Silver Fish

Late in the evening, Adam left the tall office building. He was wearing an expensive, sleek suit and fashionable eyewear. He carried the weight of a leather briefcase—a reminder of the successfully concluded contract.

Waiting for a taxi, he rubbed his eyelid and took a deep sigh. Despite the triumphant culmination of the recent deal, he didn’t feel lighthearted.

Adam took out his phone to check where the taxi was when he noticed an unread notification. It was nobody but his jobless friend, aka freelancer, who’d sent another weird link to some geeky website to their common chat. A site about the suspicious disappearance of several people According to the website, among them was even one famous merchant who was quite financially well-off.

“They probably just got fed up with their boring jobs and ran off,” commented another friend in the common chat.

Adam was about to put his phone back in his pocket when a new text message bubble popped up: “Hang on. The point is, they were all the owners of the same vintage mirror when it happened. And I found where it’s for sale! So. I wanna give it to Adam, just for fun. His birthday’s coming up. Why don’t we chip in?”

Adam has no idea how it happened, but on his day off, he found himself at an antiques shop, where a large, full-length antique mirror was being wrapped for him, accompanied by the giggles of his friends.

“So you guys want me to disappear?” he joked. But the mirror was transported to his house and placed against the wall in his home office. Not that he didn’t like such things. But the mirror didn’t really harmonize with the overall minimalist decor of the room. Perhaps if he repainted the frame in a darker hue...

In the middle of the night, when Adam rose to get some water, he noticed an unusual bluish radiance emanating from behind the home office door. Still drowsy, he opened the door and got taken aback by the discovery—his birthday-gift mirror turned out to be somewhat altered from its daytime appearance.

A dim blue light streamed from beneath the frame, and the mirror itself reflected nothing but Adam. Only the gaping blackness surrounding him.

As if mesmerized, he extended his hand, and concentric waves spread from where his fingers made contact with the surface. This must be a surreal dream, right?

Adam applies more pressure, and his hand passes through the mirror as if it were a slightly viscous, jelly-like fluid, causing the surrounding surface to ripple around.

A long-forgotten sense awakened inside Adam, and without a moment’s hesitation, he stepped forward and went through the mirror. But for some reason, he didn’t come out of his own house. Well, it was his house, but not the one where he resided now. The objects surrounding him appeared significantly larger, more imposing, and mysterious. The mirror resembled an immense, intricately carved gateway. As for things around him...

Black tile underfoot, a massive desk, wood-carved bookcases, and upholstered velvet chairs dimly lit by the table lamp cast enigmatic shadows. Father was absent at the moment, probably fast asleep by now, having carelessly forgotten to lock his office. If caught, Adam would undoubtedly face strict punishment. But curiosity got the better of him.

What secrets lay hidden on those dusty shelves, away from his inquisitive gaze?

Boxes, books, souvenirs, vases, figurines—he could study them for hours. The ornate golden frames displayed staged photos of a lady in a strict suit and a man in glasses and a necktie, both staring reproachfully out of the picture. The coiffed hairstyles, furrowed eyebrows, and dull gray backgrounds somehow appeared remarkably harmonious among these beautifully aged things.

With caution, Adam nudged the glass sash of the cabinet with his fingernail. His mother’s collection of dolls was undeniably peculiar. About a dozen exquisitely crafted gothic dolls with endearing but sad porcelain faces were seated one by another in two careful rows. While Adam liked to admire their intricate lace and embroidered clothes, their clothes were too grim for his childish tastes. Furthermore, he couldn’t comprehend what was the purpose of even smaller dolls that gothic dolls clutched in their porclein hands. The design seemed so absurd, didn’t it?

At times, the thought of finding himself among these dolls filled him with fright. Sometimes he yearned for it.

Adam pulled the heavy curtain, allowing moonlight to spill into the semi-dark room, pouring life into the shriveled pages of papers on his father’s desk, into the old-fashioned furniture exuding snooty grandeur, and into the glazed eyes of his mother’s Gothic dolls.

With a click, Adam turned off the desk lamp, and suddenly a cheery smile stretched his lips.

Night was the only time he could afford to be anything more than a decent son of successful individuals, a neatly-dressed kid standing with a perfectly straight back against a dull gray background flanked by a sternly-dressed woman and a man in a tie and glasses.

After taking a couple of dozens of cautious steps, he found himself outside. Drawn away by the familiar path that curved in from the back yard, he gradually wandered further and further away from the confines of the dreary house.

The night progressed, and the branchy trees swayed, succumbing to winds and covering the forest in the dark. Yet a faint moon was peeking out between the branches, and dim fairy lights covered the dark grass and the bushes with a scattering of twinkling flames. Flickering occasionally, they highlighted the way to a mighty crooked tree. Its hollow trunk emitted a subtle and muted glow, as if it were inhabited by myriads of fairies.

Adam used to wonder what would happen if he followed the fairy lights and never came back.

Meanwhile, the forest around was filled with shadows that slinked like silent and stealthy wraiths from one tree to another. The eerie presence of wandering spirits, the unnerving sounds of their moves, and hushed whispers permeated the darkness.  

Despite this, Adam remained determined to head towards the inky black pond without veering from his path.

On the gentle, grass-covered bank, the trees stretched their dark branches into the cloudless night sky, as the full moon cast a silvery glow and glinting reflections on the pond’s surface served as the sole illumination. A loud croaking of frogs resonated under a large spreading tree that grew at the very edge of the water.

This place was meant to be Adam’s private sanctuary. But fate had dictated that another mysterious inhabitant had claimed these serene black waters, where the stars were floating and the bottom seemed dauntingly beyond reach.

One day, a long, long time ago, one of the days when Adam followed the lights, he came across another boy: a boy who was trying to catch a silver fish.

“Silver fish?” Adam repeated it hesitantly as the boy, just a little bit older than himself, bent over the dark, mirror-like surface of the pond.

“When the stars and moon are reflected in the pond, the moon’s silver fish appears here as well,” he said with undisputed authority.

According to the boy, he kept returning to this place in hope of witnessing a shining silver tail appearing from under the water, having caught a glimpse of it once before. But the surface remained calm, and the only thing they could discern was the reflection of an enthusiastic boy in well-worn clothes.

“What happens if you catch a silver fish?” Adam once asked. After the memorable encounter, this boy took it upon himself to constantly guard the pond. Each time they met at the pond bank, the older boy would give Adam a sly little snicker.

“Well, hmm…” he drawled with the air of a mischievous sage. “If you catch it, you can sit on its back, dive into the pond, and emerge right on the other side of the moon.”

“But I have school tomorrow. And tennis practice. And then I got homework to do. After that, I have a music class. Mother and Father will be mad if I don’t show up.”

“Oh, don’t you fret. There’s a house on the back side of the moon. It’s surrounded by a garden and a pond. There is fruit in the garden and fish in the pond. We won’t need adults to live there. What’s more, they won't find us there. Because the only way to get there is on a silver fish.”

After a long pause during which the boy crouched quietly by the pond, clutching an old and slightly tattered fishing net in his hands, Adam asked, “Can I bring my mom’s dolls then? Maybe then they would stop being so sad.”

The boy gave him a surprised look, then opened his mouth as if to laugh, but ultimately chuckled into his fist, exposing a glimpse of his bruised forearm. Yet when he spoke, it was with an unexpectedly composed tone: “And how many are there?”

“A dozen.”

The older boy giggled again with that funny, sly squint.

“All right. There’s plenty of room for everyone on the back of a silver fish. It’s a big one, did you know that? And I wanna bring my little sister. Is it fine if she plays with your dolls, too?”

Adam pondered it for a minute, weighing up such a significant decision.

“Sure. Especially since they’re not mine. Haha.”

“Hehe.”

To Adam, it seemed that their search for the silver fish had lasted so long. Each time, they discussed new strategies for catching it, but mainly they just chatted. Adam eagerly anticipated the moment when the fish would finally show up, trusting the older boy without reservation. While the boy shared more and more details about their future lives on the silver moon—distant and secluded, where no one else had access. No one but them.

However, it turned out to be only three weeks. Three weeks before, Adam was caught out in the night and severely scolded. Three weeks before, he and his parents moved far away from the mystic forest and the bottomless black pond. Since then, there had been no more lights, no more dolls, and no more silver fish.

It was many years later when Adam found out the reason behind the boy’s tattered state of attire and bruised forearms. He also learned that the boy’s sister had passed away two years before they’d met, as a result of the parents’ negligence.

When Adam, now thirty-six years old, woke up in his bed, he realized that his silver fish was forever gone.

He rushed into his office to quickly assess the now-ordinary mirror with a glance. To be sure, he even put a hand to it, but the surface didn’t respond with anything but the slight coolness of glass.

The mirror revealed a mature man wearing a pair of glasses and featuring a handful of small wrinkles on his forehead, at the corners of his eyes, and around his mouth. His sleep-disturbed hair and morning stubble marred the image of the polished, high-class professional he portrayed during the day.

But all of that is inconsequential.

Because gradually and almost imperceptibly, his gaze had taken on the same expression as his parents’ in the old photograph. It felt like everything was there, yet something essential was still missing. As if something had irrevocably gone, severed and sunk into the depths of a pitiless black pond, along with his unattained childhood dream, as foolish as he himself must have been.

However, Adam did seem to grasp the reason behind the sudden disappearance of those people described on the website. Whether it was solid reality or a figment of his tired mind, perhaps, at some point, everyone had come face to face with such a marvelous mirror.

In fact, those people didn’t really disappear, oh no. Instead, they had simply followed their personal, long-since extinguished lights and had found no way back.

At times, Adam felt that he wouldn’t mind getting lost like that as well.

With a shaky sigh, he returned to the bedroom, hoping to get the remaining half hour of sleep before the alarm clock. Soon, he would have to get up again, wash his face, and meet the new day.

But before he drifted off to sleep, another thought crossed his mind.

Maybe that missing part wasn’t actually missing after all. Maybe it was sitting on the pond bank, on the far side of the moon, alongside the boy fisherman who managed to catch the silver fish, his little sister, and a dozen exquisite gothic dolls sporting smiley expressions.