Mirrors to Shackles

"Do you consider yourself an angry man, Mr. Cohen?"

The three-walled room with a double-sided glass on one side seemed oddly small. The man, Mr. Cohen, could make out two additional figures opposite the glass because of their loud voices, besides the one detective in the same room as him. Dark and dimly lit, one could hardly call it a room with its eerie corners. A few moths with their paper-thin wings fluttered about in the flickering white tube light.

He held onto the shard of the broken mirror tightly, but not enough to draw blood. The detective's question reverberated in the small, claustrophobic space. Outside, the voices grew louder, a mix of accusations and speculations. The piece of mirror glinted in the dim light, catching his eye like a memory he couldn’t shake. He could still see himself, a bit hazy with dust and grime having covered the shard, yet he could make out a square jaw and copper hair.

The mirror will not allow him to forget. 

"Barely.", he finally replied, his voice low and gravelly.

The detective ran a sweaty palm over his face. "I do not understand why you choose to be scarce. Does the truth mean so little to you?"

The truth would mean as little to anyone if they had nothing to lose. Cohen thought of the life he once lived—a life filled with dreams that now felt distant, like echoes in a vast emptiness. Each decision had chipped away at him, each lie casting a shadow over the light he once took for granted. The walls were steadily closing in on him, a doubtless sanctuary to many in the fairly recent past, and now an unfamiliar maze to him.

'Tell them. Give them what they want to hear.', said the voice in his head, the epitome of chaos. 'It was your fault, anyways.'

Yes, it was his fault and every person in the room was aware. They longed to hear the motive; they were desperate for it, but their desperation rang hollow, like a plea from a heart long resigned to despair. Each pair of eyes bore into him, not with the fervor of curiosity, but with a cold, unyielding judgment that cut deeper than any accusation, like they expected something out of him and no matter what he'd say, they wouldn't look past the surface. It was as if they were searching for a justification that could somehow make sense of the chaos he had wrought, hoping to find a thread of understanding in the tangled mess of his life. But that hope was a fragile thing, easily shattered by the weight of truth. Simplicity didn’t satiate their interest.

"There seems to have been an error in my judgment. You, detective, are not smart enough to be one if you cannot weed the truth laid out to your eyes on a silver platter."

The Detective looked back at him and let out a humorless chuckle. "And I never pegged you to have your rationality clouded by emotions. Why'd you do it, Cohen?"

He remained silent.

'They don't understand. They never will. Tell them what they wish for.', the voice nagged.

Cohen clenched his fists, staining the shard with crimson.

"I hope you know what this means." With one last look, the detective exited the room. Perhaps not the conversation given how he stood for a few moments more behind the one-sided glass wall. He recognized Cohen to be one of the 'relentless' ones, the kind that would accept the highest degree of punishment imposed upon them rather than proclaim a half-baked justification, let alone a well-thought-out one, for their actions. The people who believed themselves to be 'superior', to be God's right-hand men, which was ironic to him as someone who closely worked with the law. Mere humans shouldn’t have the right to decide the fate of another. There had to be a line drawn somewhere, but the thirst for power had corrupted countless in the judiciary. Truth had been reduced to an afterthought and consequence was on a higher pedestal. 

'Look what they made you do.'

Cohen could care less about the detective's holier-than-thou persona. Complexity is inherent in life, in words, and sometimes even actions. No matter how deep one delves into something seemingly simple, it doesn't negate the enigma looming around the same. Every action had to be backed by something bigger, and that was what Cohen firmly believed in. Everything had to fit perfectly, like pieces in a puzzle. There was nothing in this world that didn't fit into the creator's warp of time and space. Any causality, every glitch, had to be eliminated. And he'd taken on the difficult responsibility of removing such threats upon himself.

He always saw some sort of obscure beauty in tragedy. He craved to create an ending of his own, a grand finale, one that would leave the world speechless, in awe, something that would etch his name onto history for generations to come. This, creation of art and reflections, was the closest to immortality, to God, he could get. 

But, the finale was left unfinished and the mirror was now stained. Soon, the walls caved in on him.

***

The prison walls were the same thick grey stone as the dwellings of the region, but instead of a wide window with a flower box, there was a mean barred opening with thick metal bars and no glass. The light fell on the words that spoke to nobody, aware that his audience had vanished, or that the room lay silent beneath no boots at all, save his. It was as if God had stopped time, and removed all the distractions so he could see it for real, see how it really was, what it really was. And in that moment all he wished for was - nothing. He wished for nothing and that was his regret. 

Cohen looked at the once-mirror. He could barely see himself over. He hadn't forgotten though, perhaps some.

'You will never forget.', the voice screeched, never to be heard again. He picked up the shard and buried it beneath the wooden flooring.

A strange emotion twisted in his gut, a relentless specter whispering the names of those he had betrayed, the lives he had shattered. For now, he was no better than the ones he once scorned on. He was a man forever shackled to the wreckage of his own and their souls, and that was a far more unforgiving confinement. 

The mirror peaked out from beneath the wood. No matter how deep he buried, the truth would always surface. There would be no escape for him. The mirror won't let him forget.