The Lie in the Mirror

She opened her eyes with the realisation that she didn’t know her own name. 

That should have worried her. A name seemed important, somehow—was it not the one thing that was inherently a person’s? The single possession none could take away? 

And did it not identify—label, limn—that person’s whole lived world? Behind a name there might be time; years of sadness, years of joy, years of trial and years of triumph. Behind a name there might be laughter. Wisdom. Hate. Love.

A person was no-one, without a name. 

She might have argued that she did have a name; after all, people had to call her something. But there was nothing behind that name. It was a flask with no water; a door with no room; a mask with no actor. A name was more than just what others said to get a person’s attention. A name was who they were.

But that she had forgotten hers was far from surprising. Her entire life, after all, was a facade; her face, her clothes, her family (she had none). She had been convincing others of falsities for so long that she had begun convincing herself: the lines between truth and untruth blurring, like paint bleeding into water. Forgetting her name was only the next fragment of her identity in a long line of items to be claimed by the lies. It was natural, expected even. 

But the absence of her name—a strange blankness that she felt subtly lurking beneath the currents of her mind—irked her even so.

As she yawned indulgently, ran her fingers through her red curls, and smiled faintly at the old lady in the seat across from her, she pondered where it had all begun.

Was it at the police station?

Or the fire escape?

No. The lies began, she decided, at the mirror.

It is a nondescript mirror; nothing more than a polished pool framed by a gleaming silver square. It is flecked, in some places, with white toothpaste. The blue-and-white tiled bathroom hovers clearly on its surface. She admires her reflection in the foreground, the way that her eyes scintillate emerald beneath dark lashes. She twirls a lock of pin-straight blonde hair around her finger and imagines that she is a princess. Well, perhaps not quite as ethereally (unrealistically) beautiful, but close—pleasingly so.

Her meandering thoughts are interrupted. The apartment door clicks open and heavy shoes are tossed to the side; footsteps make their way tiredly towards her direction. Her father is home early, and he will soon enter his bathroom to wash. Princess fantasies forgotten, she turns quickly towards the wooden medicine cabinet in search of the bejeweled comb that she is never allowed to use—it had supposedly been her mother’s, but she cares little for people who are long gone from this world. What is the use of a beautiful comb if it sits, collecting dust, on a shelf?

Crestfallen, she turns away from the cabinet; the comb is nowhere to be found.

But in doing so, she bumps into the mirror momentarily, and a mouse-squeak is heard. Small. Almost inaudible. But she freezes, turning on her heel to observe the glass.

It has been cracked open from the wall—by no more than a centimetre, but clearly separated. She reaches out and curls her fingers around the edge of the mirror. She breathes. She pulls.

The mirror swings open, soundlessly.

The following events were a child’s dream; there were no coherent thoughts nor scenes, only arbitrary snapshots of words and pictures. But one image stood out clearly—a brief mirror-flash burned brightly into her memory—for that was where the lies began. At the mirror. In the mirror. Behind the mirror.

Not a comb, precious and studded with glittering adornments. A weapon. A gun? Yes, a revolver, sleek and black and glinting in the pale fluorescent lights and why does her father have a revolver in his bathroom?

That was the first lie: that the gun meant nothing.

It was told to herself, a reassurance that her father was the same man she had always known despite the firearm. That he was still that tall, sturdy figure of stiff coats and long blue ties; the distinct, odd mixed scent of peppermint and shaving cream; the heavy chuckle she remembered so well. He was the middle-aged attorney who worked in a tall glass-and-steel building in New York City and was always kind to his clients; he had a jar of blue M&M’s on his desk; he ruffled her hair whenever he came home from work. Yes, she knew him well. 

But lies were made to be broken. The next time she saw the gun shattered her reality. 

It was at the fire escape: the setting of the second lie. She was a few years older then, having pushed the mirror—and the revolver—to the foggy back-alleys of her mind where it lingered, half-forgotten, left to be buried like coins in a fountain. She had been wearing grey yoga pants, an orange sweater, a cloth headband. She had just gotten off the phone with her friend. This memory was vivid—too much so. 

There is a knock on the door.

She gets up, albeit reluctantly, and opens it. A policeman is standing there, in the navy outfit and brass buckle that gleams in the sun. He is pale and has a heavy mustache. His eyes are small, grey, cold and hard as steel. They peer unpleasantly over her shoulder, trying to see inside, and she shifts so that his view is blocked. He scowls.

“Ma’am, please move aside.”

She folds her arms, leaning against the doorframe with the stately smirk only a girl her age could pull off. “Why? Have you got a warrant?”

He thrusts a piece of paper in her face. “I do. Where is your father—assuming you are his daughter? He’s under arrest.”

Under arrest? She shakes her head, adjusting carefully her headband. The autumn air is crisp and cool as frost, the sun hiding meekly behind grey denim clouds, and the occasional breath of wind sends chills through her spine. She does not want to be outside any longer than she must.

“My father has done nothing wrong,” she declares confidently, gripping the doorknob in preparation for slamming it in the officer’s face. 

“If you read the warrant, ma’am—”

She tells him precisely where he might stick the warrant. 

Just then, her father appears behind him. The officer stiffens, thin lips tightening into a pursed sneer. He flashes his badge and the paper once more.

He had likely called her father by his name, in that moment. But she remembered no names. Her memory was convoluted with nameless faces and faceless names, swimming together in a murky river. 

“Sir, you are under arrest for blackmail, theft, murder…”

The list had been longer. She had stopped listening after murder.

Her eyes slip to her father, who is white. His jaw is twitching. She sees his eyes dart to the paper in the officer’s hand, then to the steps behind him. She sees his fingers vibrate.

She knows what will happen a fraction of a second before it happens.

The revolver—that revolver, cylinder flashing in the cold sunlight, barrel winking at her enigmatically—is carving a path in the air. A shining arc, from her father’s pocket to the side of the officer’s head. A slow-motion arc, lingering for so long and yet—somehow—lasting less than a second, over in an instant. So quick! So easy! A single blow, and it is done—steel to glass, briskly, that hard light in his eyes dissipating in a moment.

Why can she not breathe?

Blood, thick and glimmering slow crimson; the paper fluttering from his hand, a snowy feather, the fanned coattails of a fairy tern as it alights to the air; the navy uniform like a crumpled sea.

Her father’s hand is on her shoulder. She does not take her eyes off the officer’s body as she is dragged to the screened door of the fire escape. She does not take her eyes off the officer’s body as her father yanks open the door. She does not take her eyes off the officer’s body as her father steps out onto the metal platform.

But she turns when her father calls her name.

He is shouting at her. Beckoning. A briefcase is clutched in his hand—when had he brought that?—and the revolver is clamped in the other. As she watches, the gun clatters to the ground in his frenzy, clanging against the metal. Her father does not notice.

No, not her father. She does not recognise this man in front of her. She does not recognise this face that is speckled with red, these dark jade eyes wild and angry. This is not her father.

She bends down, slowly, and picks up the gun.

The second lie: she was not a murderer.

This one she told to both herself and to the police who were called over by a particularly nosy neighbour. It was self-defense, she had protested. He was threatening me, she had claimed. It was not her fault. It was never her fault.

But they didn’t listen.

A life sentence. She stares unseeingly at the blank stone wall, at the dusty corners with cigarette stubs and scraps of paper huddled pitifully in the shadows. Is she even old enough to be put in jail? Prison is something that happens to other people; criminals, outlaws, thieves. Not her. None of this makes sense.

A life sentence.

The lies came easily after that: she was not going to try and escape. She was not going to go back to her father’s—no, that man’s—house. She was not going to open his safe and take his money.

One after another the lies sprang from her lips like an unbidden silver waterfall; the more she told, the easier it became, and the heavier the flow. She changed her hair. She bought contacts. She moved to the other side of the country. She changed her name, her face, her life.

She had been lying for almost a decade, now.

The train rattled to a stop, but sped up again after a minute. She rested her head against the cool glass, staring outside at the silver spires racing by. Each tall, slender building glittered rutilant in the pastel dusk, blurred by the fingerprint smudges on the train window. She closed her eyes once more.

Sleepily, blindly, she rummaged through her purse. She pulled out a thin, flat object. Her fingers fumbled at the clasp.

When she opened her eyes, a green-eyed young woman with straight blonde hair was staring up at her, wearing a cloth headband and an orange sweater. Her face was splattered with blood.

“Excuse me?” A grey-haired man tapped her shoulder. His blue tie swung as he leaned down. “May I sit—” He broke off, dark jade eyes squinting behind thin gold-framed glasses. “Anna?”

She blinked up at him. “May I help you, sir?”

“Is it you, Anna? Is it really you?” His silver-stubbled chin quivers.

“I’m sorry,” she said politely, returning her attention to the mirror in her lap. “My name is not Anna. You must have mistaken me for someone else.” 

When she looked up again, the old man was gone. A strange smell—a combination of peppermint and shaving cream, perhaps—lingered behind him. Sighing, she wondered briefly who Anna was; his late wife, perhaps? Or a long-lost daughter? 

The mirror clicked shut.

Finis.