The Shop Of Broken Reflections

The store was nameless; there was only an ancient brass sign depicting an iris flower. It was located on a side street of the city which seemed to exist only in the periphery of the city itself—easily overlooked, unless searching for the people you aren’t.

Elias entered to a chorus of hums. There was an acrid smell of ozone in the air. At the other end of the counter, the saleslady had porcelain-like skin. But she didn’t seem to notice Elias’s presence since she was staring at her account book.

“The third aisle on the left, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “‘Almosts’ are categorized according to the year of the Divergence.”

Elias probed. Instead of plane mirrors, these were liquid mercury. He was attracted by a blackened oak framework. 1998: The Juilliard audition.

And as he got closer, Elias noticed his reflection in the mirror, but this time he saw himself not as someone who was greeting him, but rather as someone whose eyes had that particular gleam to them. And this did not move through space, but it moved inside Elias’s bones. That is the sort of life that Elias had been living after giving up his good career for this dull existence in his gray apartment. But, as Elias bent down further and felt a desire to touch the warmth of his success, his reflection began to see him differently. The reflection’s face was filled with a terrifying desire, while its heart was seized with fear. The “successful” Elias pushed his face against the glass with a nose squashed against its surface.

“You think you’re better off here?” whispered the reflection with a distorted, eerie voice. “The only thing I’ll sacrifice this world for is yours.”

"You have weight," spitted the Reflection, his fingers tearing at the barrier he formed, scratching cracks into the glass. "You have the sun that goes down, but not the sun that stays up. You have the freedom to come to an end. With me, I am just one loop of one great success. I am a relic from a museum. I am a shadow of a shadow."

The eyes of the Reflection grew wild, searching for everything in the shop Elias stood in: the dirty ground, the swaying light bulb hanging overhead, the gritty reality of the material world. It was like an infinite kingdom to him.

“Swap places with me,” he pleaded brokenly. “Let me bear all your troubles and failings. Let me be burdened with the mud on your hands. This perfect emptiness is suffocating me.”

However, for Elias, he saw himself through his own shaking fingers, which no longer could.

“I can’t,” whispered Elias.

The face of The Reflection contorted itself into an expression of pure envy—absolute envy. Elias pounded the closed fist against the surface, and the glass wavered outwards, as if ready to burst.

He withdrew with a hammering heart beating wildly in his chest. He turned around, made a dash for the door, and left behind him the crashing sound of shattering glass. He went out into the rain, dashing through the front door.

He was standing there under the cold rain, breathing in the smell of wet tar and gasoline. Another typical Tuesday morning. But he looked into the mirror of rainwater, which was distorted, filthy, and short-lived.

The most beautiful thing that he had ever seen.