MIRRORS

Mirror, mirror
On the wall,
Who is the fairest
Of them all?

He’s never really been interested in mirrors. Not until he lost the use of them, that is. Even Liam never much used the mirror. He wasn’t just cultivating the dishevelled look; he simply dressed by guess, and dragged his hair back into some sort of unseen queue. He didn’t use the mirror because he didn’t much like what it showed him. If he’d looked more often, perhaps he wouldn’t have run down the path that led here.

Here is where he’s trying on clothes. Whistler is standing outside, because they’ve used Angel’s breaking and entering skills, and Whistler doesn’t want to be implicated if they’re caught. The Powers may have sent him with offers of becoming someone, but it seems they didn’t include any start-up cash with that, and Angel certainly doesn’t have any. Angel’s chosen a charity shop, catering to the needy. Isn’t that what he is now? He’ll leave an IOU, though, and send some money when he can.

So, now he’s standing in the communal changing room, trying on the few clothes they have that might fit and might be suitable. There are half a dozen mirrors on the walls. He can see the clothes on the hangers, looking as empty as he is, but when he puts them on? They become as lost as he is, sharing his damnation. If he dusts, so will they. They’re the only mirrors he has, now.

He can’t really remember what he looks like. The first time he’d looked in a mirror after the soul was forced back into him, he’d wondered if there might be some vague hint of a reflection, something different. But there wasn’t.

Carefully, he takes off the last of the new/old clothes, and really looks around him. The mirrors show reflections of each other, thousands of them, smaller and smaller, empty echoes of eternity. Like him. He stands between them, and sees them disappearing into forever. Like him.

He’ll never see himself again, whoever his self really is. Here’s a chance of a new self, though, a chance of becoming (for himself, or for her?), and he wonders what that will mean, as he stares into all those infinite emptinesses. He’s afraid that he might just lose himself again, as he’s lost himself before. After all, mirrors reflect nothing but the truth, and the truth is, he’s nothing.

And so he returns the gaze of all those glassy eyes, trying to make them see him, trying to become. But there’s nothing. He walks over to one and, drawing breath he’ll never need, he huffs on it, but the mirror won’t accept even that evidence of his existence.

He’ll never see himself again. And that, he thinks, is something he should be grateful for. If he can’t see what’s outside, then at least he’ll never see what’s inside. He doesn’t think he could bear that.

THE END
August 2005

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