Shards Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
The looking glass was broken, shattered and splintered into pieces;
the shards were spread out and lost. The looking glass was no more.
Hal zoned out for a second. He was in his bathroom looking in the
mirror getting ready to shave and then his mind drifted and he lost track of
everything. He was looking at his reflection and then he wasn’t thinking or
concentrating at all.
The bathroom mirror fell from the wall, smashing against the sink
below. Glass was shattered everywhere. Hal wasn’t paying attention so he didn’t
know how it happened.
Hal didn’t react at first. He didn’t realize what was going on.
When his mind snapped back to reality, he was momentarily lost, unsure of what
had transpired while he had been gone.
He didn’t remember hearing the crash or what his first reaction
was. He was just suddenly in the room. His eyes focused and he was looking at
blood. There was blood on the tile floor. There was blood on the sink. There
was blood on the shards of glass that lay everywhere. For a moment he had no
idea why there was so much blood or where it had come from.
The blood on the mirror was playing a trick on him. He could see
the blood and the reflection of the blood. He didn’t think that was possible.
He thought the blood should block the mirror image. There was suddenly a level
of depth within the space inside the mirror and within the reflection that
shouldn’t have been there. It didn’t seem right. It made no sense. But it
seemed as if it had always been there.
Hal looked at the reflection.
There was something else in the mirror, something Hal couldn’t
quite see. It was something that didn’t quite make sense. It was a warped
image. The refraction of the reflection. Something surreal and barely
perceptible. It was bent and disfigured. The image just wasn’t right.
Hal looked and he saw himself, but what he saw was a monstrosity.
He saw pain and anger. He saw blood. He saw a lot of blood.
Hal questioned himself, the image and his sight. None of it was
making sense. His mind wasn’t focusing properly. He was lightheaded. Maybe he
wasn’t thinking or seeing clearly. Maybe it had something to do with the loss
of blood.
The blood – his mind finally processed the blood. There was blood
on the floor. On the tile. On the sink. On the broken shards of the mirror. Finally,
the pain registered.
It was his blood.
There was a large piece of the former mirror clinched in his hand,
slicing deep into his palm and fingers as they wrapped around the fractured
edges.
When did he pick it up?
Why was he gripping it?
Frightened, he dropped it to the ground. He was losing a lot of
blood. The cuts were deep. Frantically he began searching for a first aid kit.
He was going to need stitches.
On the ground, in all the broken pieces, a million reflections of
himself looked up and watched as he scurried around the room trying to get
ahold of things. The rest of the mess would have to wait. There were more
important things to deal with. Hal forgot the image in the mirror and for a
moment worried only about himself.
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