"The Museum of Mirrors and the (Mostly) Dead, Pt. 3" - A Surrealist Story in Serialized Form
I thought I'd try something out. Since I write so much fiction, I figured I'd try out a new piece on all you Steemers out there. It's dark (like nearly all of my stuff) and long (like a great deal of my stuff). It's one of six stories that will be included in my third collection coming out late next year. You can find my other (fully) posted non-fiction story "Colfax Place" on Steemit here:
https://steemit.com/nonfiction/@bucho/colfax-place-a-piece-of-non-fiction-about-the-midwest
I figure if the first couple of installments of this one pique some interest, I'll keep posting up new sections daily. Per usual, all critiques welcome as long as they're constructive. I'll also keep a running list of links at the bottom of each entry so you can play catch up a little easier.
Mirror #2
“The Twin Sister of the Desert”
Date Created Unknown/Unconfirmed
Found in Mumbai in 1974
Materials Used:
Diamond and Jewel-Encrusted, Silver Frame
Type of Reflection:
View of Sister Mirror’s Location
Two-Way or One-Way Mirror; Partially Reflective and Transparent
What You See:
Still shaken from the first mirror, you approached the second one gingerly, edging yourself across the floor inch by slow inch until you could see the briefest sliver of your reflection…but it never appeared.
You stood to one side, then directly in front, then on the other side. You waved your hand up and down the length of the mirror – nothing. Your reflection didn’t exist between the borders of the frame. It took several moments for you to process the effect, finally understanding that the mirror was looking through the location of another mirror; the two were somehow connected.
You peered into the frame as if it were a window instead, instinctively holding your hand above your eyes to block out unnecessary light. Past the mirror’s surface was a room. Dark with wooden walls. Large like a warehouse room, so maybe a barn of some sort? Crates lined both sides of the view. A large door at the back of the room shook in its frame, allowed tiny amounts of drifting snow to enter through the tiny gap between it and the floor. A single lantern’s light illuminated the room, made outlines of the shadows.
You wondered if it was April and warm here, where would it be snowing?
The door at the back of the room suddenly opened wide, flung back by the wind, and a figure hobbled in. The figure locked the barn door and removed the lantern from the wall, pivoting slowly and heading straight for the mirror.
You gasped at the snarl on the man’s face, made even more frightening by the strange light of the swinging lantern as he approached. You ducked to the side of the mirror, afraid that you’d already been seen. But what exactly was he going to do? He was in another mirror somewhere across the world.
You chanced another look at the mirror from the side. The snarling rictus was pressed against the other mirror, his bloodshot eye large and looming from the other side, rolling around in its socket as he sought you out.
He whispered something in a foreign language that you could barely hear. Just outside his line of sight, you watched as he pressed a gnarled hand against his mirror’s surface, rippling the surface of the one beside you, and his fingers swam through as if stuck in molasses, creeping across and searching for something. You backed further away from the mirror, heard a woman’s scream gurgle through the rippled surface, and then the fingers vanished back to their when and where. The mirror went dark, as did its placard, and the next mirror became illuminated by its own light overhead.
Previous Sections:
Part 1 - https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-museum-of-mirrors-and-the-mostly-dead-pt-1-a-surrealist-story-in-serialized-form
Impressive - thanks for the interesting article