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Reflection (A Short Story)
By Illiteration
Pete Derry nursed a cold beer, ever the purveyor of his bustling surroundings. It was dark, an aspect he liked to think gave him a distinct advantage: an obscure face.
The beat of some techno rhythm (it didn’t matter which one because they were all the same) rattled off through the speakers, through his ears to his brain, thumping in conjunction with a multi-color strobe light that left spots in his eyes. The air was thick and wet with the musk of perfumes and colognes coupled with a strong odor of sweat. It was a pungent, sweet and sharp aroma that poked through the nose and to the brain, stimulating a rush of hormones and adrenaline. That rush, mixed with a couple beers here of a few shots there, made for the perfect hunting grounds.
Pete took a swig of his beer, lowering the contents to a quarter bottle, watching them mingle out on the dance floor. He’d developed an eye over the years observing them swerve and gyrate in what was called dancing, had fin tuned his ability to pick out the most susceptible one of the “herd”. He was like a lion on the hunt. He was hungry and it was time to choose his weak little gazelle.
Pete drained the remaining contents of the bottle in two slow sips, scanning the women on the floor. His eyes passed from left to right, up and down, skipping over many of the potentials with disinterest.
Then something caught his eye; he was unsure but maybe this was her. Maybe his technique had become so good that his brain could subconsciously locate them. So maybe this was her. Maybe this was his gazelle.
She stood 5’2”; maybe 5’4” if he counted the heels she wore (Now a days he didn’t, because he had fine tuned his eye so well that he could instantly subtract the height of a heel) and she wore a low cut dress, red, with the back cut out of it, the straps wrapping the sides of her shoulders. Golden hair slid down her neck like water, blanketing over the smoothly curving shoulder blades.
Pete smiled. She was it. Not only was she it, but also she was better than was he was used to. It looked like the lion would be partaking in some finer cuisine tonight.
Suddenly, she looked straight at him, deeply and intensely and right through him, and there was something in her eyes that he couldn’t pinpoint but something that didn’t seem right. What was it? Pete lost his smile and for an instant his stomach rolled over and he felt ice cold.
Then as quick as it had happened it was gone, and she wasn’t looking at him.
Maybe I had too many, Pet thought. I must have imagined it.
He shook off the bad vibe he had felt, turned, and ordered up another beer. The bartender graciously obliged, popped one open, and Pete took it gratefully, taking a long drink to wash away the odd tingling in his body. He glanced back out at the dance floor, but now, his prey seemed to have vanished. He was sure of it because now he noticed she had been the only one in the club wearing red. That seemed strange in a club.
The bathroom, Pete thought. The thought was more of a plea from his bladder than a guess at where she had disappeared too, but something said she was there. In any case, his bladder was unwilling to hold any more beer.
Pete hurried towards the men’s room, parting the people in his way, like ferns in this place, his jungle, his grounds. He really had to go.
Pete reached the door in what could only be deemed record time; in a congregation of this many, a distance of 40 feet should have taken five minutes and he’d done it in a fifth of that. God forbid he who slows down a man who has to go.
Pete pressed up against the doors slowly, but didn’t enter. Something was tugging at the back of his brain, preventing him from moving. The skin on the back of his neck tingled and twitched and the hairs stood up.
3 feet away, the door to the women’s bathroom opened up and Pete knew it was her before he even saw her. He didn’t have to see. He could feel it in every inch of his body.
She stepped out, almost floating, staring directly at him with unnaturally colored eyes, a hue of reddish purple Pete had never seen. She produced a small tube of lipstick from her purse rolled it out, applying a new layer of deep red to their luscious surface, and then moved towards Pete, her eyes never leaving his. With each step she took, the more he seemed unable to move and part of his mind said that he didn’t want to.
“I left something for you,” she whispered inches from his ear. When she spoke, her voice hung in the air, invoking all 5 senses, a taste, a smell, another something that he couldn’t explain. Now he was completely immobile, nothing but her registering in his mind and although his eyes didn’t follow, he knew she had left, because he began to feel himself again.
‘I left something for you,’ her words echoed in his head. What did she mean? In the bathroom? Pete looked at the door, at the stick figure with the triangle for a dress.
“S’not like there’s anything in there that I haven’t seen before,” he said to himself, pushing through the door with a look that challenged anyone to tell him that he didn’t belong walking into the ladies room (it was a look he picked up in childhood, back when a sign saying ‘Girls’ didn’t stop him either).
He stepped in expecting—well, what did he expect? Toilets and sinks and a mirror and whatever she had left for him. He felt that feeling build up in his head again this time drawing him toward the mirror.
There was something scrawled there in a deep shade of red.
N evA dnE tseW
It was backwards and for a moment Pete was clueless, but in that moment he pulled a napkin from his pocket and scrawled down what he say. What does that mean? What does that SAY? Then it hit him, a ton of bricks across the face (metaphorically) and he instantly felt foolish. It was a reflection.
“Pete you idiot,” he said aloud, a way of massaging his ego.
“Excuse me,” a high said behind him and Pete turned. A very irritated woman stood in the doorway tapping her toe on the porcelain tile, clicking rhythmically, click-click-clickclick. “Get out!”
“Sorry,” Pete said, his apology more sarcasm then anything else. He moved towards the door glancing at the mirror, reading the cryptic message again and again, and trying to understand it backwards but he was having trouble. As he passed the irritated woman he looked quickly at one of the stalls for the source of the reflection. The room was a brilliant white with blue walls on the stalls, devoid of any red.
There was nothing.
* * *
“It’s an address,” Pete said, as he scanned the tattered map book that he kept in his apartment.
“Yeah I can see that. 5347 West End Ave N. I wonder where that is,” his roommate, Daryl said, looking at the napkin while pouring himself a big cup of orange juice. He topped of the cup and grabbed the napkin. “Where did you get this?”
“A very attractive woman, and I’ll leave it at that,” Pete said smugly.
Daryl scoffed. “Yeah right. You’ve never put this much energy into any of your sexual conquests.”
“Yeah well, this one is different man. There was something about her.”
Daryl chuckled, sipped his orange juice slowly then said, “What are you, falling in love?”
“Hell no,” Pete responded quick, “Okay, there we go. Got it.” He slammed his finger down on a spot in the map book and the got up quickly, grabbed his jacket, and moved toward the door.
“It says there’s a club there, and I bet that’s where she will be,” Pete said, “I’ll be back later tomorrow, you know?”
“Yeah, whatever man,” Daryl said, not moving an inch from his spot. When he heard the door close, he moved closer to the map and took a look at it closely.
West End Ave N. Something about that address was ringing alarms in his head. Vaguely, in the back of his head, he remembered something about a West End Ave. Something about the demolition of a whole city block a few years back.
Daryl jumped up and grabbed his coat.
* * *
Pete parked his car on the corner; his expensive deal closer as he liked to call it, shut off the lights, and peered out through the windshield. There was the spot. 5347. It was a relatively small building, but looked nice enough, with a big neon sign over the entrance advertising it’s simple name: The Mirror.
He entered the building with something he figured was excitement welling up inside of his stomach. There was no one running the door on the outside, and no one watching the door on the inside of the club. As Pete looked around the darkened room, he quickly realized there was no one here at all. The tables were all empty and the chairs were all pushed in underneath them. There was no smell of sweat or alcohol and the bar was lit up but there was no movement.
What the hell? I’ve been stood up.
Pete sighed, his brain punching itself for being so stupid. He buttoned his coat back up to prepare for the mid-February cold outside.
And then he felt that feeling again.
Over here, something whispered in his mind, pointing him towards an ordinary door at the back of the room. Pete wanted to leave, but his body wouldn’t let him, moving on it’s own like a vessel he didn’t control, right to that door in the back of the room. When he reached it, his hand reached up on it’s own power, throwing the door open, hard enough that it slammed against the wall, echoing through out the small room he was now in.
A bathroom. A brilliantly white bathroom, with blue stalls.
“Hello,” Pete said, “is anyone here?” He walked slowly, listening for a response but getting only the clack of his shoes on the linoleum. He checked the stalls as slowly as he walked, pushing open their doors, unsure if he was actually expecting to find someone occupying one of them. He got to the last one and there was nothing.
“Pete.”
Pete spun around in a circle. Who had called his name? There was no one here. This was crazy. I must have imagined it, he thought.
Until he heard it again.
“Pete.”
It was behind him and this time it was apparent, and it was behind him. He turned, slowly, carefully, and stared face to face at a large mirror the size of the wall in length. His reflection stared back at him, mimicking the confused look on his face.
“Pete.”
She appeared behind him in the mirror, golden hair flowing over the same red dress. Pete turned back around to meet here oddly entrancing purple eyes, the anticipation of connecting with her face to face again stabbing at his stomach as if he had swallowed a set of knives. He smiled around the welcome pain.
She wasn’t there.
What the hell? Pete turned back to the mirror, and she was still there, but now she had moved; now she was in front of his reflection and he couldn’t see himself anymore. And then she disappeared.
Pete’s breath became more ragged. A deep feeling of fear swam through his head, behind his eyeballs, making them ache. And something drew him to the mirror.
He reached out with his right hand and touched it with the tips of his fingers. It was smooth and cold, and solid, and felt just like a mirror.
Pete held his face as close as he could, his nose with in a few centimeters of the glass. His breath fogged the point where it hit the mirror, clouding up the image.
“What is this?” Pete said.
He got his answer in the form of a flash of black above him, and then five points of sharp pain, one in his cheek, one in his right ear, and three at various spots on the back of his head. He couldn’t move anything except for his eyes, and he looked up and wished he hadn’t.
He saw a thick black shape, a forearm protruding directly from the mirror. It was coming out of the mirror! Realizing that it was an arm was only first part of the horror, because seconds later it registered in his head that the five spots of pain in his skull were from the fingers of this forearm that was coming from the mirror, and they were digging into his head. He knew this because he could feel something on the inside, tickling and squirming at he brain. He began to gag.
The fingers dug deeper, and Pete swung his arms hard and high, and in his right hand he held his keys and he jabbed with them for his life. On the sixth or seventh swing he felt one of the keys connect, digging deep into the black, flaky flesh of the arm and it let go of his head. Pete stumbled backwards, could feel something warm and wet running down his neck, and he knew what it was but didn’t want to reach up and verify his suspicions. His stomach twisted, rolled over; Pete vomited all over the floor again and again.
He tried to keep his eyes open, making sure he didn’t get close to the mirror. The brilliant white tiles of the floor where now a mixture of food colors and red blood, slick and shiny in the bright lights from the ceiling. Pete hobbled about shakily, trying to contain his heaving, and in his jerky movements, he lost his footing, slipping on the mess of bodily fluids. He hit the ground hard and could hear the bones in his left wrist crunch, snapping like dry twigs, small splinters of white exploding through the skin in a splash of blood and pain. He struggled helplessly to get onto his feet but the pain was too great, and each time he did, he fell forward, closer to the mirror. His wrist throbbed and exploding with searing pain and the shattered bone rubbed the skin, cutting it worse each time. His head ached and his vision soon became blurred, and through it he could see pools of his own blood beneath him on the floor; his hands and his clothes were covered in it. Pete managed to muster enough strength to roll himself over and face the ceiling, not wanting to look at his own blood vomit any longer. The ceiling was hardly visible through his blurred vision, and the lights that hung from it glared down unforgiving but for a second his vision cleared, long enough for him to read something on the ceiling that wasn’t backwards or hard to read and it was in dark red lettering:
For he who. preys on the.. weak, shall.. . . he be prey for me... . .
It took three seconds to read, and a split second to register. The mirror above him rippled slightly, like the surface of a lake when a small stone is dropped, and then Pete’s view of everything was obscured to black and he all he could see was a wall of long dagger like protrusions, row after row in what could only be described as the mouth of hell. It closed around him tightly and quickly, but his mind was slow to fade to the same black hue as that which had now encompassed and impaled him, pulled him back towards the mirror.
* * *
Daryl arrived at West End Ave and saw his friends Mercedes parked on the corner, quiet and lifeless, no one inside. He scanned the area searching for Pete.
Nothing but an empty, derelict open space, devoid of any constructions, nothing but a few scraps of newspaper blowing in the wind and any number of piles of crumbling rubble. There was no club.
It was almost an hour before the police arrived. They did a thorough search of the area, but they found nothing. No club, no Pete, no body. His car was checked over three times but there was no evidence of foul play or any crime. To all those on the scene is appeared that Pete had ran off, maybe with his secretive rendezvous, the woman he had met in the club. After three months and no word to anyone Pete knew, everyone said he must have dropped off the face of the earth.
No one ever saw him again.
4/8/2004 11:00:43 PM
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