Stuck in a Mirror

Here's one that I thought of while listening to an Ozzy Osborne song.

Can you guess which one?

PS: This one is also set in "Boston", Oregon.

Stuck in a Mirror

By David J Reichen

Here we are, no hope of release
Waiting for time, itself to cease.

"I need some cash fast," I thought, just getting off of the MAX, looking for a place to hit. As the train pulled away from the stop I was at, the one in Chinatown, I made my way to one of the more peculiar streets in Boston, Oregon. The street goes North-South and East-West. On the Downtown side, which is where I was, it starts from the South and continues North, parallel to the Willamette River, at Lovejoy it crosses over the river and goes Eastward from there.

The shop that I chose was a run down hole in the wall that had a bunch of black volcanic islands on its facade. I went inside to case the joint out, noticed that most of the stuff piled on the shelves, tables and the counters in back had seen better days and decided that it was not worth my bother. As I was about to leave, I heard a voice coming from the back of the shop and turned arround to see who it could be. I could have sworn that there was not anyone back there.

"Can I help you?" repeated the shop owner that I had thought was one of the items on display.

I turned arround, decided against any judgement, good or bad, and headed over to the thing to take a closer look. He was short and had skin that looked like it was peeled off of a corpse and shrink wrapped onto him. Yes, it was a him, at least that is what I assumed. His eyes looked unusually big for the size of the head and seemed to bulge out of their sockets. He was dressed in what I would have called Peasant Chinese with a little Native American thrown into the mix.

"Do you see anything you would like?" he added, placing his hands on top of the glass counter that he was standing behind.

I looked at the hands, which gave the impression of being in the tub too long and noticed that the nails looked like cats' claws. Looking past the hands, I saw something that I just could not pass up heisting. It was a necklace with weird stars along the chain and a medallion with an Octopus type thingy on it. It would go great with the Goth outfit I have. I decided that I would just have to take it from him and made plans to do so.

I feinted another look around, then focused on the thing in front of me, smiled at it and said, "I am looking for something for my girl. What would you suggest?"

He shuffled around the counter and approached me, all five feet of him. He was very short and barely cleared the counter top which was why I thought he was just a bust set there for people to look at. He gestured off to the back corner of his hovel, went in that direction and said, "We have many nice things over here. If you will follow me, I will show you."
As soon as he turned his back to me, I shoved the poor wretch to the floor, picked up something big and smashed the counter top, got the necklace, took off out the door and ran down the street. As I turned the corner, I could have sworn that I heard him yell not to wear the medallion. Yeah, as if I would be taking the advice of a fugitive from a freak show.


When I got back to my pad, I went to the backroom, where I keep my special stash, and put the necklace on. I went to the mirror to check out how I looked with my newest piece of jewelry. As I looked into the mirror hanging on the wall, my reflection started to fade until it completely disappeared.

With a Chestershire Cat grin, I shouted, "SWEET! I am invisible, now to clean out the town."

Just then the door slammed shut.

I turned to the door, startled by the noise and went over to open it. It would not open. I tried the door knob. It would not turn. The key did not move the lock, which I did check and it was unlocked. I reached into my back pocket, took out a knife and tried to take the pins out of the door's hinges. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts and slicing my fingers in the process, I gave up, stood for a couple of seconds and took stock of the situation.

I then went over to the window to see if I could get out that way. Wouldn't you know it? As I moved the curtains aside and looked out, all I could see was black, the type of black that does not even hint of a trace of light. It was a complete and utter darkness. I tried to open the window but it would not budge, which may have been a good thing considering what was not out there.

"Great!" I exclaimed.

"I am locked in. The windows are stuck. Now how in the hell am I going to get out!" I screamed in frustration.

Let me tell you, if there was not a better time to panic, I have no idea when it would be. I spun around the room, looking for another way out and stopped when I looked at the mirror.

"It all started when I put on the necklace and looked in the mirror," I thought. I moved to the mirror and looked through it. Sure enough, the only thing missing was my reflection. I tried to take off the necklace but it seemed to have gained an infinite resistance to motion relative to me. It would not budge from my shoulders and kept on slipping from my fingers.

It was then that it dawned on me that I had been ignoring something important, a clue about my situation. I came very close to losing my mind.

I had assumed that I cast no refection because I could not see myself in the mirror that was mounted on the wall. What I had just realized was that I had another mirror in the room. The other mirror stood on the nearby table and was pointed at me. In that mirror, on the table, I could clearly see the reflection of me looking at it. I quickly turned arround, to look back at the mirror on the wall and saw that same mirror, that was on the table, placed so that I could see what was reflected on its surface. I could plainly see myself in that mirror too and saw something unexpected. I had assumed that I would just see my backside reflected in the mirror on the table since that mirror was behind me. What I saw however was this, I saw my frontside, like I was standing in front of a window. No matter how many times I switched from looking at the mirror on the wall and the mirror on the table, nothing changed what I had seen reflected in either mirror. It could only mean one thing to me. I had somehow gotten trapped on the other side of the mirror on the wall.

It suddenly began to get very hot in the direction of where that mirror hung on the wall and I looked at it once more. After a moment of staring at it, still not reflecting me, it began to warp, as if it was melting. Red cracks began to form upon its surface. I was showered by a hail of partially melted glass shards as the mirror exploded into shattered pieces. I managed to bring my arms up to protect my face from the flying glass but my cloths were cut into shredded wheat.

I looked into the space where the mirror was and all sanity left me. I screamed. I saw what looked like withering strands of fire reaching out in my direction. They leaped out from the chasm and wrapped themselves all around my body and burned. It felt like they were going straight through my flesh and bone before consciousness fled and I was freed from the overwhelming agony.


The call came in the morning, way too morning. I am a day person. I don't get up until after the sun is up.

The previous night, Chan Ing called me to let me know that somebody stole something from his curio shop. After he gave me a brief description of the item, I promised that I would bring it back to him if I noticed it anywhere. So it was no surprise that the police called me, it was just too early.

When I got to where they asked me to come to, I flashed my NSA badge at the officer guarding the door and he directed me to a room in back. I approached the coroner, crouching down next to the body. I smiled at the beauty of a woman who worked with the dead and asked "What's news?"

"Just up your alley, Chancey, I would say," she answered, rising up from the stiff to greet me.

"The neighbors complained about somebody screaming in the night. We sent out a patrol this morning to look into the complaint. They found him here when they looked to see if there was anybody around. They called me, I came here and then I called you.

"The body was found here and must have been facing the wall. There was a mirror on the wall, its shattered glass is all around here and there is a scorched section of wall where the mirror was. The clothes that he had on are ripped to shreds, probably from the flying glass."

After a pause, she continued, "We can't rule out somebody doing this to him but I would call it death by unnatural circumstances and leave it at that. The one thing that has me puzzled, which is why I called you here is that the body has these curious markings all over it. It looks as if he was lashed by whips of fire.

"The jerk is a known thief that has been having a spree lately, as you can see. No one is sorry that he is dead, not even his few neighbors. He probably died here looking at the mirror. I wonder if he liked what he saw."

I looked around a bit to see if there was a puzzle for the missing pieces I had and noticed a necklace around the neck of the body. I pointed to it and said, "I think that's Chan Ing's. He told me that some dufus made off with something like this yesterday. Do you mind if I take it over to him and check to see if it is his? I will sign an evidence voucher form for it so you have a record of me taking it from the scene."

"Why not. If it is his, he can have it back, we have already taken all the pictures we need of this place. It will take quite a while to return all of this back to their rightful owners, if they bother to claim it. I'm sure they would not complain about not having to send a cop on a delivery run," she answered.

We went over to the Officer in Charge. I explained the situation to him, ended up with the doohickey and went over to Ing's shop so that I could ask him if it was from his place and what it was.


"This is one of the Reapers of Souls," he explained. He put the necklace on and continued, "each of them is endowed with one of the seven deadly sins. This particular one is named Vanity. Legend has it that anyone committing the represented sin while wearing one will have their souls removed but they are harmless, as you can see."

"I guess so but if you looked in the mirror, you would not be exactly overwhelmed by vanity," I said, chuckling at my joke.

"On the contrary," he said, with a sniff, "I am as vain as anyone. I just accept that no matter how hard I wish it to be otherwise, in the end I will always be me."

He took off the necklace and put it on the counter top between us and I made my way to the door, to leave the place. I stopped in the doorway, turned to him and said, "do me a favor and lock that thing up somewhere safe. I think it actually might do what you said it does."

"Why bother?" he replied, as I stepped into the street. "It somehow makes it back to me no matter how hard I try to get rid of it. Good bye and thanks for returning it to me."

The only thing I could think of doing was shake my head and leave. As I moved down the street, I paused to look at the sign that was above the shop's door: "Chan Ing's, Treasures of Pnakot"