There was a man in the mirror.
The man looked frail at first glance, but a second one would have focused on the several ugly scars littering his thin and pale body. Some of the newer ones were almost pretty, slightly less glamorous than the scars of proud paladins or alluring like some of the defining features belonging to daring rouges in romance novels, but still taken care of. The others were not, the older the scar the uglier it was. Near some of the bigger old ones there were some additional marks of burning or sloppy marks left behind a shaky hand wielding a needle.
His skin was pale, unnaturally so to the point that he could have been mistaken for some cave dwelling alternative version of humanity, risen to take the surface from its decadent and ignorant inhabitants. Luckily his stance was far too straight and proud for that to be the case.
There was someone looking at the man in the mirror.
Supposedly the man was this person’s reflection. A perfect copy of body, mind and soul. But the person observing had his doubts, not because the reflection was not accurate, not at all. It was too accurate. The observer looked through the various scars and marks covering the body of the man in the mirror at first wondering if there was any space for more, until they saw two new ones. Relatively fresh bruises around his neck and wrists. The observer moved onto the man’s face, it was somewhat feminine in structure but still leaning towards the masculine, there was an attempt at a moustache in the shape of a thin and sparse line of hair above his lip. His right eye was dark chestnut, and his left socket had no eye at all. But a shimmering and brilliant blood red ruby. There were some swollen spots on the man’s right cheek, nothing too horrible but enough to be noticeable.
The observer and the man in the mirror looked at each other, acting like two strangers at a bar seizing up each other for a fight or a drink. It took a few moments, but the observer remembered that the man was merely just him, that they are one and the same for better or worse. His mind started to come back to the moment and remember all important yet annoying fact that he was Ricard Feher, and that he was, truly, fucked.
With a towel hanging from his shoulder Ricard left the bathroom to be greeted by the remnants of his apartment. As he quickly scoured the Library/Kitchen/Living/Bedroom, he deliberately avoided looking at the tiny glass shards and other small debris littering the stone floor, instead focusing on the out of place medium sized furniture. Particularly those that were closer to their original position. He quickly put on his shoes that laid beside his barely standing bed and took another glance around his ruined home. Only for his frustration to flare up once again as the broom was on the other side of a field of sharp debris and cold chipped stone with most of the countless small rugs that once covered the floor now laying haphazardly. His door was luckily in much better shape, by no means a vault but it was still sturdy enough to discourage any would be assailants. Or it would be if Ricard still had his key, assuming it lost within the river, in the place of a working lock was a barricade consisting of a small cabinet and several splintered of parts from various wood furniture used to keep the door handle from moving, with some others laying in smaller across the floor beneath the door hinges.
“Fuck!”
Ricard in a flash of motion leaned onto the wall and desperately held onto his foot and promptly fell. Accompanied by several pained grunts Ricard managed to slowly sit up and look at his foot and the gently dropping blood that started to envelop the glass shard impaling it. After managing to stand up on his undamaged leg he hopped on it back toward the bathroom to remove the shard and clean up the wound. Using a piece of torn fabric from a clean towel. While bandaging himself up his attention once again wandering towards the mirror. He looked at the man in the mirror. A man whose posture was hunched, whose eyes looked tired, whose hands desperately grabbed the edge of the torn tower they were holding to stop them from shaking. There was a facade of control, one that still held but was crumbling.
He didn’t like the man in the mirror. He had to resist the urge to hit him. To learn forward and shatter it with his bare hands, though the thought proved to be tantalizing he managed to hold himself back. After managing to wrestle his gaze away from the mirror Ricard let out a long grunt as he breathed out then breathed in and so on for a few more minutes. Considerably less volatile he checked on his foot to make sure the bandage held. It luckily held, at least until he was able to venture out from his little hole and find something or someone to apply a more permanent fix.
Summoning every bit of energy left in him, Ricard stands up, leaning mostly on his right leg. He takes another glance at the mirror. Only to find someone else in the mirror. Someone he didn’t recognize.
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Glittering glass shards drifted across an everlasting and unquenchable void. The shards tended to form clumps of different sizes. Floating towards the same direction and occasionally splitting from them and creating new ones. Yet there were still uncountable shards, many too small to see, that drifted around aimlessly. Waiting to surprise some unsuspecting fool who made the foolish decision to possess a body capable of being cut by the razor-edged shards.
Reptilian scales shone brightly as the light that bounced between the uncountable shards bathed a wandering figure. They walked on one of the larger shards, roughly the size of a house. They were clad in a loose robe which covered their waist and most of their torso, but still revealed their charred and gnarly arms, each missing a few fingers, and their head which looked normal if it weren’t for the patches of scales which covered most of their head. They were bald with almost all their skin that was not covered by scales instead covered in various circular drawings emitting a soft humming sound, which grew louder the closer they ventured towards a loose shard. Their face was angular with proportions that were ever so slightly off. Namely their noose and slightly more importantly, that his eyes were blank glass orbs. They moved with occasional sporadic bursts as they avoided the various stray glace shards that were drifting near their path. During their journey the figure couldn’t help but give a glimpse at a nearby phenomena. They gazed as glittering rainbow light bounced between the two flat circular glass planes. Rays of light twisting and contorting like rope as the shapes drifted closer towards each other, causing this bundle of light to bounce and squeeze until it was wholly in between, the shapes working now as the hands of a talented sculptor. The light was stretched and flattened until it reached the proper dimensions that was required of it, though for what purpose the figure couldn’t tell yet, the light was twisted and twirled until the shimmering moving mess of colors learned some manners. Stopping their rumbustious movements, the colors allowed themselves to be shaped and moved in a slightly more precise manner. As the two shapes parted ways with a sudden and violent motion, the energetic flowing bundle of light was no more. Instead of the shapes there was an image. That of a young woman with auburn hair and bloody split lips looking forward, with a tiny brush covered in some powder sharing the same color as her skin held delicately with long pale fingers. The scaled figure took a careful step closer in order to observe as the image began to slip off the mirrored surface it laid on. The young lady was caught by the other shape where she melded together with her environment, granting her a background in the shape of a ruined yet elegant bedroom with the various gilded furniture and bed sheets layed amuck on the ground. The other shape bent itself back and then springed forward, launching the now completed image away into the dark void surrounding everything as far as the eyes could see. It fell and fell until it couldn’t be seen anymore. The shapes, completing their purposes, began to fracture into small bonelike shards. Joining a tornado of similar splints and pieces that span contentious around themselves and some unknowable axis.
This process repeated a thousand times across the storm of glass and light that was surrounding the figure. Their pupil-less milky white eyes strained themselves at the symphony of motion and light dancing through the soul clenching emptiness, but not for long as an upcoming migraine reminded them of their purpose here. They moved into a well practiced stance that strengthened their footing, took a big breath and began to sing. Sounds of crumbling stone and fracturing glass left their throat, mixing together with the murmurings of crowd and the clanging of construction and the squawking of birds, At first they were separate, singing one at the time but slowly they began to mix, creating reverberating harmony. Some of the glass shards start to fly towards him and as before, began to create images, of people walking and working, of birds flying past.
It wasn’t what they were after. They began to change their song, adding and removing elements until they have created the perfect symphony. Drawing forwards the perfect selection of shards. The images they forged were that of a ruined apartment, with furniture thorn around, a very poorly barricaded door and a fish tank that by all rights should have been broken by now but somehow still staying together. A slight frown grew across the figure’s face as they scoured the images only to find empty rooms. They sat down on the cold glass surface they were standing on, trying to get as comfortable as possible, their song slowly becoming a quiet hum which the other shards seemed to lose interest in and flew away. Focusing on the shards that continuously created images of the door, until they saw something from the corner of their eye, the images depicting the bathroom changed. Some objects were moved and on a closer inspection there was a trail of watery footprints leading out of the bathroom. The figure immediately stood up and scoured the other shards creating the rest of the images. Blinking and rubbing their eyes rapidly for a few moments, until they saw some neatly folded clothes on the bed float up and unbutton themselves. They began to sing once more, but this time the song was accompanied by a quick erratic dance of middling quality, the figure reaching out to the shards as part of the dance and with a single motion merged them together. Glass acting like liquid as the shards flown into each other and created ripples from the new combined surface. Soon after the new glass shard began to vibrate with increasing intensity. The figure stopped their dance and watched the surface intently, waiting. Until it had reached a critical point, fractures began to appear as the figure jumped into the rapidly disintegrating glass surface, feeling a thousand jagged fragments cutting their skin and clothes. They closed their eyes and shielded their face, until they felt solid ground underneath their feet. Slowly moving their hands from their face, they looked around, recognizing the ruined apartment surrounding them, but not being as familiar with the unseen fist that hit them in the jaw.
They stumbled back, almost hitting the floor, readying themselves for an attack. The figure looked around for their opponent only to see no one in the apartment. Were they hit? Did they just hit something when they arrived here? Their doubts quickly disappeared as they heard the shuffling of feet on stone and the grunts of a man charging towards him.