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 like the windows of a drug dealer’s Cadillac Escalade; except you understood why the drug dealer wanted privacy. The same façade on a storefront gave it a unique, sinister quality.

"It's Thursday," Johnathan ‘Joe' D'Iver replied, pushing past him and grabbing the handle. "Let's put off conversations we can have the office.”

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

Walter might have thought as much, but Joe very much doubted he ever said that part out loud.

The guts of the pawnshop were a stark contrast to the outside. No flickering lights, no jaundice coloring. It was white, too white. It was the austere color of heaven, to someone who had no love for the idea of religion. And yet through the rows of shelves and furniture, dark shadows formed in unnatural ways.

A whimpering chime pinged as Calvin joined him, and the door wooshed shut. ""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 this place is on the way home, but really?"

Engaging with Calvin would result in more chatter, as impossible as it seemed. He learned that the day they started work 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?

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. Jewlry scattered about with no regards to security. And somehow the merchandise was silhouetted with shadows despite the hum of the lights directly overhead. John eyed a paperweight of a black monolith. He had seen that somewhere before?

"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 to carry furniture, Calvin started talking about the damn office. About their newly deceased coworker. Poor bastard had a massive carotid and died gurgling only last week.

John wished it was him. Only once.

"Can we just find a mirror and get out?” John nodded to the 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 a jewelry case cast a gleam on his face as if distorted by water.

It was less lonely work than John's; working here, you could look down and pretend you were 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– something sticky poked out from one of the nozzles. It rested on a stack of yellowed Bibles.

"Thank God," John said seeing his coworker disappear.

He pushed ahead past the piss-stained couches and a 1950’s fridge with distinct smudgy finger prints on the outside. He strode to the back of the store past many items that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. A couch wedged between two dressers: a broken stapler and a half used candle. This is where he was at in life; this is where he was shopping. Joe walked past all these things that his gut railed against and more-- right up to a mirror.

It would have been perfect if the top left corner hadn’t shattered and enameled the shivs of glass into the mahogany.

John 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 damn mirror fell. The cleanup had only been as bad as dreading the very moment he was now in, having to waste time buying a new one. Except for that one surprise sliver of glass that fell on the toilet seat, that was worse.

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. And why not? John couldn’t even place when it had started, he used to have things in working order.

Looking around, he felt that the thrift shop would agree, as if the hobbled shelves could remember their better days too. It would be easier to have a conversation about his life with them or the bobble heads than Calvin.

Joe passed under a chandelier skeptically.

"Entropy!" Calvin rounded the corner, toying with a wooden slide puzzle, 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. "You know where I’ve seen this puzzle before?” John shrugged. “Good ole’ Walter’s house. It was sitting on his living room table. His grandfather made it, apparently.”

“When would you have ever been at Walter’s house?”

“He hosted a Christmas party one year. Only I came. Actually, the boss swung by for five minutes too.” Calvin continued down the aisle, his eyes set on something. “You see that couch back there? Grey, bit of water damage? Walter had the same one. We were sitting on it while he explained the woodworking.”

John followed Calvin's lead but he wasn’t buying it for one bit. Ghost stories. He couldn’t refute what Waltor did or didn’t own in life, but there was no chance his belongings just happened to end up here. The only real coincidence was he and Calvin spending time together. Those kinds of relationships didn’t just happen without a story—the kind involving either trauma or excessive amounts of alcohol.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

This one did not.

"A mirror. I wouldn’t want it, but the only intact one I see." Calvin thrust his oversized thumbs into his jeans.

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 where the shadows laid down properly.

John rubbed his hands together and approached, looking at the joints that hung the mirror in its frame. "Yeah, this will come off; let's see if we can sneak it through without buying the entire thing." The clerk was obscured in that daedalum weave of tetanus. They wouldn’t see. Not thieving exactly. Just a bit of slight of hand.

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 standup 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, against all expectations. John stooped down at a shelf and pulled up a toaster. Not one of those neat chrome editions, but a kitsch mess that looked right out of the seventies with some frayed wiring uncomfortably close to the male end of the 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 as he took his finger nail and slowly rocked it back and forth at the edge of the price tag. Sucker would break easily, had to be gentle. Be delicate. Little by little the bastard detached and John even managed avoiding the sticker curling on the end. 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 approached wearily. His coworker was just standing there, head cocked. He spoke up when he heard John on his heels though.

“Why wouldn’t you want this mirror,” John asked.

“Two reasons,” Calvin shrugged. “First off, mirrors are weird. Who’d want to own a mirror?”

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

"Course I do– everyone does. Even native Americans at those reservations do. Or at least I'm assuming so.” John got to work unhinging the mirror from its joints. "But people should have a problem with them. Who wants to see themselves like that?”

“Combing your hair? Flossing? Most basic hygiene really.”

"You know what I mean.”

John did not in fact know what his friend meant. John sighed and grunted at the same time as he lifted the mirror from it's perch on one side.

Cal cut in and forced the mirror over as they held it, face down. "You’re focused on vanity, I’m talking about shame. Although right this second in which case I don’t want to see how this store looks like on the other side.

"I'm not ashamed of myself. I have a decent job. A nice place. Family and friends. And you know what?" 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 the pair. This meant each man was at the mercy of the other. Cal in particular bumped John as they moved, and John could swear it was on purpose.

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.”

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 daintily onto the ground to rest and dug for his wallet.

He handed a crisp twenty to the man behind the cashier’s counter.

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, “What was the second reason you didn’t want this mirror?”

“Hm? The mirror? We’re back to that?” Calvin licked his lips. “It was also Walter’s. Wouldn’t want a dead man’s stuff and that’s why I never shop at these places.”

John bit his lip and stared ahead. “Hold on. He left the car running as he stepped out and reentered the store. He strode to the paper weight and scooped it up, flipped it over. There on the bottom, with the office’s label maker, were printed Walter’s initials. John didn’t know why he did it, but he brought it to the counter and slapped a five-dollar bill down.

"Can you also help me get it up to my apartment, I'm cutting it close here," John asked as slid back into the driver’s seat. He threw the clunker into reverse and peeled out through a yellow light.

"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, the side of his index finger rubbing his lips, doing a poor job to hide a grin. "What?" John asked. "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, Joe 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, 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. It couldn’t be forever.

Joe “John” D'Iver stepped out of the shower and tentatively placed a wet foot on the slick tile and grasped for the towels that should have been on the bar. He took a deep breath of the steam-soaked air. Maintenance still hadn't fixed the vent.

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

The lights flickered and that was new. Maybe maintenance 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 in front of his new mirror and the fog dimmed. All that remained from his shower was the opaque spray caked onto 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 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. To the door, to the shower. His eyes jittered in a frenzy.

But when he looked back to the mirror, the reflection seemed normal. The man in the mirror was a bit blurry from the fog, but that was it. A dent in his forehead where he fell off a swing in the third grade. Two days of beard stubble. Completely normal.

But John cocked his head, studying harder. The angle didn’t seem right. Well now it did. But even still, everything he looked at now seemed a fraction of a hair off.

Joe stared at the mirror, mouth agape, and realized: the image of Joe in the mirror was standing two steps back. Joe could barely breathe now. His instincts took over and he backed away, from this. . . thing. This illusion. This not-Joe.

And as the real Joe looked on in horror, the image's own bulging eyes and snarling mouth became clearer and clearer, the water evaporating away. He almost jumped as the image vaulted to the side, but not out of view. The not-Joe on the other side of the mirror flung downwards and thudded to 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 Joe 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.

Joe’s wet toes dug into the divots of the square porcelain tiles only long enough for his feet to slip out from under him. The back of his skull careened into the floor first, and then 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. The mirror and the image it reflected matched perfectly now.