Vanity

The house had been built a century ago, but renovated many times, making it look both old and new. Shadows spread across its face in the twilight, while the brass knocker and knob glinted furtively. I stood at the front door, caught between the obligation to go in and the impulse to leave; pinned like a mirror between reality and reflection. 

I would give back her key and leave. We would be separate, whole; there would be closure. I stood at the door for several minutes. The key warmed in my fist. The last of the light slid down under the horizon. The door darkened to a rusty, sanguine color.

I was still numb from the break-up. It had been abrupt, a shock. Her mother died. An event like that tends to shake things up. It put our bond to the test. I was hoping we would pass.

I could not have told you what was holding us together in the first place. Viv was gorgeous, tall, intelligent; she came from “a good family”, though I didn’t believe in things like that. I, on the other hand, was a man of intangibles. Was I tall? No, I was quite short. Handsome? Wealthy? No. Was I in good shape? Not at all, my figure reflected an advanced palate, an epicurean lifestyle, an appreciation for the decadent. Was I brimming with potential? Perhaps a kind of ineffable promise. The good in me evaded language, but Viv could see it. In pictures, we looked a bit like a bulldog standing next to a greyhound.

She was rare in her ability to see past the polished surfaces of things, though her mother had been the opposite. When Mrs. Mirrim looked at me, I always saw disapproval, the tolerance strained to its breaking point. It was all she could do not to openly ignore me. I would hear her voice in my head, saying things like, my daughter will be wasted on that.

She passed away unexpectedly, and Viv inherited the house. She rapidly became cold and distant. I began to see regret and dissatisfaction in her face when she looked at me. She developed a taste for mirrors, and formed a habit of compulsively polishing her formerly effortless beauty.

She broke up in a text message. The conversation was brief. It included her pasting in a picture of the two of us, followed by “Look at it.” I could not believe it. This was a whole different person. It could have been someone else texting me from her phone.

Maybe tonight I would get answers. Maybe it was a mistake or an impostor. Maybe we would be back together by the end of the night.

I knocked the brass knocker on the door and waited. I pressed the doorbell. I tried the knob. It was unlocked. I could let myself in. I still had her key. Not the key to this door, no; it was her apartment key. But the key symbolized my right to go to her. Deep down, she must have wanted me to go to her -- otherwise she would have made sure to take her key back.

Somewhere out there in the weft of spacetime was a universe where I looked into that dark entryway, and left. In that universe, an abandoned apartment key symbolized nothing, a text-message breakup was closure enough, and I leapt with both feet into my future.

In this universe, I stepped into that darkness.

Flipping on the light switch, light, crystal and glass blinded me from all directions. A dazzling chandelier blazed on the ceiling, and its light ricocheted from hundreds of mirrors covering the walls. Once my psyche adjusted to this mind-bending room of reflected space, I chuckled. It made perfect sense that the elder Mirrim would have this many mirrors. Stepping into the foyer, I could see that the surfaces of the different mirrors all seemed a bit distorted.

My slimmer self appeared in the floor-length mirror next to the coat rack. It was the kind of mirror they would install in a department store dressing room to make you look thin and dashing in whatever you were trying on. So this is what I would look like if I dropped some pounds. I felt confident. Maybe I would start a diet, get on the straight and narrow, and make my svelte self a reality.

But of course, I was thin in reality, and always had been. A physique like mine had its drawbacks, growing up. I never had the muscle for football or wrestling, but I never had trouble finding clothing that fit like it had been tailored just for me. And I got to have a somewhat illustrious gymnastics career from high school until college, where my short stature had been no drawback.

"Viv?" I shouted into the house. I didn't hear anything. I thought I would look upstairs.

The mirror on the landing was tall, and the reflection somewhat vertically stretched. In that mirror I must have been 6'4" or 6'6". What a commanding presence.

Finally, a mirror I didn't have to stoop down to see my own face in. Throughout my life, I had gotten used to stooping, to being asked what the weather was like "up there", or whether I played basketball. Every pair of pants I ever wore was either too wide or too short for my long, skinny legs. 

I took the remaining stairs three-at-a-time. The upstairs hallway was dim, but I could see light under one door.

"Viv?" I shouted again. I heard a vague creaking sound, like movement coming from that direction.

The mirror in the hall was warped at face level. My jaw looked oversized for my head, and angular, like the mandible of a deep-sea carnivore. I smiled, showing jagged teeth. The other children had been afraid of me, growing up, and I was the only one on picture day the teacher had asked not to smile quite so much. I had never needed to use a steak knife in my life, though I could tell it made people uncomfortable the way my teeth sliced through meat.

I knocked on the door. "Viv?"

It opened into the master bedroom. A dressing screen stood at the end of the room. I could see that her bed was there. Maybe she would be, too.

The vanity caught my eye. Combs and beauty products lay scattered on the desk. A big, roughly rectangular portion of the mirror looked metallic and non-reflective. As my hand passed through the reflection, it resembled a large cleaver. I had brought the cleaver as a gift. Viv always loved cooking. This might have been the last time we would see each other, but it tickled to imagine her remembering me whenever she split a chicken or lopped the wings off a turkey.

I closed the door behind me. The mirror hanging on the interior side of the door had a reddish tint, rosey, flushed. Only then did I notice the look in my eyes. They were a dark, hateful, red color. What would do that to a pair of eyes? How many days in a row would you have to go without sleep?

Seven. No room for dreams had remained in my brain since the breakup. Only hate. There had been love between us, the sweetest and most perfect thing human life can produce, but she had destroyed it, heartlessly. I put my whole life into that love, all of my being, all that was wise and good within myself I entrusted to our shared heart which was then crushed beneath her boot. I had thought her the one person whose existence could make up for the scourge of devils and cretins which comprise the human race. For all of my hope, for all of my mercy, I had been a fool. All humanity and kindness I had struggled my whole life to cultivate was worthless, as I realized now nothing on earth was worthy of it.

I went behind the screen and found her waiting on her bed. She held a hand mirror in one hand; in the other, a sword like a long and jagged piece of glass.

I sensed that we would leave each other in pieces within mere moments, but I could not help my curiosity.

"What is that one?" I asked, gesturing at the hand mirror with my cleaver. Her eyes were dark and bloodshot. She smiled like a barracuda.

"This one shows things the way they really are." She smashed the mirror against the sword, spraying shards of glass everywhere.

I didn’t understand what she meant. Of all the mirrors I had looked in in this house, each one had shown nothing but reality as it had always been. It didn’t matter.

She stood up on her bed and raised her blade. I raised my cleaver.

We flew at each other. Metal crashed against metal. Blade bit into flesh. Red rained down. Skin and sinew hung from ragged limbs, and Viv’s sword cut my hand off at the wrist. 

We collapsed weakly into each other. In our final moments, we were together.