Mirror St.

Mirror St. is a street tucked away in a borough of Pittspurgh, PA. An ordinary blue collar neighborhood on the surface. But a closer look reveals small ephemeral nuances in the scenery.

The green rectangular sign atop the steel pole on the sidewalk says Mirror st. Although Alabaster wouldn't discover that until a few moments after this one. It is an ironic name for a street for him to be on, because he often feels like he is caught in a mirror, forever wondering in a world somewhere between this one and the one of dreams. Not ordinary dreams mind you, but next-level type dreams. Ones in which it feels like reality is even more dense then in waking moments. Dreams in which it feels like sleep is like a gateway between worlds. The dreams in which you realize you can't be awake, and you know something important is happening. But then you do awake, . . . sweaty, confused for a split second as the tentacles of your mind desperately search for any fragment of the moment from the reality of the place you just woke up from. But the more you reach the farther away that passed moment gets.

Alabaster snapped into being and found himself on the top of a steep set of what looked like ancient wood steps. It was very early morning everything was mostly dark and the sky had a strange dark pink color to it. He grimaced, clutching his fluffy coat he was glad to be wearing, as everything was completely covered in snow. The Street looked menacingly icy and black. It didn't seem quite real, but not quite imaginary either. After all he just swore he felt his nose hairs freeze. He didn't see a single soul. He felt that seemingly omni-present, strange kind of malleable amorphousness to everything and sighed.

He thought to himself, I hope I've never had to traverse these ominous stairs after a few too many pints. His stomach felt like it had a hole in it. Like somehow an endless pit had been put there that sucked all emotion out of him and into it, and away into the darkness. his head had one of those skull penetrating thumps every few moments that seemed to go straight through to his brain and into his eyebrows. His chest felt like he had been riding in one of those rides at the amusement park all night, the one with the circle that spins you so fast you stick to the wall and the floor drops out.

My god what had happened, he thought to himself. Just a while ago everything had seemed so good, so normal. He vaguely remember that he had a girlfriend? Where was she? Instead of normal, wonderful moments with a beautiful woman, now suddenly it was dark, evil looking wood staircases, with menacing gnarly-fingered bushes lashing out from all sides, on a strange foggy, frozen street and a head that seemed to jump from moment to moment. 

Alabaster was a thin man. Just above average height. His legs seemed to be in-proportionally small as compared to his torso, and being thin this combined for an awkward lurching like movement when he walked. Like somehow he had gotten the wrong parts when he was made. His cheeks looked like they had once not too long ago, contained color. At this moment though, they looked grey. Green even in the right light. Bluish grey. Faded.  His hair was a mangled dirty patch. Like it had been long recently but had been cut down in  some sort of ceremonial mangle-ment. some kind of effort to initiate transformation.

Alabaster looked downwards past the large evergreen bushes, which seemed to grow in opposite directions all at the same time, forming long ominous limb like things with shadows. There was enough of these bush on both sides. With the very steep yard, and staircase, that they seemed to tower over him. It seemed to be morning but it felt like he was in some kind of eternal grey void. What the hell was going on h e thought to himself, surely this was not normal, but what the hell was normal anyways. 

He looked down past the bushes and stairs to the street below. Across the street stood a small tree with bare branches. Just beyond the tree was a hill overlooking a foggy downtown of a moderately sized city. Well, a strong sign of something human at least , he thought. Then he wondered why a thought like that had crept into this brain at all.  

But directly at the bottom of the staircase, and across the street stood that tree. That is what got his attention. On it were about four, what seemed to in proportionally large, crows. How could those small branches support each bird he thought. He stared and blinked, and as if the crows had been waiting for him to appear all night, waiting for just after the moment he noticed them, all at the exact same time spread their wings and flew away. 

Not a good sign, he thought, not a good sign at all on this very pinkish-grey, very strange morning, And with that, despite all signs pointing against it, he traversed the steep staircase downwards, slowly and carefully, bracing the grey rickety cracked wood handrail and being careful not to step on patches of the treacherous ice. Each stair creaked in a different tone it seemed like. Creaking into his brain in the process. After what felt like hours he finally stepped onto the street below.

There was absolutely no one out and about, save for the crows that just flew the coup. He looked above to the front yard he just come down from, and saw a large grey wooden house. There was small patches of faded dark red paint but it was grey, cracked wood mostly. The whole thing seemed to tilt to the left and loomed ominously in doing so. Together with the odd bushes, and steep yard, it was like right out of a kooky haunted house movie. but the house didn't feel kooky at all, damn creepy was more like it. 

The other houses seemed as large but were better painted, and didn't seemed to tilt like the one he just left. All the houses looked far away now, standing below here on the street. He crept slowly down the block trying to stay in the snow (not ice), his shoes, jeans and ankles getting soaked in the process. His mind desperately searched for some kind of clue as to what had happened the night before. I mean he seemed to somehow know where he was, but then again he didn't. Like he tripped into an echo of a former life. But this was his life he was sure of it. Not helping this conundrum at all, was what he saw when he got to the end of the block. On the corner was the street sign, and it read "Mirror St."

The thought that struck him now was that he would surely like this to be a dream. But the emotional sucking pit in his belly and devastatingly aching head seemed to indicate an altogether much to physical reality. The eery endless pink sky and grey clouds, the early morning frozen stillness, the surreal trees, the crows, all seemed very strange still nonetheless. None of this helped him feel better. Only adding to the cringingly strange moment he found himself in.

He thought he would try to make his way towards the downtown of the city that he had seen in the distance. He made his way down the snow and ice covered sidewalk looking at the houses as he went. He noticed the backdoor on one side of a large duplex. On it was written in bright red spraypaint from top to bottom over the door: "trapped In Hyperspace".

Well that certainly was a good caption for today's headline he thought as he went past. He turned the corner and meandered down the street trying to find his way to a main avenue downtown. Maybe he could catch a bus or something..

His cheeks were turning red from the blistering cold wind on his face. His feet, with only old worn plain leather shoes were starting to feel frozen as well. Where he could see the sidewalk it was disenegrating. He came to what felt like a larger street hoping he could maybe get his first clue as to where to go next. He still had not seen a single soul, but finally spotted a little corner market with a sign that said open. With his head thudding and pounding into his emotional core, creating light pangs of pain in his chest even, he started for the tiny market. 

A bell rang as he walked in the door. The clerk at the counter, a large African-American lady was reading and didn't give any indication of noticing him. He didn't know what else to get but milk, given the current drained-holy hell feeling that his body and spirit felt. So he got a small plastic bottle of milk and some Gatorade and took it the counter. The lady eyed him not with suspicion, but one of pity mixed with disregard. He stepped back out onto the street looking for a bus.

He didn't have time to worry about the lady's body language. He felt like he was late for an appointment, was someone counting on him to be somewhere? Maybe it was his job? Memories of being some sort of craftsmen started creeping into his brain in small flashes. He spent a few minutes like this in a daze until he realized he was staring down at the charcoal colored black pavement of the street below which he now saw was frozen solid.

He could make out the distorted reflections of the ice covered bare branched tree limbs above his head, in the frozen street. He continued to stare as if in a trance. The images distorted further into flashes of memories of his life here in this odd burgh, or whatever this was. He snapped out of it and looked around. He couldn't see a street sign anymore. Was he still on Mirror st.? How long had it taken him to get to the market?

The memories, images in the black ice reflections of the street were of a young odd fellow with long hair in clumps. He was making art or selling it, he had a boss telling him what to do. He saw a woman in some of the scenes, seeing her caused the pangs in his chest to flare like being fired with intense burning white light. 

An oncoming bus distracted him from the familiar but still out of reach memories he saw in the ice. He waved his hand and it slowly stopped, ending up a few feet from the curb about 10 feet in front of him. Alabaster contemplated the transforming man in the visions and realized it must be him because the visions were stirring emotions, somewhere deep he felt them moving underneath his shattered body and spirit. He didn't even recognize himself at first when he was looking into the ice, but that had to have been him. What in nine hells was going on?

Alabastar stepped onto the bus. Luckily he did have enough change in his pocket to slide into the coin slot, allowing him entry onto the bus. The driver looked impatient and angry as he fumbled through his pockets, depositing nickels and dimes and pennies in his dazed and confused state.

(note to self: space reserved for scene addition involving mentally challanged man on the bus)

. . . He took a step carefully off the bus towards the street. But in his very next step Alabaster's foot came down and completely lost grip on the street, sliding like butter in the ice. next his other foot slipped from underneath him as the front one flailed wildly upwards into the air. He panicked, realizing he had lost complete control and something disastrous was about to happen. He went almost completely horizontal into the air, his heart skipping a beat as he stared up at the sky which was now very light blue, . . .  and then he smashed into the icy street below a*s first, then his back and head hit.

Well it was more like he smashed through the street not into it. He had intense pain in his butt and hips and head. The ice smashed like a mirror and he had gone through it. At he least he knows what happened this time. Only slightly more comforting then waking up feeling broken in a frozen burgh like he had done, what was that, . . . yesterday now? He did remember that as he landed in the street the ice seemed to smashed like glass. He went through it catching a last glimpse of the frozen-tree-limbed sky above as it faded from view.

He continued to fall. Through earth. Dry rocky earth at first then muddy earth, finally landing with a thud face down in some sort of underground cave. Although the fall was painful, he felt like it was his previous wounds being strained. Somehow the fall had not been that bad. How had he turned in the air? He thought he hadn't. He wanted to just lay there for a while.

The walls were not in focus he finally noticed. They were waving slightly, like a bed-sheet being waved by a small fan. He closed his eyes. He wanted to stay conscious to avoid the lost feeling of not knowing what was happening growing further, but the trauma of the moment was too much to bear. He blacked out.