"Through the Cracks" by Nur AYAZ

The windows were stained, welcoming the fresh rain without having any second thoughts. With the company of every drop, he had been gazing at the mirror enough to make the hands of a clock exhausted. He wondered why he bought this haunting chamber, despite knowing at the bottom that he wouldn’t be able to spend a conscious minute before it.

'I wouldn’t dare to do this'. His mumble faded, forming a fog on his reflection.

The cheval glass had an antique oval shape. Worn-down stands that smelled like a voyage—perhaps from an antique store to an open-air bazaar, from a mansion to a one-room—drifted among spaces. It held a swirl of a hint of being flipped under any circumstance of a sudden whiffle.

After surrendering to the distorted reflections and the altered reality of his surroundings, he paused to reflect on the mirror's role in his life. He considered placing it in the middle of the room as a symbol of his decision to step aside from whatever this life offered. The sun that rises, the moon that appears—anything that shines its light on this sealed glass might turn out to be something that he is able to leave in this room. As a relic of his existence, a standing autograph of his own being.

The optimism he tried to muster in front of this eerie, glass-encased world felt strained, even to himself. He yearned to confront the mirror's reflection, yet a deep-seated apprehension about what might gaze back at him held him in its grip.

His solace lay in his readiness to surrender everything to this ancient relic—to cast aside his flesh—in one decisive act. Yet, the oppressive doubts kept encircling him: how could someone get rid of a mere product of this everyday inferno that they had come to identify as themselves?

Facing the gateway of one last turmoil to finish it all, he matched his level with it.

Considering a mirror is bound to reflect what stands in front of it, this one had a tendency to prove its kind wrong from time to time. Being a reflective creation from the beginning, his reluctance to reflect in midday must be an uprising similar to mine, he thought.

Whether it was his elusive perception or a buried yore, there was something occult about this reflective infinity.

He got up, causing a pile of dust to rise in the air, quickly followed by his cough. Without caring about the “fragile” labels attached, he pushed the boxes.

'Why bother to buy something before moving out? The place you move to probably has one.'

The point was not to leave with it; it was to leave it.

Abandon everything that made this small life backbreaking, giving him thorns of truth. Let him lose his reality into a maze, full of two-faced ivies, embracing him as if they were the only way out. Luring him into the calamity of the mind’s eye.

Habitually reminding him of the missed possibilities in life—the ones that couldn’t hold our hands tight enough. Forcing us to face the fluid reflection, shearing the reality before us, and elongating it to a couple of moments. Deceiving him into thinking that “perhaps this is why reflection is created in the beginning, a trap that plays with our nebulous minds”.

Indeed, the point was to leave them all.

He pondered over the mirror, wondering if its depths could set someone free if they held the key to the burdens he carried. Silencing the lingering thoughts in his head and clearing the last few obstacles that lay between him and the mirror, each step he took toward the infinity of glass became a deliberate move, deeper into a realm of profound reflection.

‘Would you like to get a refund ticket for the mirror?’ A hesitant wind blew off his decision momentarily. Yet then he realized it was personal. For the first time, as the pilot of his own life.

'No', he answered. 'No, I don’t want. Thank you, though.'

He touched the old material of the wood covering it. Scratches that leave little cuts on a finger tracing them, and a handle left alone on the right. Not knowing what its function was before purchase, his current instinct focused on cranking the handle hastily.

At first, cranking the handle seemed to do nothing, but as he persisted, the glass shattered, appearing to defy gravity. It dislocated and joined back simultaneously by forming vacant interfaces among each other.

Starving for a small breath, he let go of the handle and fell to his knees. Leaving even him in doubt about whether he is to pray for mercy or crawl to the gallows.

As he gazed through the fractured mirror, a surreal version of his room unfolded before his eyes. Boxes that were neatly stowed away mere moments ago had inexplicably shifted; they now formed an imposing barricade in front of the door, as if to block any escape. In this rearranged reality, time seemed to warp, stretching moments into eternity.

Amidst this stillness, a subtle yet piercing sound began to swell, slicing through the silence. The kettle on the cooker, forgotten until now, was whistling fiercely. Its shrill, insistent cry formed a sharp counterpoint to the constant ringing that plagued his ears—a maddening symphony that reverberated through the room. The discordant sounds melded, creating a palpable tension that hung heavily in the air as if the room itself were holding its breath.

His gaze darted around, searching for any anchor to the reality he once knew—something tangible to grasp amidst this chaos. He longed for the familiar texture of life. Something to draw him back, to communicate reality into his veins and awaken his dulled senses to the 'now.'

'Tick, tick, tick,' the relentless clock marked time’s passage pointlessly. Struggling to focus on it, he momentarily rebelled against time’s inexorable march, only to be pulled back into the stark realization of his transformed surroundings. Surrendering to the realm of cracks and disjointed reflections, he let the altered reality cut his ties with the familiar.

At that moment, everything shifted, replaced by its own distorted echo.

He chose to crawl towards the mirror on his hands and started to trace down the cracks formed in the borders of glass pieces.

With the sound of a small droplet of blood, his attention came back home. He looked at his finger, only to realize the same trace on the mirror was now on his finger. This same crack was to mark, or perhaps create, the final seal on his soul.

He had been shattered all along, even before the mirror.

He kept cranking; his blood coated the handle and traced a path, eventually filling up the little dam beneath. Just then, a faint, almost inaudible hum began to emanate from the new owner of the house.

“Once the cracks were filled with golden possibility,

They called it Wabi-Sabi

As breaches are repleted by a concurrent agony

What title, then, befits such an entity?”

‘Flip me’ the mirror distorted frozen air.

‘Flip to see what lies behind you,

And ahead of me’.