by Spike Black
“Go on, just go. You don’t understand. He flew into a psychotic rage once because he thought he saw me with another man.”
Fergus tensed. He turned to go, and then stopped. “I’m not leaving here without you.” He grabbed her hand.
When he looked up, the man with the wolf tattoo was standing in the doorway.
“So,” Zane said. “That’s why you wouldn’t let me ride the elevator. Because you’re sleeping with my wife.”
He pulled out his gun, aiming it at Fergus’s head.
Mrs Trenton screamed.
Fergus whimpered. Then, in one swift movement, he pulled the baton from his jacket and hurled it.
It thwacked Zane around the head with a skull-cracking crunch, sending him tumbling to the floor.
Fergus charged forward. “Come on!” They squeezed through the doorway and made a break for it, their hands separating. Fergus ran so fast he almost tripped over his feet. A cold terror shuddered through him as he thought about the psychopath behind them with a gun, and he increased his speed.
Mrs Trenton was falling behind. As he turned back for her, Zane appeared at the end of the corridor, gun raised. Ahead, the corridor elbowed to the right. They made the turn, temporarily out of sight of their pursuer, and approached the elevator.
Fergus cursed. As luck would have it, the elevator was, according to the strip of lights above the closed doors, currently on the third floor. He punched the button.
The lights instantly changed. 4—5—6—
“Come on, come on…”
Fergus checked behind him.
7—8—
He looked around, trying to get his bearings. “The stairs. Where are the stairs?”
9—10—
“Let’s go. We haven’t got time—”
At that moment, the ear-piercing crack of a gunshot rang out, echoing around the corridor. Fergus didn’t even realize he’d been shot until he looked down and saw a hole in his torso. And then the pain hit. He dropped to his knees, clutching his chest. When he pulled his hands away, they were covered in blood.
He fell back against the wall and slid down it, leaving a smear of blood on the crescent-patterned wallpaper.
The elevator arrived with a ping and the doors opened.
Fergus saw something and gasped, causing a wave of pain to tear through his dying body. The button on the back wall of the elevator car was bulging from its case.
He launched forward onto his hands, inflicting so much pain on his body that it felt like his torso was tearing apart. He crawled slowly, forcing himself onward through the pain, until he was inside the elevator car. Tears streamed down his face as he reached up, flailing around for the button, but it was too high for him to reach.
A shadow fell over him. Zane raised his gun. “Bye bye, bellboy.”
With one last effort and all his remaining energy, Fergus stretched up and pressed the button. A last breath fizzled from his lips like the air from a shriveled balloon, and he collapsed onto the floor.
The agony consumed him.
“What are you doing down there?”
Fergus gazed up in the direction of the voice.
A figure was silhouetted in the doorway, holding a cane. It was Douglas.
Fergus suddenly realized that he felt no pain. He peered down at his torso. There was no hole in his chest. There was not even any blood. He scrambled to his feet, looking from Douglas to the button and back again.
The old man chuckled as he entered the elevator. “Sleeping on the job?”
Fergus peered around him at the twelfth floor beyond. There was no blood or any sign of an incident.
“Lobby, please.”
Fergus punched a button and the doors closed. He rubbed his eyes, completely disoriented.
“How are you getting on?” Douglas asked.
“Oh, you know,” Fergus said. “First day on the job, it’s always… difficult.”
“I’ll bet. But you’ll get there. It’s bound to have its ups and downs.”
Fergus nodded. The muzak was now on repeat. My Heart Will Go On again.
Douglas laughed. “Ups and downs. Do you get it?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You know, because you work in an elevator.”
Visions of Zane pointing the gun flashed before him. He blinked them away. “I get it, sir. Thank you.”
“Oh, please, call me Douglas. Or Doug. There was one chap, back in the Merchant Navy…”
The elevator reached the lobby. Fergus interrupted him. “We’re here.”
The doors opened, and Fergus was suddenly nervous at the thought of what he might see. He peered out at a busy lobby. The security guard roamed the area. Shelley was busy behind the check-in desk.
Douglas hobbled out. “Well, cheerio, young man.”
“Goodbye, sir.”
Shelley looked over and caught his eye. She exaggerated her smile, holding it with her eyebrows raised.
Fergus got the message. He lifted his lips into an attempt at a smile, but it was weak and his cheeks were trembling.
A middle-aged couple moved onto the elevator, pushing luggage. Their cheery faces turned his stomach.
They waved in unison. “Hello!”
“Good morning. Which floor?”
“Seven, please.”
Fergus punched the button. The doors closed. The elevator began its ascent.
“Bit of a pointless job, isn’t it?” the man said. “Attendant in an automatic elevator?”
“Yes,” Fergus said. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
“But then, I guess it has its ups and downs.” The man burst out laughing, and then his wife got the joke and joined in, too.
Fergus tried to fake a laugh, but he couldn’t muster it and just smiled instead. As the couple’s laughter died down, they glanced over at him. His attempt at a smile had mutated into a scowl.
They looked at him uneasily as the doors opened on the seventh floor.
“You have a nice day, now,” Fergus said.
The couple shuffled off, muttering thanks. The doors closed.
As Fergus turned, the button screamed at him from the rear wall of the elevator car:
PRESS.
The dome of the button bulged pleasingly from its metal case, begging to be pressed. His finger hovered over the faded letters.
He resisted. Turned away. No. Absolutely not.
The next muzak track started up on the sound system: Everything I Do (I Do It For You).
Fergus found himself humming along. His smile dropped.
He turned and pressed the button.
The Glass Is Always Cleaner
The hotel suite was smaller than Esther remembered, and it hadn’t held up well over the years. The bed sagged, the sofa was broken, the carpet was stained. She wouldn’t have minded so much, except that booking this very room had been shockingly expensive. She’d paid considerably more than she had a decade ago, back when everything was clean and shiny and new.
Given that she’d spent the last of her wages on the Eversham Suite for the night, it was incredibly important to her that everything be just so. This was it - her goodbye. It was the ten year anniversary of their night together here - this room was where Esther and Todd had first made love - and she’d vowed to give herself one last wallow in the past.
She opened her jewelry box and removed a necklace with a purple heart-shaped pendant. She’d refused to wear it since his death - the memories had been too painful. She moved over to the leather-upholstered window seat and sat down. It was here that Todd had presented the necklace to her, when they’d returned to the room after dinner, placing it around her neck and fastening the clasp… Her belly fluttered as she pictured it. She fixed the chain around her neck and straightened the pendant. Her younger self had felt an initial tinge of disappointment, she remembered, because the pendant had been purple, and not red. Hearts were supposed to be red, after all, and red went so much better with her wardrobe. Ungrateful bitch, she thought
now. You don’t know how good you had it.
She’d still been excited to see how it looked, of course, so she had run over to the mirror…
Esther turned and saw the full-length mirror by the bureau. Her eyes welled with tears. She glided over to the mirror and looked at her reflection.
Maybe she had expected to see her younger self staring back at her, but it was still shocking to see how much she’d aged in the past decade. Where once there had been a fresh-faced beauty, now there was a gaunt, dull-eyed widow in her early forties, crow’s feet splayed from the corners of her eyes, laugh lines etched deep into her cheeks. Ironic really, she thought. Because I don’t remember laughing too much recently.
The room was reflected in the mirror behind her - the bed, the sofa, the window. Her eyes rested on something that she hadn’t seen before, and she looked harder. On the table beside the bed. What is that? It looked like…
Yes. Thick wads of money.
Gasping, she spun around. There was a lamp on the bedside table, but nothing else. She turned back to the mirror, and the money was still there in the reflection. What was going on? She had to have the wrong angle, surely. She looked across to the table on the other side of the bed, but that was bare, too.
What the hell?
Esther stared at the block of banknotes that seemed to exist only in the reflection. Was it some kind of optical illusion? A trick of the light? She put her hand out to the surface of the mirror, and as her fingertips touched the glass there was a buzzing noise, and she received a small shock. She gasped, jerking her hand back.
The money, though. There had to be thousands there. She put her hand out again, and this time her fingertips disappeared through the surface of the mirror with a fizzle.
“Ahh!” Pulling her hand back, Esther sighed with relief as she realized her fingers were still intact. She pushed forward again, a little farther this time, until her entire hand had disappeared. “Whoa…” She leaned forward, pushing her head through the surface of the mirror.
She got a sudden head rush, and it took a moment for her eyes to clear of stars, but what she saw when her vision had adjusted was mind boggling. The world on the other side of the glass was an exact mirror image of the Eversham Suite, down to the smallest detail, except for one crucial difference - the money was ahead of her, on the bedside table.
Her heart raced. She stepped through, all the way into the mirrored universe, and headed straight for the money. She had reached as far as the bed when she stopped.
There has to be a catch. This is just too good to be true.
Esther edged forward, expecting that the pile of cash would disappear as soon as she touched it. Or maybe it was a trap of some kind, and the floor would open up and swallow her as she stepped closer.
The money certainly looked real, and there was much more of it than she had first thought. There had to be seven or eight stacks of banknotes wrapped with paper bands, like something out of a heist movie. She reached out and grabbed a brick.
It’s real! She squealed with delight, flicking through the wad, sniffing the cash just to make sure. By her estimation, it would take her the rest of the year to earn just the amount she was holding. Swiftly, and with trembling hands, she built a tower with the bricks of cash, like a billionaire’s version of Jenga, then lifted the cash into her arms and headed back to the mirror.
“Let’s go home!”
She stepped through the mirror with a crackle, receiving a mild electric shock. As she arrived on the other side, even before her head had cleared and her eyes had readjusted, she knew something was wrong. The weight of the money was gone. She looked down at her empty arms. “No!”
Poking her head back through to the other side, she saw, once she’d blinked away the stars, all the money piled on the floor. She grabbed one of the stacks and took it through the mirror with her.
Her hand was now empty. “Damn it!”
She looked around the drab room. Was there really any reason for her to stay? Thinking about all that lovely money, she decided not, and stepped through the mirror. This time, however, the shock was more powerful. When she arrived on the other side, her body was tingling. She looked down and saw that her skin was red, as if she’d caught a mild sunburn.
She scrambled to pick up all the cash, and as she clambered to her feet, cradling the stacks untidily in her arms, she saw something that caused her to gasp in shock. The reflection in the mirror showed something different now - a world other than the one she had just left. The room was smarter, cleaner, less worn with age, much like it had been ten years earlier. But the thing that caught her attention was the tie hanging over the lamp on the bureau.
It was Todd’s tie, the art deco one with the crescent moons that he’d worn that night to dinner. Her heart leapt. Todd? She turned sharply, but of course there was no tie on the lamp behind her.
She glanced down at the money. Looked back up at the tie reflected in the mirror. The silver moons shone as they reflected the light.
Esther dropped the stacks of cash without a second thought and stepped through the mirror. She barely felt the burning sensation on her skin as she crossed the room and snatched up the tie.
“Todd? Todd, are you here?” She waited in silence, her breath shaking.
No response.
She ran through to the bathroom; it was empty. Returning to the room, she dropped onto the bed, resisting the urge to cry. As she put the tie to her nose and inhaled his scent, Todd’s face returned to her in flashes. She could almost picture him. As she went to take another sniff, Esther saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She sat up.
In the world beyond the mirror, Todd had just walked out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist.
She almost passed out.
“My God!” she cried, dropping the tie. “Todd! Sweetie! I’m here!”
She leapt off the bed, ran for the mirror and jumped through. Her muscles seized up; the pain was agonizing. As she landed with a thump on the deep-pile carpet, everything went black.
***
She awoke on the bed, in the arms of her husband. Todd stared down at her, a contented smile warming his doughy but handsome face. His hair was flecked with gray and the wrinkles around his eyes made him look a little older, but the extra years suited him. Placing a trembling hand on his cheek, she realized that he was now the age that he would have been, had he never died.
“You’re real,” she gasped.
He laughed. “Yes. Yes I am.” He stroked her hair.
She’d forgotten what his laugh sounded like, and hearing it again caused a tingle of pleasure to ripple through her body. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Really?” He laughed again. “You were only unconscious for five minutes.” He frowned. “Are you okay?”
The bed, she realized, was now a king-sized four-poster. The sofa was a Chesterfield, the bureau an antique writing desk. As she turned her head, her eyes lit up: there were several stacks of crisp banknotes, wrapped with paper bands, piled high on the bedside table.
“Oh yes,” she said, picking up one of the stacks and feeling the weight of it in her hands. “Life simply doesn’t get any better than this.”
At that moment, she glanced down and noticed that the pendant hanging from her necklace was still purple.
She glanced over to the mirror. The curiosity was killing her - she had to know. She climbed off the bed and approached the mirror. Her pendant was indeed red in the reflection, as she had suspected, but as she moved closer, she realized much more had changed. Her mouth fell open.
Esther was much younger and more beautiful. Her skin was radiant, her waist tiny. Her eyes sparkled almost as much as the jewel-encrusted rings on her fingers. Just then, a man passed by in the room behind her reflection - and he was the perfect male specimen. A young Adonis. The most handsome man she had ever seen.
She had to do it. You only lived once, after all. She loved Todd, she truly did, but she had come to the Eversham
Suite to put him to rest. This was a chance for her to move on with her life. She simply had to seize the opportunity.
Esther pushed her hand through the mirror - and pulled it back in agony. Her skin was burned, fingers already starting to blister. But it would be worth it.
She walked away from the mirror, giving herself a run up, and then turned back. “Goodbye, Todd.” She took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and bolted, leaping into the mirror.
***
Her eyes snapped open, and she jerked into a sitting position on the carpet beside the mirror. She gasped, checking her hands. They were the hands of a much younger woman, and blister-free. Rings embedded with sparkling jewels adorned her slender fingers.
She touched her face; the skin was not burned, but smooth and supple. Looking down she saw the ruby red pendant around her neck, and smiled.
Esther climbed to her feet. The most handsome man she had ever seen came up behind her and nuzzled his face into her neck. She moaned with delight.
He brought his large, powerful hands up and squeezed her throat.
She tried to speak, but found she could not. She grabbed his arms, but he was too strong. He applied more pressure, crushing her neck. Her eyes bulged from their sockets.
She fought, thrusting her elbows back. His grip only tightened. Choking for life, she kicked out and struck him. His grip loosened enough for Esther to free herself from his grasp. She burst forward, leaping for the mirror — and smashed into it, hard.
The glass was solid. There was no way through.
A heavy hand fell on her shoulder, and she flinched. His other hand came around, and she cried out. In his grip was a large knife.
With one swift flick of his wrist, he sliced her throat open. A gush of arterial blood sprayed the mirror. She wanted to scream but could only gurgle. Her hands rushed to her throat, trying to stem the flow, but a fountain of blood pumped through her fingers.
She fell onto the mirror and slid down its cold glass.
A figure drifted into view in the mirror, partly obscured by the fresh smears of blood. It was her old self, glumly checking her reflection earlier that evening. The purple pendant hung around her neck.
