these questions, I hear the buzzing screech of the sink's porcelain against my arm. My silver arm. How was it that it became silver? Where did my left hand go? It was a stump now – a silvery stump. And wait, how was it that I looked?

I try inspecting my face in the mirror above the sink, but find only the coagulated nest of blood and dust upon the tiled wall staring back at me, with a white frame designating it as a portrait of some morbid work of art.

Then it dawns on me – comes into my full and conscious understanding – that the mirror is gone; that it is on my arm; that it had moved on its own.

I could not see my skin, or feel the flesh underneath. The entire portion of my left arm from my stumpy wrist to just above the elbow was covered in the silvery, reflective coating, like I was a person of metal – or beginning to turn into one. I am seized by a momentary panic. What if I cannot get it off? I try hitting it against the sink, pulling it, striking it, try to tear it off, but it seemed to have fused with my skin; I could not get it off of me no matter how hard I tried.

But wait.

Some other part of my consciousness takes hold of my thoughts.

This mirror saved me. Two times.

Yes, it did. First when I struck it in desperation at the reflection of the first man, and his head promptly exploded; the second when I blocked the strike of the machete from the second man, and he was split in two.

... I could use this.

A sudden elation bubbles up from my stomach, an elation that I'd never ever felt before. I feel giddy, far from the sense of happiness per se; rather, it's the giddiness of waking up from a nightmare into the waking world, the giddiness of realizing that none of the nightmares were true and that monsters could no longer lay claim to my body.

I could use this...

...but how? I think.

What was it about this mirror? What did I do those two times to make it do whatever it did?

I analyze.

The first, I struck my fist into the mirror at the reflection of the man, and that sent him off into the afterlands. So it must have accounted for something.

The second time, it was not me who struck the mirror, but rather the man with the machete, who promptly divided into two.

The logic suddenly clicks in my head.

Striking the mirror at whichever reflection is present will cause it harm. The manner of harm and damage depends on the way in which the mirror is struck.

I was beginning to figure this out.

If the mirror is struck bluntly, as in with a fist, or perhaps a stone, then the object in the reflection will likewise suffer blunt damage. Makes sense. The first man's head exploded like it was hit with a bat or a cannonball.

If the mirror is sliced with a sharp object, as in with a machete, or perhaps a blade of any sort, then the object in the reflection will likewise be sliced. Makes complete sense. The second man was sliced into two as if the machete came down upon him.

Both times, the mirror actually failed to break, even though it did briefly seem to crack when I struck it with my fist the first time; it failed to break, and was made whole again. That in itself was incredible. It was perhaps an artifact from one of those old tales told by Korean shamans – or people with lineage more ancient still – about objects that held magic. I did not believe in magic, ghosts, spirits, or the ilk, because to believe in magic was tantamount to heresy in North Korea, a belief that I carried with me to the South, because no gods or spirits ever helped my family in our escape and defection from the North.

But the people were always superstitious, and now as I saw it, they had every right to. My firsthand experience disproved everything that I in my arrogance claimed to know about the world. How do you explain an unbreakable mirror with science? Perhaps some geniuses could – perhaps it was a technologically advanced material, the same stuff that made up military planes and warships – but I wasn't interested in prying into how and what this mirror was made of, but rather what it could do to help me, save me, protect me.

My next step then – the only practical course of action – was to make sure that my hypothesis was correct.

I stand more squarely, and hold my left forearm out to see a reflection of myself and the door of a stall – painted bluish-gray – behind me to the right. I am going to punch the reflection of the stall door in my silver forearm. If my conjecture is right, punching it should destroy the stall door.

I take a calculated breath and, trembling a little, punch the reflection of the stall door.

...

Nothing.

What? It couldn't be.

I punch my forearm again, aiming for the reflected image of the stall door. My knuckles land squarely upon the image.

Still nothing.

Did the mirror lose its magic? I begin to panic. My hypothesis – which I am certain is true – doesn't match the results.

I punch it again, this time with the base of my fist, because that was how I struck the mirror the first time when the first man had me in his chokehold.

Still nothing.

I punch it again, this time with the back of my fist. My aim strikes true.

Absolutely nothing.

Maybe I have to think of destroying the stall door when I am punching the reflection in my mirror-arm. Yes, maybe that was it – after all, I was desperate when I struck the reflection of the first man and held my arm out against the second man – I wanted them to be gone, I wanted them dead. For the mirror to work, I have to will it. I have to will the destruction of the object in the reflection.

I muster my will, my focus, my totality of desire to destroy this stall door behind me. I imagine, picture in my head, of it being smashed to smithereens.

I punch the reflection in my arm as hard as I can.

Nothing.

Reimagining, I punch it again.

Nothing.

Imagining, I punch again.

I punch again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I punch again until I feel the skin of my knuckles crack. It hurts terribly. It feels like I am punching metal, glass – hell, because I am!

Come on, Reza. Gritting my teeth, putting all my force in the blow, and imagining the precise image of destruction in my head, I drive my fist with a frustrated scream into the reflection of the stall.

The wind sweeps the side of my face and hair first.

Then it comes.

A screech, a thunderous crack, a cacophony of splintered plastic and wood, metal hinges ripping off, the porcelain of the toilet shattering to pieces, the flies and the hiding rats slaughtered in red mist, the back of the wall beyond the stall door caving in, as if it received a tank-shell.

SCRAA-BOOM.

The explosion sounds off and out the toilet walls and into the narrow hallways and corridors of the abandoned shopping strip from whence I came. Splinters from the broken stall door drive into the back of my uniform, pierce it, and embed in my skin and scalp like porcupine quills; concrete fragments pepper my thigh and calves like pellets, marking bruises that welt up on the spot.

Hot blood rushes down my pierced scalp, down the back of my neck, dribbling under my uniform; the explosion has knocked me off of my feet and hurled me into the wall in front of me, bruising my nose and forehead.

I can now barely stand. I can neither look behind, nor raise my head.

Yet, I am grinning from ear to ear.