Thursday, February 22, 2007

The Mirror Version 1

He was completely ordinary and completely unnoticeable. There was nothing about him to hold one's attention; it slipped off him like water off a duck. No one gave him more than a passing glance, and no one gave him a thought.

Each night he sat in front of the mirror staring at himself, wondering what he could change that would make a difference - any difference that would help people notice him. Each time he found nothing. He was commonness personified, bland dull normality in the shape of a man.

One night he was doing as he always did, when all of a sudden the surface of the mirror began to ripple. Soon, to his horror, something else was staring out at him.

"What are you?" he asked of it.
"The means to making your wish come true."
"What is the cost?"
It smiled, catlike. "We can talk about that later. Are you willing?"
He was willing.
"Done," it said.

Feeling dizzy, he turned away from the mirror - now an ordinary mirror again - and went to bed. When he woke up in the morning, he found everything had changed.

What followed was the two best months of his life. He was a different man now, so blissfully happy he was almost convinced he was living a dream. He rarely looked in the mirror because he simply didn't have time to, or perhaps because he was secretly afraid of seeing the thing that had granted him his wish. One night though, he happened to glance at his reflection and saw, again, something else watching him.

"Hello," it said amiably displaying long yellow teeth. "I've come to collect."
"All right," he said. "What do you want?"
"Nothing very much," it said placatingly. "Only something small. Like... the light in your eye."

He looked at a bit of mirror that was still reflective, not roiling darkness and slimy skin, and saw, really saw, for the first time how much he had changed. He looked happier, of course. He had put on weight. And there was a light in his eye, the light of one who has all he wanted in life and is perfectly content.

"It wasn't there before, and what use is it to me now? You could have asked for worse and I would have had to give it to you. Take it if you will."
"I will," the thing in the mirror said with a horrible smile that had too many teeth and tongues, "and I believe I have got a better bargain than you think."

There was a terrible pain in the man's head, heart and soul, and when it was gone the man was overcome with exhaustion and the feeling that something vital had been ripped from him.

From that day life continued for him as it had since his wish had been granted, but he found he could take no pleasure in anything anymore. He grew thinner and thinner, grayer and grayer, and never smiled again.

After he disappeared for a few days they knocked down his front door and found him in front of a broken mirror; he had sliced his wrists with a sharp, shining shard.

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