Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall…

“It’s all done with smoke and mirrors, you know. It’s like what Death says – that eating curry is like biting a red hot ice cube…”

“Don’t you begin with the literary references now. I’ve had it up to here already. I wish I’d never signed up for extra classes.”

“The problem with you, kiddo, is that you take too much for granted. You thought it would be a cinch to earn writing credits rather than attending classes full-time… and oh, how good it feels to say ‘I told you so’!”

Hadrian scratched his scalp, drawing blood with his ragged fingernails. His psoriasis was driving him crazy – he assumed it was the stress of having to write 1,000 words plus within twenty-four hours, on random topics meted out by even more random dons whose mission in life was to make their students miserable.

Frankly, he had assumed that, just this once, he would be able to bounce ideas off his mother, and just get the stream of consciousness edited and in order, and Bob was his Uncle.

But his ma was made of sterner stuff. She had sussed him out from the get-go, and she was determined to see him sweat blood to earn this credit, as he had earned all his others so far.

That morning, Stinky (he was the poster boy for B.O.) had nonchalantly tossed an ‘Oh, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, your topic for tomorrow is The Smell of Mirrors,’ over his shoulder, on his way out of the lecture room.

“Ma! Not even you can write 1,000 words on The Smell of Mirrors…”

 “What you mean is that nobody ever bothered to find out if they can write 1,000 plus words on mirrors smell like,” his mother interjected. “I’m sure Stinky was oh-so-casually informing you all that he knows what his nickname is. And maybe he wishes you all tried to smell the said mirrors, so that he could thump you in the back of your collective head in one fell swoop, while you did so, and break the said mirrors. So, you would never, ever have to smell any mirrors again, because you’d all have developed a phobia of them, and would run a mile each time you saw one, blah blah blah.”

 “Ma, I tell you, I do know what mirrors smell like. Or rather, what they shouldn’t smell like. Don’t you remember the time I washed Nan’s mirror with Baby Oil to make it shiny, and she made me clean it up with a mixture of vinegar and bleach? I still throw up a little in my mouth, at the memory.

I could not get the smell of vinegar and bleach off my skin, and my friends ribbed me about it. Don’t you remember how I nearly went crazy, and I went to swim in the middle of October…like some kind of demented Lady Macbeth?

You’re asking me whether I know what the smell of mirrors is, Ma? The smell of mirrors is even worse than that of glasses that have been wiped with a smelly dishcloth. It is a putrid, acrid smell that is tinged with fear.”

“There you go. You already have enough notions there to write a thesis, go figure a mere 1000 words.”

“Ma… if I peel the spuds and hose down the driveway, and hang the washing on the line for a whole week…? Would you write it for me? Please? I have a bad feeling about this essay title, really, ma, I do.”

“No. The essay is yours to write. But remember that echoes reflect sound.”

“Say what?”

“You heard me first time, kiddo. You really must pull your socks up. Read between my lines.”

Hadrian had thought his offer to do the chores while his ma compiled his essay would be greeted with gratitude. After all, his mother was a writer – she could drum up a book in a week if she found a charitable cause to which to donate the proceeds, albeit secretly. She was constantly on the best-seller lists, and her cast of characters was mentioned in everyday speech by ordinary people… yes, she was that famous. But she wrote under a pseudonym - several, in fact - so nobody who met the elegant, softly-spoken, friendly, lady would have associated her with pot-boilers or Regency romances. Or sci-fi erotica.

Indeed, Hadrian had inherited her knack for words. His secondary school teachers could not quite believe he did his own homework… so they actually tested him at school, to see if the quality of his work would be consistent with that which he brought from home… The stood by him as he wrote classwork essays, just in case he accessed notes. He never did.

Yet, he was bone lazy. He wrote homework essays for his classmates, according to their level of proficiency, just so that he could copy their French and Mathematics homework exercises, on the school bus… The system worked perfectly. He swotted up in the fortnight prior to examinations, and passed them with flying colours.

“I would compare and contrast mirrors and smell… but I don’t want to… A mirror does have a smell, however vague… and a smell mirrors (ha!) something else deep within the primordial memories of a person…”

Yes, once the verbal gymnastics had begun, he could not help himself. Hadrian’s fingers took on a life of their own as they flew across the keyboard. “The mirror is the fundamental entity that mirrors the soul, more deeply than the eyes are said to do. Its smell evokes deep within us the elemental feelings of the womb, taking is back to the time when consciousness was not yet achieved – or, even, achievable…”

This, and more, he composed, as sweat trickled down his forehead and dribbled down his chin.

“The world outside seems to mirror our innermost thoughts – and the smell of the world intrudes on our psyche to make us react in ways we never thought we would, could, or should…”

He remembered reading somewhere that mirrors are actually super-cooled liquids rather than solids, or at least, amorphous solids… something like pitch… and expanded upon this bit of thermodynamic fiction into a couple of sentences, and mentioned the reeking dishcloth, vinegar, and bleach, in passing.

Hadrian was hungry, and sleepy, and had a crick in his neck. He was just 400 words short of his word-count… when he suddenly remembered the television trope about how evil twins or other malefactors appear out of mirrors. That was good for another 167 words, because he added that the smell of bleach and vinegar (oh, sulphur is such a cliché) usually preceded the apparitions.

Hadrian sniffed the air. Bleach, and vinegar. Yes, that’s it. His mind went back to when he was nine years old. He sensed, more than saw, movement in the dressing table mirror…