'Story Thing' by Alasdair Goudie. Year 1
There’s something about
my mirror, I think.
The one Mum bought at a
stall on Portobello, and propped up in-between my pitted radiator and
collection of rock posters.
It’s not that
interesting a mirror, I’ll be honest with you. The brass around it is pitted,
the glass itself fairly flat, normal, reflective, glass-ish.
I just find it…odd upon
occasion. I think it’s because of what happens when I shine a torch on it.
Oh, yes, I should talk
about that. I always go to bed with a torch. I have done ever since I was
little, because if you think about it, it makes sense.
If monsters are going
to hide in the corners of my room, in the curves of my chair legs and the
dust-filled corners of the sock drawers, and crawl out at night, I need a way
of popping up quickly whenever I hear a noise and making them go back.
And if they think a
tiny, boy-shaped lighthouse is in the bed, which pops on whenever they get too
close to it, they’ll stop coming near it.
You might think this is
a stupid measure, but the fact I haven’t yet been dismembered and eaten by
shadow monsters is evidence that you’re wrong.
But, yes. Whenever I
shine a light on the mirror, it does something odd. It…falls apart.
Not in the sense of
shattering, because then I’d stop shining my torch in it and clean the glass
up, because pieces of shattered glass are very dangerous, and Mum always tells
me to avoid them when they appear in the kitchen on certain mornings. They
didn’t show up when Dad lived with us, so I think he must have warded them off
with his manly presence or something.
But, anyway. The mirror
doesn’t shatter. It falls apart more like a collection of cloth fibres, like a
shirt when you rip it. Like if it were a piece of raw chicken breast, like the
M&S kind for lunchboxes, and the strands and fibres hold together as you
pull one piece from another.
But my mirror isn’t
chicken, because by this point it would have gone past its sell by and Mum
would have taken it away. If it was chicken, though (and let’s say it was,
because I’ve said the word ‘chicken’ too many times and I’m hungry now) then it
would be a chicken that held the stars inside its flesh.
Because that’s what I see, between the strands, the cloth fibres of chicken
breast. I see stars that shoot and zip across the various strands, as the beam
of my torch moves across them. The mirror always tears itself apart as my beam
moves over it, like it’s cutting a hole- but it repairs itself after I move the
beam away, and completely if I switch the torch off. I see other things in
there, too. I thought the monsters had taken advantage one day, when I wasn’t
looking, and gone inside my mirror, immigrating from the corner regions of my
cabinet in search of a better life. But they weren’t the shadow monsters from
my room- they were more like metal dogs, with curved blue armour that hummed
and throbbed. I was in awe of them, in a way- they felt very natural, and very
free. The world that I could see beyond there, beyond the torn fibres of my own
mirror, was a tiny room of theirs- but somehow it meant more to me than my own.
I was a prisoner in my room sometimes, when Mum would tell me to do my homework
because she needed to use the living room- but they were always free in theirs.
That room wasn’t so large, though. You might ask how I knew that- it’s because
I went in it.
Yes, one day I’d had
enough of boring old Winchester. It’s really boring, actually. There’s nothing
to do for kids like me- the big shops all sell adult stuff like food and chairs
and floor tiles, and all the cool shops that sell records and second hand books
and tattoos and stuff are small and always look like they’re about to run out
of money. So I went through the mirror. I found out that if a part of me was in
the mirror, when I held the torch on it and it tore itself open, I could keep
the way to the other world held open. I put my pinkie finger in first, because
I reasoned that if any part of my body was going to vanish or be eaten by
vicious blue cyborg dogs, it should be the part I use least. And then, bit by
bit, I shoved my whole body through, until I was inside the mirror world. It
wasn’t a mirror world, though, because mirror worlds in books or computer games
are always opposite versions of ‘the real’ world- as in, everything’s back to
front. Cats get on with dogs, people are always happy, girls make sense. This
wasn’t like that. This, if anything, was how I’d think a mirror world should
have been- flat, clear, and soundless as a plate. I wondered around the first
room I’d seen- the one that my mirror looked onto- for a while. But there
wasn’t much in it, really. Some black, shiny slopes, some raised platforms.
Some blue thrumming lights, a big white disc in the ceiling. It wasn’t really
looking at me, more looking at everything, but not really caring. One of the
big blue dogs came into the room after a while- I thought of hiding, but there
wasn’t anywhere- and he looked around for a bit. He didn’t really notice me- if
he did, he didn’t seem to care. And I can’t really blame him- I’m just me,
after all. But I stroked his back for a bit. It was cold, and prickly, like my
face in winter, kind of- scabby, almost. But it looked smooth. Why would
something not look like it felt? It was a very odd world to me, so I went to
see what was outside. There were loads of big, towering, arcing columns in this
massive field, like my school’s football ground but ten thousand times bigger.
I knew that I was on top of one, somehow, but the point at which I could have
been able to look down onto the next one was miles away, so I didn’t go there.
There were loads of other holes I could see in the columns, that were drifting
around next to mine, but it wasn’t as if I could fly anything. The blue dogs
could- they leapt across from one column to the next, floating almost. They
almost seemed to jump from platforms that weren’t there- they couldn’t be
there- but they were there anyway, just for them. Not for me.
I didn’t like the world
in my mirror. I wish Mum had left it in Portobello or donated it, so the Army
or Police could have taken it in and then they could have had a poke around in
it. There were little puzzles I would do sometimes- bits of strange black
machines that were in larger walls, that if I slotted the blocks around the
right way would open up larger bits in
the wall for me to go into. But there was nothing in there. Maybe the woman Mum
had bought the mirror off of had been in here and taken all the sweets. They
must have been sweets, or records, or DVDs or something. Why would someone go
to all that trouble to put nothing in a wall? The air felt odd, as well. It
felt metallic, and as if it wasn’t moving. It would move inside my mouth, but
whenever I stood still it felt like I was choking. I spent hours in there, so
I’d get into a habit of moving my head around constantly that was very hard to
break out of when I heard Mum shouting into my room and had to come out for
dinner. I gave up on the world in my mirror after a while- after a while, I
stopped sleeping with the torch, thinking that by now, all the monsters in my
room must know not to go near the bed. And if not, then I’d just deal with the
mild dismemberment as it came. I had more important things anyway, like trying
to invite Rachel from 3W to come out with me sometime, or riding my bike, or
school stuff, which Mum always tells me is very important but I only really
like Geography. The only reason I’ve written all this stuff about the mirror
now is because, recently, I pulled it out again. Out from behind all the
cardboard cut-outs, the piled-up clothes, the record sleeves. And in a small
top corner, I saw that there was a small bit sticking out. Mirrors don’t really
tend to stick out, but then again they don’t tend to have odd smooth glass
worlds with blue robot dogs in them either. But this bit stuck out in the same
way it would have if I’d have shone my torch on it- it was fibrous, like strips
of chicken peeling off from the otherwise smooth glass. And in the bit behind
the mirror, in the frame, I could see something else. Flickers of something
burnt orange, a reddish tint. Much more colourful than the glass world. I’m
keeping the mirror on the floor next to my bed now, and whenever I get back
from school I peel a bit off. I can’t wait to get inside the world underneath
the mirror, but then again, it is making a rather funny smell. And the noises
it makes when I’m asleep and I think I’m safe are so very odd.
