The Mirror

A reflection shows beyond surfaces.

A scathing, loathing look formed slowly on his face in the mirror without warning. His tie was tied, his shirt was crisp and his pants were pressed, all belying his face. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep compiled with the extreme stress of his job, but as he looked at his image in the mirror, he could feel his mind disconnecting from his brain. All his thirty years came to nothing but a point and vanished entirely. It was a stranger's face in the mirror now; someone, however, he had once known. There was something vaguely familiar in the features and haunting in the eyes--he had known this person in childhood. But from where?

 The eyes looked hollow, the face tense and frightened, like a boy lost in some deep forest waiting for night to devour him. Quickly, the illusion ended and it was only the same sallow face he saw every day. On the bathroom counter sat his handgun that he had no memory of getting from the small safe in the bedroom closet. Water poured from the faucet steadily, cool and clear. As he reached for the gun, he ran his other hand under the water where it was washed away, and he felt himself quenched of an intolerable, oppressive heat; the heat he had been born into that performed the real alchemy. For it forged and transformed him hideously, as it does to all in the world. And it would never stop this dark process, human beings mere material for experimentation.

 He raised the gun to his temple and the barrel's coldness filled his body with pure arctic water. The boy he had known now stood beside him in the mirror holding his hand and smiling.

 Wendy Williams heard a sharp report and then a thump on the wall from the apartment next door that rose slightly above the volume of the people yelling on her television. It sounded like a firecracker. She waited for another to go off, considering whether to call the super or go and complain next door directly. Upon hearing nothing more, she decided she felt too lazy to do either and went back to watching the talk show.