So at that moment of death, when life is stolen and you breathe your last breath, where does it go? Well if you were unlucky enough to meet Walter Bishop, it would have gone into his pocket…
Stanley Osborne was happy to see his old friend Raymond. It had been almost fifteen years since they had last met face to face. Raymond was an odd fellow, one of those people who believed all kinds of superstitions, salt over the shoulder, black cats, the whole nine yards.
Whenever they drove by the old Fairmont cemetery Raymond would hold his breath, because if you breathe while driving past a graveyard you could end up inhaling the spirits of the dead. He always stayed indoors on Friday the thirteen, and would never kill a bee that came into his house, lest he have an unwelcome visitor. He carried a four leaf clover in his wallet, and wore a necklace to ward off the evil eye. He lived in a house he bought five years ago, with ivy growing along one side to keep out evil, and a horseshoe above the front door for luck.
Raymond met Stanley at the front door of his house, “Stanley, man it’s good to see you after all these years, glad you had time to drop by and say howdy, how have things been?”
As they walked in Stanley noticed that there were mirrors everywhere inside the house, one of Raymond’s own strange superstitions. He believed that if the mirrors all captured his reflection daily his spirit would become one with the house, preventing any bad luck from coming inside. There was at least one on every wall of the house. Some in the hallways were placed so that standing between them you could see your reflection multiplied until it faded in the distance.
Stanley didn’t know if they protected against bad luck, but the infinity effect was cool. As the walked into the living room the passed a small table, and sitting by itself in the middle was a small handheld mirror with etched glass. Stopping to look Stanley picked it up, and noticing that his fingers left prints on it held it up to blow on it and wipe away the prints. Raymond quickly grabbed the mirror away from him.
“Oh my God, do you have any idea what you almost did?”
“I’m sorry Ray; I was going to wipe the finger prints off!!”
“Not that, this was the mirror used by a man many years ago who was a killer. When his victims were almost dead he would hold the mirror in front of their mouth, and used it to capture their last breath. If you had blown on it you would have died!!” turning to place the mirror back on the table he missed, and the mirror fell to the floor shattering.
“NO!! If a mirror breaks inside your home someone will die!!”
“Ray, it’s OK, it was just a mirror” behind him the mirror on the wall fell, and on impact with the floor exploded in a blast of wind, and mirror fragments, slicing his legs.
Stumbling backwards Stanley fell against the wall leaving a small smear of blood from the cuts.
“Damn, that hurt” he said leaning against the wall examining his shallow gashes.
The mirrors in the hall began to fall, one after another, and each with a fierce blast of wind, soon a maelstrom of sparking mirror shards spun in the hallway like a dirt devil. In the living room other mirrors could be heard crashing, the fragments flowing into the hallway to block the front door.
“Ray, is there some way to stop them from doing more damage?
“Damn, I don’t really know, there might be something. You have to let me think” more mirrors farther back in the house shattered, and glass was getting thicker in a swirling wall around them. The swirling fragments moved in and Ray vanished inside of them, the sparkling shards turned crimson as a high pitched scream came from inside, answered by cries from the glass itself. The mass spun ever faster, throw bright red splotches of blood and gore on the walls, and they cry raised in pitch until it was almost ultrasonic.
Suddenly it stopped and all the pieces fell to the floor in a giant heap, covered in thickening blood, drying now in the warm summer air. There was no sign of Ray at all, just the mound of glass, and the smell of blood that left a coppery taste in Stanley’s mouth. Standing he looked at the room, painted as if by some insane artist, with rivulets of blood running down the wall in places. Raymond had been right about one thing, someone did die from a mirror falling, just not the way he thought. The last breath of all of those victims had found release, and the sun shining through the red spotted windows seemed brighter somehow.
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©2011 Neil Leckman
