‘Ok, Mirrorman. Ready to show me a good time?’
He nodded, his smile feeling strangely natural. She pushed her arm into his, and they left, her heels clacking up the promenade toward the bowling alley. Emilian found himself relaxing. His usual knot of hormone-fuelled nerves didn’t stand a chance against her easy laughter. He’d never felt at ease with a girl before, but she made it simple to be himself, and Taylor seemed to enjoy his company. Time accelerated and, long before he wanted the night to end, she ordered a taxi. She kissed him, tongue probing past his stiff lips. Her hands clutched at him, and he lost himself. Her hair smelled of pink grapefruit, her skin silky-firm. Then she was gone, waving from the receding car. Emilian was confounded. He sat on a wall, his lungs rapid bellows, skin flushed. His lips tingled with remembered wetness, a skittish smile playing on them. Then he remembered the dark, and stood, resolute. He made his way back to the fair, climbed the locked gates and opened the Hall of Mirrors.
* * *
Candlelight flickered, a galaxy of distorted reflections echoing round the maze. At the centre, Emilian sat cross-legged on the dusty floor, staring into the ancient looking glass. In the mirror, Taylor slept once more. He waited patiently. It was barely discernible at first: shadows sliding, slowly congealing, merging into larger patches of dark. Then the nightmare took on three dimensions, folding itself into reality, blossoming into a mockery of female form. Threads of luminosity rose from Taylor’s prone form, chaining her to the ragged creature above. The strings pulsed and surged until they were pure quicksilver. The shadow-witch was draining her quickly. Emilian’s stomach heaved as he flung his thoughts through the mirror.
‘Enough.’
The obsidian figure turned. Words wormed into his skull. ‘How sweet. You’re going to protect her from the big bad demon are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your little magic trick won’t work again. I am a god, and you a mere beast, a stray puppy to entertain me.’
Emilian visualised his outstretched hands beginning to flare with hatred, but they were smothered by vicious cold night. He sent his fear and anger to them, desperate to ignite the fabric of the black. The shadows were impenetrable. Taylor’s life force flooded through the ribbons of energy until they had grown to thick white ropes.
Grief and helplessness gripped Emilian, burrowing deep into his psyche. Waves of negativity crashed through his thoughts, breaking upon the tiny seed of first-love that Taylor had planted. The seed cracked under the weight of depression, blossoming, surging into a torrent of innocent light amidst the rage and fury. He willed it into his arms. It raced through his hands, bursting forth in shards of radiance that pierced the dark. Opening his fists, energy rushed forth, spreading out, and caging the twilight female in a ball of white-hot love. The night creature screamed; a piercing noise that chilled Emilian’s mind. Taylor woke, wide-eyed and frozen with fear. He didn’t notice. He was tethered to the poisoned being, a chain of energy surging, burning between them. He yanked his mind back, dragging the wailing beast with him. As his consciousness slammed back into his body, Emilian released the tether. Opening his eyes, the surface of the mirror before him heaved and buckled. It was a stormy mercury sea, the evil within desperate to escape.
‘I told you to stop, Mother, but you wouldn’t listen.’
‘Emilian, you bastard, how could you?’ The night wailed. ‘I gave you life, you ungrateful wretch.’
‘You cannot gift what you have stolen from others, Mother. Your time here has ended.’
‘Emilian,’ she keened. ‘Let me out now. I’ll forgive you.’
‘Nothing escapes the glass, Mother. You know that.’
The surface of the glass was slowing, finding its form like viscous steel. It bulged briefly, and Emilian thought it might actually crack, but it settled into a concave oval that sucked in candlelight without reflection. He turned, launching himself through another mirror, and back the way he had come.
* * *
She wasn’t there: her room empty. Emilian searched under her bed, looked in her wardrobe, confused. There was a fleeting movement in the mirror on her dresser. He peered into the silvery depths. Suddenly, Taylor’s face pushed out of the glass, bending the reflected bedroom into a caricature of form and light.
‘Taylor? How…’
‘You bastard,’ she screamed. ‘What have you done?’
‘I… I was protecting you. I, I love you.’
‘Love me?’ She screeched. ‘What kind of love is this? I can’t get out. How do I get out?’
‘You can’t get out.’ Emilian sobbed. ‘You can’t escape the glass.’
‘There’s things in here with me, Emilian. They’re touching me. I can feel them. Help me. Emilian. Get me out.’
He sat on her bed, crying softly as her voice grew distant, her form fading, leaving a twisted mess of refraction and reflection standing on her dresser.
* * *
As the sun rose, Emilian placed the antique mirror in the maze. He sighed, looking along the rows of trapped souls. He locked up, and touched a match to the puddle of petrol around the door. The dry timbers caught quickly, and glowing embers swirled upward, caught in the coastal breeze. Emilian tried to block out the inhuman screams as one by one the mirrors shattered, splintering their imprisoned spirits into miniscule fragments.
Life and Death Trip
for Peter Steele (January 4, 1962 – April 14, 2010)
by Stefy Janeva
Just close your eyes
and bite your pillow
I`ll be on the other side…
Feel your dark power
so strong and different
I can`t change that…
I`ll destroy the border
between us,
like broken glass.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.”
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
Just a Kiss Away
by Jef With One F
Tomas Reynolds found himself in a predicament shared by many middle-aged divorced men. He had too much money, too much time, and too much confusion about women. His divorce from Ellen the previous year was amicable, though in a way that made it worse. They hadn’t split up over infidelity, abuse, rage issues, or anything that would be, you know, at least exciting. Instead it had been a final, flat statement by Ellen that they were no longer in love and would dissolve their marriage at the earliest possible convenience.
Tomas would’ve fought for their marriage, but how can you battle apathy and inertia? It was like a junkie lying in the gutter screaming at gravity for being pinned to the planet after a fall. He knew the argument about staying together for their children, eleven-year-old Zoe and nine-year-old Nathan, would be no use. Both he and Ellen were from divorced families, and saw the unbonding of the nuclear family molecule as a natural as the junkie’s gravity.
Now he lived in a small town home that always seemed to echo when his children weren’t visiting. Ellen owned her own accounting firm, and was currently dating another wealthy financial type who’s name wasn’t Colin but was something so close to it that Tomas’ mind would autocorrect it to Colin, much to his continued embarrassment at drop-offs.
Ellen kept the house, with Tomas trading his equity in it for no alimony payments. His work, as the top manager of a firm that inspected cybersecurity systems, paid handsomely and he found living alone no real financial burden. Zoe and Nathan now had rooms in two homes, as well as all the comforts two parents with slightly guilty consciences and a courting future step-dad could provide.
That split in his time as a father and the subtraction of his obligations as a husband proved to be the real threat to his sanity. When you’re a full-time dad, time is always unmanaged and undisciplined. Vacations cancelled by the flu, babysitters flaked out, teachers wanted to have conferences, right now, about your son singing death metal tunes as he ran down the hall. When you moved to shared custody, suddenly half of you
r hours became your exclusive property.
It sounded nice, and for a while it was. On the other hand, have you ever seen what happens to a deep sea diver that races for the surface without decompressing? All the compressed air bubbles start ricocheting through your system like buckshot. The truly unlucky can die from it. It’s the reason you never see anglerfish in aquariums. Take away the pressure and the fish pops like a balloon.
* * *
Tomas started going to the nearest strip club.
Honestly, it wasn’t the girls at first. He just hated to drink alone and The Gold Room was the closest bar within walking distance. Wade, the assistant manager, was an old friend from back in high school when they’d fronted garage bands – Tomas played guitar in the shoe-gazey Aeris Asked For It while Wade put his manic smile and endless cocaine supply to use, singing in the more metallic Moon God. The friendly administrator, with the leaf-nose-bat coke nostrils, happily waived the door fee for old time’s sake, and in exchange for the occasional computer help or a sound equipment tinker.
He started visiting the club on Friday nights when the kids would be home. He always thought of the house as home, and still found himself starting to drive there after a particularly long day. Mostly he caught whatever sporting event was on display behind the bar and nursed a couple of screwdrivers or the occasional Rolling Rock.
Sports wasn’t a passion of his, but it’s easy to follow even when a naked woman is gyrating in your peripheral vision to a Bachman–Turner Overdrive tune played way louder than decency would suggest. It’s also a pretty simple way to strike up a time-killing conversation with a total stranger. You don’t have to know the finer points of football to remark on a particularly spectacular tackle. It may be a friendship as disposable as the drinks themselves, but it was better than sitting at home staring at a Netflix queue and marking time between the dumping of the automatic ice machine.
Still, put any human being in a sexually charged environment for long enough and he will respond to stimuli. Sometime between his first and second drink, Tomas began wandering over to a table a middle distance from the stage. It allowed him a good look at the action, without getting in the way of the show-offs looking to conspicuously shower a girl in cash.
The waitresses got to know him pretty well, as he tipped nicely, smiled, and didn’t leer or grope in the throes of frustrated arousal brought on by the flesh parade. In addition, Tomas was a pretty good-looking guy. He had the solid build of a man who burns calories in everything he does in his life and never liked to sit idle. His green eyes were large and warm, and he took great care with his suits and grooming. The view of computer professionals as greasy rebels irked him, and he made sure he would never be confused with an angst-ridden man-child.
The deal with strip clubs is pretty simple. The girls, both dancers and waitresses, want you to order a lot of liquor, tip them, and order them drinks as well when they can talk you into it. The exchange rate is often somewhere between a date and a business transaction. Oddly, it filled a hole in Tomas’s heart.
Pretty, raven-headed Tracy was his favorite waitress. She didn’t have kids, but babysat her young niece while her sister pursued night school. She preened and touched Tomas’ arm as they laughed over the nature of children, and how they change when you’re not with them. Tracy drank vodka cranberries, and sometimes got a little sad near the end of the night. Tomas always wanted to ask her why she seemed so lonely, but was worried about how it would sound like a come-on line.
Beth was another regular attendee. She was full-figured brunette with a lion’s mane of curly hair and the bearing of a stage actress. She fancied herself a singer, and more than a few demos were pressed into Tomas’ hand along with his drinks. She tended to disappear for weeks at a time, chasing after some dream or another. Tomas found her both winning and slightly tiresome and bossy. Her drink was Sex on the Beach, but he suspected that it was just so she could make people say it.
There was Lauren. She was slightly mousey and shy, and would confess an endless fascination with old video games, over a rum and Diet Coke, before scuttling back out of talking distance. Olena was a hard-faced girl with a Russian accent and a fondness for Texas beers. Her demeanour wasn’t terribly friendly, but she would spin some wonderful, if probably fictional, tales if you helped her indulge that fondness. Michelle was a slightly grubby blonde who’d talk your ear off about The Walking Dead over a martini.
Pretty soon the dancers got wind of the gentlemanly and generous stranger that never made it up to the stage. They started to seek him out between dances like lions taking over a hyena’s kill.
At first Tomas was nervous with the girls. After all, he had seen them dance naked moments before, and the Gold Room took nude dancing to the limit of what that implied. The performers were encouraged at all times to treat stares from the darkness as welcome invasive sexual penetrations, and the potent combination of masturbation and ballet left the rooms full of a musky odour and panted air.
You can’t simply pretend that the dancer, who comes by post-performance, is there as a casual acquaintance. There’s just something intimate about it.
Angelica was the first one to make sure way to Tomas’ usual seat. Ten minutes earlier she had hung suspended by her legs from a pole as Poe sang about not being a virgin anymore. It was a weird, randy tune from an otherwise disturbing album, and the somewhat underground selection gave Tomas the courage to speak up.
“I never thought I’d see someone strip to a cut from Haunted,” he said. “Can I buy you a drink in appreciation of your tastes?”
“That would be fine,” said Angelica in an accent that, Tomas later learned, was acquired by being born in Nicaragua and raised in Scotland. She ordered a glass of merlot.
“The word backstage is that you know how to treat a lady,” she said, ducking the glare of Tracy who knew that once the dancers homed in on the good marks they usually left the waitresses behind.
“I try to,” said Tomas. “Honestly, as pretty as the girls are here, I come for the company.”
“Well,’ said Angelica. “I’ve got some time to kill before my next dance.”
* * *
Tomas had gotten married shortly after high school, and his range as a romantic companion was somewhat limited. He’d had female friends his whole life but, having spent his prime dating years as a happily married man, he rarely thought of the women he met in any kind of romantic way, except in passing.
But here, he started to feel something most men never really feel. He felt desired and sought out by the opposite sex. He wasn’t stupid. He knew most of the kindness and the caresses, and especially the occasional lap dance, were tied more to his wallet and the fact that unlike many of the other patrons he kept his manners about him, than anything else.
He also recognized that in a strange way, this relationship was perfectly equal. These were girls whose entire livelihood was based on being desired. No one talked to them as human beings beyond trying to find the right compliments that would get the speaker a step closer to some sort of sexual encounter.
But for Tomas, who in the end was only seeking someone to spend some time with, the lure of his money and presence cancelled out the almighty power of the girls’ charms. The result was a very odd friendship.
Beyond some fawning words and girlish flirts, Angelica wouldn’t say much before her first glass of wine, but the easy company of Tomas led her to open up about the strict, religious upbringing she had fled. She talked longingly of her younger sister who stayed in Scotland, now merely a Facebook friend, who wavered between love of her sister and the disapproval preached by their father.
Tomas, in turn, told her of a time when he has asked a priest if listening to Black Sabbath meant he was a bad Christian. Father Daly had told him that he should limit his exposure to sinful things, but a week later contradicted his words with, “You know… I heard that ‘War Pigs’ tune. It’s not bad. Forget what I said, and let me know if you find anything else good.”
“I still go to that church on Christmas and Easter,” Tomas told the laughing girl, wiping $4 wine from her nose. “I gave him Mastodon’s Leviathan after the service. He loved it.”
Angelica gave way to Krystal, an imposingly tall girl with midnight black skin and a penchant for dangling earrings. Krystal stripped while she tried to sell her work as a poet. Tomas found her doing readings on YouTube, and left encouraging comments under a different name. Occasionally, he quoted her work back to her, and the resulting blush showed even on her ebon skin. Those were the nights she bought him a drink instead.
Tonya was a wreck, but fun the way trouble is. She was built like a pixie. An ultra-feminist reaching for gay but not quite getting there, who alternated between an adult’s problems and the weird glee of an 8-year-old. She always introduced herself by covering his eyes from behind and playing peek-a-boo throughout her lap dance. Their conversations revealed she was obviously on some kind of drug, but the kid sister act was adorable, as were her constant attempts to shock Tomas with obviously embellished stories.
“I touch myself in that scene The Exorcist where she sticks the cross in her pussy and screams, ‘Let Jesus fuck you,’” she said out of nowhere, once.
“As long as it’s not during Lion King when they sing “Hakuna Matata” it’s fine with me,” he replied. She literally fell on the floor laughing. The next time he saw her, she undressed to “Friend Like Me” from Aladdin.
This was Tomas’ social life. His friends were strippers and strip club employees. Somehow, it just felt right. He’d tried dating; even going so far as calling up a recently divorced high school girlfriend. The magic of the social network led to a night of nostalgia and sex, but nothing deeper. She was ready to go back to school in another state as a nutritionist, he wasn’t going anywhere.
Broken Mirrors, Fractured Minds Page 3
