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Turner Classic Movies (U.S.) Daily Schedule for March, 2024.

2024.02.29 07:58 yawningvoid28 Turner Classic Movies (U.S.) Daily Schedule for March, 2024.

(all airtimes E.S.T.)
FRI MAR 01
(2:00AM) All Quiet on the Western Front (1930/2h 20m/WaLewis Milestone)
(4:30AM) The Divine Lady (1929/1h 50m/Romance/Frank Lloyd)
(6:15AM) The Informer (1935/1h 31m/Drama/John Ford)
(8:00AM) The Crowd (1928/1h 35m/Drama/King Vidor)
(9:45AM) Great Expectations (1946/1h 58m/Drama/David Lean)tb
(12:00PM) The Heiress (1949/1h 55m/Drama/William Wyler)
(2:00PM) I Want to Live! (1958/2h 0m/Drama/Robert Wise)
(4:15PM) 12 Angry Men (1957/1h 35m/Drama/Sidney Lumet)
(6:00PM) Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967/1h 48m/Comedy/Stanley Kramer)
(8:00PM) Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936/1h 55m/Comedy/Frank Capra)
(10:15PM) A Letter to Three Wives (1948/1h 43m/Comedy/Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
SAT MAR 02
(12:15AM) Marty (1955/1h 31m/Romance/Delbert Mann)
(2:00AM) The Awful Truth (1937/1h 30m/Comedy/Leo Mccarey)
(4:00AM) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932/1h 30m/HorroRouben Mamoulian)
(6:00AM) The Great Dictator (1940/2h 9m/Comedy/Charles Chaplin)
(8:15AM) The Thin Man (1934/1h 20m/Mystery/W. S. Van Dyke)
(10:00AM) Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939/1h 54m/Drama/Sam Wood)
(12:00PM) Anatomy of a Murder (1959/2h 40m/Drama/Otto Preminger)
(3:00PM) Elmer Gantry (1960/2h 26m/Drama/Richard Brooks)
(5:45PM) East of Eden (1955/1h 55m/Drama/Elia Kazan)
(8:00PM) Lincoln (2012/2h 29m/Drama/Steven Spielberg)
(10:45PM) A Man for All Seasons (1966/2h 0m/Drama/Fred Zinnemann)
SUN MAR 03
(1:00AM) Sergeant York (1941/2h 14m/WaHoward Hawks)
(3:30AM) Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942/2h 6m/Musical/Michael Curtiz)
(6:00AM) The Front Page (1931/1h 41m/Comedy/Lewis Milestone)
(7:45AM) Penny Serenade (1941/2h 5m/Romance/George Stevens)
(10:00AM) Watch on the Rhine (1943/1h 54m/Drama/Herman Shumlin)
(12:00PM) Sounder (1972/1h 45m/Drama/Martin Ritt)
(2:00PM) Cat Ballou (1965/1h 36m/Western/Elliot Silverstein)
(4:00PM) The Lost Weekend (1945/1h 41m/Drama/Billy Wilder)
(6:00PM) The Goodbye Girl (1977/1h 50m/Comedy/Herbert Ross)
(8:00PM) A Double Life (1947/1h 44m/Crime/George Cukor)
(10:00PM) To Kill a Mockingbird (1962/2h 11m/Drama/Robert Mulligan)
MON MAR 04
(12:30AM) On Golden Pond (1981/1h 49m/Drama/Mark Rydell)
(2:30AM) Lilies of the Field (1963/1h 34m/Comedy/Ralph Nelson)
(4:15AM) Boys Town (1938/1h 36m/Drama/Norman Taurog)
(6:00AM) Five Star Final (1931/1h 29m/Drama/Mervyn Le Roy)
(8:00AM) The Human Comedy (1943/1h 58m/Drama/Clarence Brown)
(10:00AM) The Little Foxes (1941/1h 56m/Drama/William Wyler)
(12:00PM) Stagecoach (1939/1h 36m/Western/John Ford)
(1:45PM) The Caine Mutiny (1954/2h 5m/Drama/Edward Dmytryk)
(4:00PM) Picnic (1956/1h 55m/Drama/Joshua Logan)
(6:00PM) Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954/1h 43m/Musical/Stanley Donen)
(8:00PM) An American in Paris (1951/1h 53m/Musical/Vincente Minnelli)
(10:00PM) It Happened One Night (1934/1h 45m/Comedy/Frank Capra)
TUE MAR 05
(12:00AM) Mrs. Miniver (1942/2h 14m/WaWilliam Wyler)
(2:30AM) Cavalcade (1933/1h 49m/Drama/Frank Lloyd)
(4:30AM) Grand Hotel (1932/1h 45m/Drama/Edmund Goulding)
(6:30AM) The Racket (1928/1h 25m/Silent/Lewis Milestone)
(8:00AM) A Tale of Two Cities (1935/2h 0m/Drama/Jack Conway)
(10:15AM) The Nun's Story (1959/2h 29m/Drama/Fred Zinnemann)
(1:00PM) Anchors Aweigh (1945/2h 23m/Musical/George Sidney)
(3:30PM) Battleground (1949/1h 58m/WaWilliam Wellman)
(5:45PM) Citizen Kane (1941/1h 59m/Drama/Orson Welles)
(8:00PM) In the Heat of the Night (1967/1h 49m/Suspense/Norman Jewison)
(10:00PM) Platoon (1986/2h 0m/WaOliver Stone)
WED MAR 06
(12:15AM) No Country For Old Men (2007/2h 2m/Crime/Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
(2:30AM) Midnight Cowboy (1969/1h 53m/Drama/John Schlesinger)
(4:30AM) All the King's Men (1949/1h 49m/Drama/Robert Rossen)
(6:30AM) The Big House (1930/1h 20m/Crime/George Hill)
(8:00AM) The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933/1h 33m/Drama/Alexander Korda)
(9:45AM) Captain Blood (1935/1h 59m/Adventure/Michael Curtiz)
(12:00PM) Ivanhoe (1952/1h 46m/Adventure/Richard Thorpe)
(2:00PM) The Alamo (1960/3h 10m/Western/John Wayne)
(5:00PM) America America (1963/2h 57m/Drama/Elia Kazan)
(8:00PM) All About Eve (1950/2h 18m/Drama/Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
(10:30PM) Gentleman's Agreement (1947/1h 58m/Drama/Elia Kazan)
THU MAR 07
(12:45AM) Going My Way (1944/2h 10m/Musical/Leo McCarey)
(3:00AM) Hamlet (1948/2h 35m/Drama/Laurence Olivier)
(5:45AM) Madame Curie (1943/2h 4m/Drama/Mervyn Le Roy)
(8:00AM) Captains Courageous (1937/1h 56m/Drama/Victor Fleming)
(10:00AM) 42nd Street (1933/1h 25m/Musical/Lloyd Bacon)
(11:45AM) Foreign Correspondent (1940/1h 59m/Suspense/Alfred Hitchcock)
(2:00PM) The Letter (1940/1h 37m/Drama/William Wyler)
(4:00PM) Libeled Lady (1936/1h 38m/Comedy/Jack Conway)
(6:00PM) Ninotchka (1939/1h 50m/Comedy/Ernst Lubitsch)
(8:00PM) Casablanca (1942/1h 42m/Romance/Michael Curtiz)
(10:00PM) Out Of Africa (1985/2h 42m/Romance/Sydney Pollack)
FRI MAR 08
(1:00AM) My Fair Lady (1964/2h 50m/Musical/George Cukor)
(4:00AM) Tom Jones (1963/2h 11m/Comedy/Tony Richardson)
(6:15AM) Our Town (1940/1h 30m/Drama/Sam Wood)
(7:45AM) The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936/1h 25m/Drama/William Dieterle)
(9:15AM) Johnny Belinda (1948/1h 42m/Drama/Jean Negulesco)
(11:00AM) The Yearling (1946/2h 14m/Drama/Clarence Brown)
(1:15PM) Father of the Bride (1950/1h 33m/Comedy/Vincente Minnelli)
(3:00PM) The Music Man (1962/2h 31m/Musical/Morton Dacosta)
(5:45PM) Mister Roberts (1955/2h 3m/Comedy/John Ford)
(8:00PM) Rain Man (1988/2h 20m/Drama/Barry Levinson)
(10:30PM) Annie Hall (1977/1h 33m/Comedy/Woody Allen)
SAT MAR 09
(12:15AM) The Apartment (1960/2h 5m/Comedy/Billy Wilder)
(2:30AM) Gigi (1958/1h 56m/Musical/Vincente Minnelli)
(4:30AM) The Great Ziegfeld (1936/3h 0m/Musical/Robert Z. Leonard)
(7:30AM) The Champ (1931/1h 26m/Drama/King Vidor)
(9:00AM) Top Hat (1935/1h 45m/Musical/Mark Sandrich)
(11:00AM) The Maltese Falcon (1941/1h 40m/Film-NoiJohn Huston)
(1:00PM) The Last Emperor (1987/2h 43m/Drama/Bernardo Bertolucci)
(4:00PM) Lawrence of Arabia (1962/3h 46m/Adventure/David Lean)
(8:00PM) Ben-Hur (1959/3h 32m/Drama/William Wyler)
SUN MAR 10
(12:00AM) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946/2h 52m/Drama/William Wyler)
(3:00AM) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935/2h 12m/Adventure/Frank Lloyd)
(5:15AM) Cimarron (1931/2h 11m/Western/Wesley Ruggles)
(8:30AM) A Farewell to Arms (1932/1h 18m/Romance/Frank Borzage)
(10:00AM) Dark Victory (1939/1h 46m/Romance/Edmund Goulding)
(12:00PM) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958/1h 48m/Drama/Richard Brooks)
(2:00PM) Bonnie and Clyde (1967/1h 51m/Crime/Arthur Penn)
(4:00PM) Gone With the Wind (1939/3h 39m/Drama/Victor Fleming)
(8:00PM) Around the World in 80 Days (1956/2h 50m/Adventure/Michael Anderson)
(11:15AM) Wings (1927/2h 24m/WaWilliam A. Wellman)
MON MAR 11
(1:45AM) You Can't Take It With You (1938/2h 0m/Comedy/Frank Capra)
(4:00AM) The Broadway Melody (1929/1h 42m/Musical/Harry Beaumont)
(6:00AM) They Drive by Night (1940/1h 33m/Drama/Raoul Walsh)
(7:45AM) High Sierra (1941/1h 40m/Crime/Raoul Walsh)
(9:30AM) Desperate Journey (1942/1h 47m/WaRaoul Walsh)
(11:30AM) Background To Danger (1943/1h 20m/Suspense/Raoul Walsh)
(1:00PM) Northern Pursuit (1943/1h 34m/Adventure/Raoul Walsh)
(2:45PM) White Heat (1949/1h 54m/Crime/Raoul Walsh)
(4:45PM) Along the Great Divide (1951/1h 28m/Western/Raoul Walsh)
(6:15PM) A Lion Is in the Streets (1953/1h 28m/Drama/Raoul Walsh)
(8:00PM) Baby Face (1933/1h 16m/Drama/Alfred E. Green)
(9:30PM) Bachelor Mother (1939/1h 20m/Comedy/Garson Kanin)
(11:00PM) Imitation of Life (1934/1h 46m/Drama/John M. Stahl)
TUE MAR 12
(1:00AM) Man Wanted (1932/1h 2m/Romance/William Dieterle)
(2:15AM) Female (1933/1h 0m/Drama/Michael Curtiz)
(3:30AM) Big Business Girl (1931/1h 19m/Comedy/William A. Seiter)
(4:45AM) Employees' Entrance (1933/1h 15m/Drama/Roy Del Ruth)
(6:00AM) Blonde Dynamite (1950/1h 6m/Comedy/William Beaudine)
(7:15AM) Larceny, Inc. (1942/1h 35m/Comedy/Lloyd Bacon)
(9:00AM) The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1960/1h 25m/Crime/John Guillermin)
(10:30AM) Transatlantic Tunnel (1935/1h 34m/Science-Fiction/Maurice Elvey)
(12:30PM) Things To Come (1936/1h 53m/Science-Fiction/William Cameron Menzies)
(2:30PM) The Time Machine (1960/1h 43m/Science-Fiction/George Pal)
(4:15PM) Escape From East Berlin (1962/1h 34m/Drama/Robert Siodmak)
(6:00PM) The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974/1h 44m/Suspense/Joseph Sargent)
(8:00PM) His Girl Friday (1940/1h 32m/Comedy/Howard Hawks)
(10:00PM) Mildred Pierce (1945/1h 53m/Drama/Michael Curtiz)
WED MAR 13
(12:00AM) Adam's Rib (1949/1h 41m/Comedy/George Cukor)
(2:00AM) Woman of the Year (1942/1h 52m/Comedy/George Stevens)
(4:00AM) Millions Like Us (1943/1h 43m/Drama/Frank Launder)
(6:00AM) Ambush (1950/1h 29m/Western/Sam Wood)
(7:30AM) The Last Hunt (1956/1h 48m/Adventure/Richard Brooks)
(9:30AM) The Painted Hills (1951/1h 5m/Adventure/Harold Kress)
(10:45AM) The Sheepman (1958/1h 25m/Western/George Marshall)
(12:15PM) Wagon Master (1950/1h 26m/Western/John Ford)
(3:30PM) The Forty-Niners (1954/1h 11m/Western/Thomas Carr)
(4:45PM) Hot Lead (1951/1h 0m/Western/Stuart Gilmore)
(6:00PM) The Hanging Tree (1959/1h 46m/Western/Delmer Daves)
(8:00PM) The Best of Everything (1959/2h 2m/Romance/Jean Negulesco)
(10:15PM) Desk Set (1957/1h 43m/Comedy/Walter Lang)
THU MAR 14
(12:15AM) Lucy Gallant (1955/1h 44m/Drama/Robert Parrish)
(2:15AM) The Fuller Brush Girl (1950/1h 25m/Comedy/Lloyd Bacon)
(4:00AM) Bright Road (1953/1h 9m/Drama/Gerald Mayer)
(5:15AM) The Wasp Woman (1960/1h 13m/HorroRoger Corman)
(6:30AM) Side Street (1950/1h 23m/Crime/Anthony Mann)
(8:00AM) Stakeout on Dope Street (1958/1h 23m/Crime/Irving Kershner)
(9:30AM) Scarlet Street (1945/1h 43m/Film-NoiFritz Lang)
(11:30AM) Main Street After Dark (1944/0h 56m/Crime/Edward Cahn)
(12:30PM) The House Across The Street (1949/1h 9m/Crime/Richard Bare)
(1:45PM) Crime in the Streets (1956/1h 31m/Crime/Don Siegel)
(3:30PM) Mystery Street (1950/1h 33m/Mystery/John Sturges)
(5:30PM) Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1982/2h 19m/Musical/Terry Hughes)
(8:00PM) Lover Come Back (1961/1h 47m/Comedy/Delbert Mann)
(10:00PM) The Wheeler Dealers (1963/1h 46m/Comedy/Arthur Hiller)
FRI MAR 15
(12:00AM) Come Fly with Me (1962/1h 49m/Comedy/Henry Levin)
(2:00AM) Sex and the Single Girl (1964/1h 54m/Comedy/Richard Quine)
(4:00AM) Kisses for My President (1964/1h 53m/Comedy/Curtis Bernhardt)
(6:00AM) The Painted Veil (1934/1h 23m/Romance/Richard Boleslawski)
(7:45AM) Living On Velvet (1935/1h 20m/Drama/Frank Borzage)
(9:15AM) Submarine D-1 (1937/1h 40m/Drama/Lloyd Bacon)
(11:00AM) Honeymoon for Three (1941/1h 14m/Comedy/Lloyd Bacon)
(12:30PM) 'Til We Meet Again (1940/1h 30m/Romance/Edmund Goulding)
(2:15PM) Experiment Perilous (1944/1h 31m/Drama/Jacques Tourneur)
(4:00PM) Dark Victory (1939/1h 46m/Romance/Edmund Goulding)
(6:00PM) The Great Lie (1941/1h 47m/Drama/Edmund Goulding)
(8:00PM) Nine to Five (1980/1h 50m/Comedy/Colin Higgins)
(10:00PM) Baby Boom (1987/1h 43m/Comedy/Charles Shyer)
SAT MAR 16
(12:00AM) The China Syndrome (1979/2h 2m/Drama/James Bridges)
(2:15AM) Network (1976/2h 1m/Drama/Sidney Lumet)
(4:30AM) Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More (1974/1h 53m/Dramedy/Martin Scorsese)
(6:30AM) Sunday Punch (1942/1h 16m/Comedy/David Miller)
(8:00AM) MGM CARTOONS: First Swallow (1942/0h 7m/Animation/Rudolf Ising)
(8:08AM) Believe It or Not #4 (1932/0h 8m/Short/?)
(8:17AM) Calling on Cape Town (1952/0h 8m/Short/?)
(8:26AM) Sagebrush Law (1943/0h 56m/Western/Sam Nelson)
(9:30AM) Meet the Governor (1955/0h 30m/Comedy/Leo McCarey)
(10:00AM) POPEYE: A Clean Shaven Man (1936/0m 6m/Comedy/Dave Fleischer)
(10:09AM) Aggie Appleby, Maker of Men (1933/1h 13m/Comedy/Mark Sandrich)
(11:30AM) I'm Much Obliged (1936/0m 21m/Comedy/Roy Mack)
(12:00PM) Gypsy (1962/2h 29m/Musical/Mervyn Le Roy)
(2:30PM) Bad Day at Black Rock (1955/1h 21m/Film-NoiJohn Sturges)
(4:00PM) The Defiant Ones (1958/1h 37m/Drama/Stanley Kramer)
(5:45PM) Spencer's Mountain (1963/1h 59m/Drama/Delmer Daves)
(8:00PM) King Solomon's Mines (1950/1h 42m/Adventure/Compton Bennett)
(10:00PM) The Prisoner of Zenda (1952/1h 41m/Adventure/Richard Thorpe)
SUN MAR 17
(12:00AM) Le Samourai (1967/1h 35m/Film-NoiJean-pierre Melville)
(2:00AM) Night Shift (1982/1h 46m/Comedy/Ron Howard)
(4:00AM) He Knows You're Alone (1980/1h 34m/HorroArmand Mastroianni)
(6:00AM) Little Nellie Kelly (1940/1h 40m/Musical/Norman Taurog)
(8:00AM) Odd Man Out (1947/1h 56m/Suspense/Carol Reed)
(10:00AM) Le Samourai (1967/1h 35m/Film-NoiJean-pierre Melville)
(12:00PM) The Rising of the Moon (1957/1h 21m/Comedy/John Ford)
(1:30PM) Flight of the Doves (1971/1h 41m/Drama/Ralph Nelson)
(3:30PM) Young Cassidy (1965/1h 50m/Romance/Jack Cardiff)
(5:30PM) Finian's Rainbow (1968/2h 40m/Musical/Francis Ford Coppola)
(8:00PM) Far and Away (1992/2h 20m/Adventure/Ron Howard)
(10:30PM) The Quiet Man (1952/2h 9m/Dramedy/John Ford)
MON MAR 18
(12:45AM) The Johnstown Flood (1926/1h 06m/Silent/Irving Cummings)
(2:00AM) A Story of Floating Weeds (1934/1h 29m/Silent/Yasujiro Ozu)
(3:45AM) Floating Weeds (1959/1h 59m/Drama/Yasujiro Ozu)
(6:00AM) The Warriors (1955/1h 25m/Adventure/Henry Levin)
(7:30AM) Cry Wolf (1947/1h 23m/Suspense/Peter Godfrey)
(9:00AM) Mara Maru (1952/1h 38m/Adventure/Gordon Douglas)
(10:45AM) Silver River (1948/1h 50m/Western/Raoul Walsh)
(12:45PM) The Prince and the Pauper (1937/2h 0m/Drama/William Keighley)
(3:00PM) Dive Bomber (1941/2h 13m/Drama/Michael Curtiz)
(5:30PM) San Antonio (1945/1h 51m/Western/David Butler)
(7:30PM) MGM Parade Show #17 (1955/0h 25m/Documentary/?)
(8:00PM) The Big Combo (1955/1h 29m/Crime/Joseph Lewis)
(11:30PM) Forever Amber (1947/2h 20m/Drama/Otto Preminger)
TUE MAR 19
(2:00AM) Beach Red (1967/1h 45m/WaCornel Wilde)
(4:00AM) At Sword's Point (1951/1h 21m/Adventure/Lewis Allen)
(5:30AM) Alice in Movieland (1940/0h 21m/Short/Jean Negulesco)
(6-:00AM) The Gay Diplomat (1931/1h 10m/Adventure/Richard Boleslawski)
(7:15AM) The Lady Refuses (1931/1h 12m/Drama/George Archainbaud)
(8:30AM) On With The Show (1929/1h 38m/Musical/Alan Crosland)
(10:15AM) Hard Boiled Mahoney (1947/1h 3m/Comedy/William Beaudine)
(11:30AM) Here Comes Trouble (1948/0h 50m/Comedy/Fred Guiol)
(12:30PM) Blondes at Work (1938/1h 0m/Suspense/Mystery/Frank Mcdonald)
(1:45PM) Street Girl (1929/1h 31m/Musical/Wesley Ruggles)
(3:30PM) Inside the Lines (1930/1h 12m/Drama/Roy J. Pomeroy)
(5:00PM) Three Who Loved (1931/1h 4m/Drama/George Archainbaud)
(6:15PM) Weary River (1929/1h 29m/Crime/Frank Lloyd)
(8:00PM) The Children's Hour (1961/1h 47m/Drama/William Wyler)
(10:00PM) Another Part of the Forest (1948/1h 47m/Drama/Michael Gordon)
WED MAR 20
(12:00AM) Watch on the Rhine (1943/1h 54m/Drama/Herman Shumlin)
(2:00AM) Toys in the Attic (1963/1h 30m/Drama/George Roy Hill)
(4:00AM) The North Star (1943/1h 45m/WaLewis Milestone)
(6:00AM) Crazy House (1930/0h 13m/Comedy/Jack Cummings)
(6:30AM) The Mad Genius (1931/1h 21m/HorroMichael Curtiz)
(8:00AM) Doctor X (1932/1h 16m/HorroMichael Curtiz)
(9:30AM) Svengali (1931/1h 16m/HorroArchie Mayo)
(11:00AM) Plane Nuts (1933/0h 19m/Comedy/Jack Cummings)
(11:30AM) M (1931/1h 39m/Suspense/Fritz Lang)
(1:30PM) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932/1h 30m/HorroRouben Mamoulian)
(3:15PM) The Most Dangerous Game (1932/1h 3m/HorroErnest B. Schoedsack)
(4:30PM) Rasputin and the Empress (1932/2h 13m/Drama/Richard Boleslavsky)
(6:45PM) Thirteen Women (1932/1h 14m/Suspense/George Archainbaud)
(10:00PM) What's Up, Doc? (1972/1h 34m/Comedy/Peter Bogdanovich)
THU MAR 21
(12:00AM) Nickelodeon (1976/2h 2m/Comedy/Peter Bogdanovich)
(2:15AM) Wild Rovers (1971/1h 50m/Western/Blake Edwards)
(4:45AM) The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973/1h 45m/Romance/Bud Yorkin)
(6:45AM) Cairo (1963/1h 31m/Crime/Wolf Rilla)
(8:45AM) Never So Few (1959/2h 4m/WaJohn Sturges)
(11:00AM) Operation: Crossbow (1965/1h 58m/Adventure/Michael Anderson)
(1:15PM) Khartoum (1966/2h 14m/Drama/Basil Dearden)
(3:45PM) The Fifth Day of Peace, (1969/1h 43m/Giuliano Montaldo)
(5:45PM) The Haunting (1963/1h 52m/HorroRobert Wise)
(8:00PM) The Thomas Crown Affair (1968/1h 42m/Romance/Norman Jewison)
(10:00PM) In the Heat of the Night (1967/1h 49m/Suspense/Norman Jewison)
FRI MAR 22
(12:00AM) Moonstruck (1987/1h 42m/Comedy/Norman Jewison)
(2:00AM) Fiddler on the Roof (1971/3h 0m/Musical/Norman Jewison)
(5:15AM) The Cincinnati Kid (1965/1h 53m/Drama/Norman Jewison)
(6:00AM) We Were Dancing (1942/1h 34m/Romance/Robert Z. Leonard)
(7:15AM) MGM Parade Show #17 (1955/0h 25m/Documentary/?)
(7:45AM) We Were Dancing (1942/1h 34m/Romance/Robert Z. Leonard)
(9:30AM) Bitter Sweet (1940/1h 32m/Musical/W. S. Van Dyke II)
(11:15AM) In Which We Serve (1942/1h 53m/WaNoel Coward)
(1:15PM) This Happy Breed (1944/1h 50m/Drama/David Lean)
(3:15PM) Private Lives (1931/1h 27m/Comedy/Sidney Franklin)
(4:45PM) Brief Encounter (1945/1h 26m/Romance/David Lean)
(6:15PM) Blithe Spirit (1945/1h 36m/Comedy/David Lean)
(8:00PM) Brian's Song (1971/1h 30m/Drama/Buzz Kulik)
(10:00PM) The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976/2h 0m/Biography/Randal Kleiser)
SAT MAR 23
(12:00AM) Duel (1971/1h 30m/HorroSteven Spielberg)
(2:00AM) The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman (1974/2h 0m/Drama/John Korty)
(4:00AM) Queen Christina (1933/1h 37m/Romance/Rouben Mamoulian)
(6:00AM) Night Watch (1973/1h 45m/Suspense/Brian G. Hutton)
(8:00AM) MGM CARTOONS: The Impossible Possum (1954/0h 6m/Animation/Dick Lundy)
(8:08AM) Believe It or Not #5 (1932/0h 7m/Documentary/?)
(8:16AM) Glimpses of California (1946/0h 9m/Documentary/?)
(8:26AM) Western Heritage (1948/1h 1m/Western/Wallace A. Grissell)
(9:30AM) Day Is Done (1955/0h 26m/WaFrank Borzage)
(10:00AM) POPEYE: Brotherly Love (1936/0h 6m/Comedy/Dave Fleischer)
(10:08AM) The Captain's Kid (1936/1h 12m/Drama/Nick Grinde)
(11:30AM) Men of the Sky (1942/0h 20m/Short/B. Reeves Eason)
(12:00PM) Buena Vista Social Club (1998/1h 44m/Documentary/Wim Wenders)
(2:00PM) International Velvet (1979/2h 12m/Drama/Bryan Forbes)
(4:15PM) Courage of Lassie (1946/1h 32m/Drama/Fred M. Wilcox)
(6:00PM) Bringing Up Baby (1938/1h 42m/Comedy/Howard Hawks)
(8:00PM) Brannigan (1975/1h 51m/Crime/Douglas Hickox)
(10:00PM) Coogan's Bluff (1968/1h 34m/Crime/Donald Siegel)
SUN MAR 24
(12:00AM) Where Danger Lives (1950/1h 24m/Film-NoiJohn Farrow)
(1:45AM) A Raisin in the Sun (1961/2h 8m/Drama/Daniel Petrie)
(4:00AM) Edge of the City (1957/1h 25m/Drama/Martin Ritt)
(6:00AM) Easy to Wed (1946/1h 50m/Musical/Edward Buzzell)
(8:00AM) History Is Made at Night (1937/1h 37m/Romance/Frank Borzage)
(10:00AM) Where Danger Lives (1950/1h 24m/Film-NoiJohn Farrow)
(11:45AM) The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954/1h 56m/Drama/Richard Brooks)
(2:00PM) Sunday in New York (1963/1h 45m/Comedy/Peter Tewksbury)
(4:00PM) High Society (1956/1h 47m/Musical/Charles Walters)
(6:00PM) Three Coins in the Fountain (1954/1h 42m/Romance/Jean Negulesco)
(8:00PM) Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939/1h 6m/Romance/Gregory Ratoff)
(9:30PM) Notorious (1946/1h 43m/Drama/Alfred Hitchcock)
MON MAR 25
(12:00AM) The Boob (1926/1h 4m/Silent/William Wellman)
(1:30AM) All These Women (1964/1h 20m/Comedy/Ingmar Bergman)
(3:00AM) And God Created Woman (1956/1h 30m/Drama/Roger Vadim)
(5:00AM) Conspiracy (1938/0h 58m/Crime/Lew Landers)
(6:00AM) The Saint in London (1939/1h 12m/Mystery/John Paddy Carstairs)
(7:15AM) Piccadilly Jim (1936/1h 40m/Comedy/Robert Z. Leonard)
(9:15AM) The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937/1h 38m/Romance/Richard Boleslawski)
(11:00AM) Loose in London (1953/1h 2m/Comedy/Edward Bernds)
(12:15PM) The V.I.P.s (1963/1h 59m/Drama/Anthony Asquith)
(2:30PM) The Prince and the Showgirl (1957/1h 57m/Comedy/Laurence Olivier)
(4:30PM) The Reluctant Debutante (1958/1h 36m/Musical/Vincente Minnelli)
(6:15PM) A Hard Day's Night (1964/1h 32m/Musical/Richard Lester)
(8:00PM) Singin' in the Rain (1952/1h 43m/Musical/Gene Kelly)
(10:00PM) Three Little Words (1950/1h 42m/Musical/Richard Thorpe)
TUE MAR 26
(12:00AM) Two Weeks with Love (1950/1h 32m/Musical/Roy Rowland)
(1:45AM) Mr. Imperium (1951/1h 27m/Romance/Don Hartman)
(3:30AM) The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (1950/1h 44m/Musical/David Butler)
(5:30AM) Skirts Ahoy! (1952/1h 49m/Musical/Sidney Lanfield)
(7:30AM) Romeo and Juliet (1937/2h 7m/Romance/George Cukor)
(9:45AM) Green Mansions (1959/1h 44m/Romance/Mel Ferrer)
(11:45AM) Palm Springs Weekend (1963/1h 40m/Comedy/Norman Taurog)
(1:30PM) The Young Lovers (1964/1h 45m/Romance/Samuel Goldwyn, Jr.)
(3:30PM) A Summer Place (1959/2h 10m/Drama/Delmer Daves)
(5:45PM) Splendor in the Grass (1961/2h 4m/Drama/Elia Kazan)
(8:00PM) The Catered Affair (1956/1h 33m/Drama/Richard Brooks)
(9:45PM) The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953/1h 14m/Comedy/Don Weis)
(11:15PM) I Love Melvin (1953/1h 16m/Musical/Don Weis)
WED MAR 27
(12:45AM) Give a Girl a Break (1953/1h 21m/Musical/Stanley Donen)
(2:15AM) Hit the Deck (1955/1h 52m/Musical/Roy Rowland)
(4:15AM) Athena (1954/1h 36m/Musical/Richard Thorpe)
(6:00AM) Red Dust (1932/1h 19m/Romance/Victor Fleming)
(7:30AM) Bird of Paradise (1932/1h 20m/Adventure/King Vidor)
(9:00AM) Tarzan and His Mate (1934/1h 45m/Adventure/Cedric Gibbons)
(11:00AM) King Solomon's Mines (1937/1h 20m/Adventure/Robert Stevenson)
(12:30PM) China Seas (1935/1h 30m/Adventure/Tay Garnett)
(2:00PM) The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938/1h 42m/Adventure/Michael Curtiz)
(4:00PM) They Met in Bombay (1941/1h 26m/Drama/Clarence Brown)
(5:45PM) Mogambo (1953/1h 55m/Adventure/John Ford)
(8:00PM) Tammy and the Bachelor (1957/1h 29m/Romance/Joseph Pevney)
(9:45PM) The Mating Game (1959/1h 37m/Comedy/George Marshall)
(11:30PM) The Tender Trap (1955/1h 51m/Comedy/Charles Walters)
THU MAR 28
(1:30AM) Bundle of Joy (1956/1h 38m/Musical/Norman Taurog)
(3:30AM) This Happy Feeling (1958/Comedy/Blake Edwards)
(5:15AM) Susan Slept Here (1954/1h 38m/Comedy/Frank Tashlin)
(7:00AM) Listen, Darling (1938/1h 10m/Romance/Edwin L. Marin)
(8:30AM) Lord Jeff (1938/1h 18m/Drama/Sam Wood)
(10:00AM) David Copperfield (1935/2h 13m/Drama/George Cukor)
(12:30PM) Anna Karenina (1935/1h 35m/Romance/Clarence Brown)
(2:15PM) Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936/1h 38m/Drama/John Cromwell)
(4:00PM) The Devil Is a Sissy (1936/1h 32m/Comedy/W. S. Van Dyke)
(6:00PM) Captains Courageous (1937/1h 56m/Drama/Victor Fleming)
(10:00PM) Goodbye Charlie (1964/1h 57m/Comedy/Vincente Minnelli)
FRI MAR 29
(12:15AM) The Pleasure of His Company (1961/1h 55m/Comedy/George Seaton)
(2:30AM) The Gazebo (1960/1h 40m/Comedy/George Marshall)
(4:30AM) It Started with a Kiss (1959/1h 43m/Comedy/George Marshall)
(6:30AM) Mary, Mary (1963/2h 6m/Comedy/Mervyn Le Roy)
(8:45AM) How Sweet It Is (1968/1h 39m/Comedy/Jerry Paris)
(10:30AM) MGM Parade Show #17 (1955/25m/Documentary/?)
(11:15AM) The Great Race (1965/2h 37m/Comedy/Blake Edwards)
(2:00PM) Don't Make Waves (1967/1h 37m/Comedy/Alexander Mackendrick)
(3:45PM) Not With My Wife, You Don't! (1966/1h 58m/Comedy/Norman Panama)
(6:00PM) Sex and the Single Girl (1964/1h 54m/Comedy/Richard Quine)
(8:00PM) The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964/2h 8m/Musical/Charles Walters)
(10:30PM) Divorce, American Style (1967/1h 49m/Comedy/Bud Yorkin)
SAT MAR 30
(12:30AM) What's the Matter with Helen? (1971/1h 41m/HorroCurtis Harrington)
(2:30AM) The Second Time Around (1961/1h 39m/Western/Vincent Sherman)
(4:30AM) How the West Was Won (1962/2h 35m/Western/John Ford)
(7:30AM) The Singing Nun (1966/1h 38m/Musical/Henry Koster)
(9:30AM) A Midsummer Daydream (1955/0h 25m/Comedy/John Brahm)
(10:00AM) POPEYE: I-ski, Love-ski, You-ski (1933/0h 6m/Animated/Dave Fleischer)
(10:08AM) The Chaser (1938/1h 15m/Drama/Edwin L. Marin)
(11:30AM) The Mild West (1933/0h 20m/Western/Joseph Henabery)
(12:00PM) The Gay Divorcee (1934/1h 47m/Musical/Mark Sandrich)
(2:00PM) Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948//1h 34m/Comedy/H. C. Potter)
(3:45PM) Fort Apache (1948/2h 7m/Western/John Ford)
(6:00PM) Get Carter (1971/1h 52m/Crime/Mike Hodges)
(8:00PM) The Passenger (1975/2h 3m/Drama/Michelangelo Antonioni)
(10:15PM) Prizzi's Honor (1985/2h 9m/Comedy/John Huston)
SUN MAR 31
(12:30AM) Pushover (1954/1h 28m/Film-NoiRichard Quine)
(2:15 AM) The Last Picture Show (1971/1h 58m/Drama/Peter Bogdanovich)
(4:30AM) Hearts of the West (1975/1h 43m/Western/Howard Zieff)
(6:15AM) The Green Pastures (1936/1h 30m/Drama/Marc Connelly)
(8:00AM) The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952/1h 42m/Drama/John Brahm)
(10:00AM) Pushover (1954/1h 28m/Film-NoiRichard Quine)
(12:00PM) Godspell (1973/1h 43m/Musical/David Greene)
(2:00PM) The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965/3h 45m/Drama/George Stevens)
(5:30PM) The Robe (1953/2h 15m/Drama/Henry Koster)
(8:00PM) Easter Parade (1h 43m/Musical/Charles Walters)
(10:00PM) King of Kings (1961/2h 48m/Drama/Nicholas Ray)
submitted by yawningvoid28 to movies [link] [comments]

2024.02.20 04:30 ThrowAway7s2 "Washington Island Unique Spot on Door Peninsula" from the March 22, 1962 Door County Advocate (part 2)

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Thordarson's $250,000 boathouse, Rock Island.
The men who have served as chairman of the Town of Washington have all been extremely busy men. For instance, Bo L. Anderson (brother of the late Mrs. Nor Shellswick) owned and operated a hotel and general store on the property now owned by Alfred Stelter. He was an amateur poet and actor, and wrote a song, praising the Island, to the tune of "Home, Sweet Home." He was also postmaster of the Detroit Harbor post office in 1895.
William Jess was referred to as the "Mayor" of Washington Island, although not a mayor. At the time that he was Town Chairman he was also Clerk of the School Board, Treasurer and general manager of the telephone company, and secretary of the local insurance company. He held some of these jobs from the time they were created, and for many years. He was appointed postmaster in 1907 and served until 1921. These jobs, plus his private enterprise, made him one of the busiest men on the Island.
Other chairmen have been Chas. O. Hansen, who served eight years, and who was a successful dairy farmer and had a milk delivery route for years, as well as serving on various civic boards. Then came Conrad Anderson, Roger Gunnerson (President of the Telephone Company at present), Dr. E. C. Farmer, and now Jack Hagen is serving his third term of two years.
Being the general practitioner on Washington Island is a full-time job, but Dr. Farmer took on the job of Chairman of the Town as well, which kept him hopping almost day and night, since many of his sick calls came in the middle of the night, and practically all babies were ushered into the world in the wee small hours. Also, Dr. Farmer played the saxophone in the Island orchestra back in the 1930's.
Jack Hagen is a dairy farmer, and President of the Washington Island Cooperative Dairy, Inc., as well as being Town Chairman.
The succession of postmasters on the Island began with Mr. Ranney in his store at Washington Harbor. Later the post office was located in the old home on the H. J. Leasum property with Robert Severs as postmaster. About 1895 another post office was established at Detroit Harbor, with Bo L. Anderson as postmaster.
In 1901 Mr. Severs died, and L. P. Ottosen (Carrie Jorgenson's father) became postmaster in a building which stood where Clifford Young's house now stands. Mr. Ottosen held this job until 1912, when he retired due to ill health, and that post office was discontinued.
In 1907 William Jess was appointed postmaster at Detroit Harbor, and served until 1921, when John Gudmundsen (brother of Haldor Gudmundsen) was appointed and served until 1924, when Mack Magnusson was appointed. Mack served for 34 years, the first two of which the post office was located in the basement of the John Malloch house, and the next 32 years in the present location. Mack retired in 1958 at the age of 70 years. In 1940 the post office came under the Civil Service, and Mack was required to take a Civil Service examination to hold his job. There were two other Islanders, women, who took the examination, but Mack was successful in holding the job.
Mrs. Robert (Theresa) Rainsford, daughter of Christine and Haldor Gudmundsen, was then appointed postmaster, and is still serving in that capacity. Her assistant is Mrs. Clifford (Betty) Young. Carrie Jorgenson serves as substitute when one of them is ill. Carrie also served as substitute for Cecelia and Mack Magnusson.
In 1926 the name of the post office was changed from Detroit Harbor to Washington Island. The post office will in the near future be located in the new post office building under construction on the corner next to the Clover Farm store, and owned by Roger Gunnerson.
The first rural mail route was established in 1902, with. John Malloch as carrier. He served in that capacity until his retirement in 1928. Ernest Boucsein was then the rural carrier for some years until his death. Then followed Elden Hettiger (who moved to Milwaukee, Wis.), and now Harley Hanson.
​
Mail to Washington Island once crossed frozen Death's Door.
The life of the mail carrier, transporting the mail to and from the mainland in the late 1800's was adventurous, particularly in the wintertime. Back around the turn of the century the mail was carried by sailboat, and Pete Anderson (brother of John O. Anderson and the late Clara Boyce) was the carrier from Washington Island to Ellison Bay, Wis. He had many harrowing experiences when the ice began to break up in the spring. There was one time when he and his horse and sleigh were almost lost, because the ice broke loose and left them stranded on an ice cake, floating around helplessly. The horse was very frightened, and kept falling down every time he tried to stand. Finally, some kind soul was able to throw a rope to Pete, which he made fast and pulled that ice cake over to firm ice where he could walk off.
The mail has been carried with the small mail boat (also named Welcome) from the East Channel between Washington and Detroit Islands; it has been hauled on a sleigh by hand within a mile of Plum Island, then on the Coast Guard boat (when all boats were frozen in tight at the ferry dock).
During the depression some farmers shipped cream to Fairmont, so it had to be hauled along with the mail. (The Richters had the mail-carrying contract only at that time.) One time Arni Richter and Ray Andersen were pulling the sleigh with the mail and two 10-gallon cans of cream, walking out to where they could get close to the Coast Guard boat (about a mile from Plum Island). There was a stiff southwest wind in their faces, and the ice was very rough and frozen up in peaks. Then men had to wear creepers on their shoes in order to walk. I happened to be the only passenger going to the mainland that day, and had been injured in a fall ice skating. The men kindly told me to sit on the sleigh, although they were already straining at pulling the heavy load. They said they could not feel any difference when I got on the sleigh.
The mail was carried by snowmobile a few years later (when the "Door" was frozen over). Everybody drove back and forth across the "Door" then. It was just about this time that the most awful tragedy occurred in the memory of island people, when the Washington Island basketball team went down through thin ice to their death on Mar. 10, 1935. They were returning to the Island on Sunday morning after playing a basketball game at Sister Bay Saturday night. It was foggy; they lost their way, and drove on ice too thin to hold them in the "Door." Their names were: Leroy Einarsen (son of Anne), Roy Stover (brother of the late Marie McCormick), Norman Nelson (son of Olga Nelson, and nephew of all the members of the Ottosen family), Raymond Richter (son of Minnie Richter), Ralph Wade (son-in-law of William Jepson), and "Bub" Cornell (brother of Mary Richter). There has never been another Washington Island basketball team.
​
At Washington Island. Sleighs with sails attached.
There has been no necessity for the people to drive across the "Door" for the past few years because the ferry goes across almost every day in the year. Arni Richter's crew keep the ferry cut loose all the time. It does happen occasionally in the spring that a strong wind will pile ice cakes so high that the ferry cannot get out, but as soon as the wind shifts, it is all cleared. It is not like in the old days when L. P. Ottosen recalled that there were seven weeks when no word was received from the outside world. This situation could not occur today, because if the boats could not run, and the telephone lines across the "Door" were down (which has happened many times in years gone by), there is a police radio located in the home of Ann and Victor Cornell, which can be used in case of emergency to call Sturgeon Bay.
Up to 1904 there had been no telephones on Washington Island. In that year the government extended telephone service to the lighthouses on Plum, Pilot, Rock, St. Martin's, Poverty, and to Washington Island. Phones were then installed in Bo L. Anderson's, Koyen's store, Washington Harbor Dock, and at the Rasmus Hansen home. In 1910 the Washington Island Telephone Company was organized, and now there is a telephone in almost every Island home.
​
Josie Jepson, telephone operator.
There have been many different telephone operators over the years, but the first people to operate a telephone office were the Carl Hansens, who lived in the house now owned by John Jessen. When the switchboard was installed in its present location Mae (Ottosen) Sorensen became the Chief Operator. She had been working for the Carl Hansens. Mae had different helpers in the time that she was Chief Operator, and Lena (Einarsen) Pickert was one, and Josie Jepson was another. Mae Sorensen recalls that there were 14 local telephone lines when she was the operator, as compared to 41 lines today. There are five long distance circuits at present, and 307 telephones on the Island, including those of summer residents. The telephone office has been located in its present building for all these years. Mrs. Harry (Reggie) Hansen, Gladys Boshka, Florence and Orville Jess, and others have been the Chief Operators and have had many helpers. Two of my children, Kent and Rosalie, have worked there a couple of years each after school and on Saturdays and Sundays while attending high school. For the past four years Mrs. L. A. Davison has been saying, "Number, please," and Alvin Cornell, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Cornell, is her helper. Mrs. Davidson knows the voice of every Islander, and can usually locate anybody in a few seconds if they are visiting where there is a phone.
The storekeepers have played an important part in the history of Washington Island also. One of the oldest stores was Koyen's, owned and operated by A. A. Koyen. Later on it was Jesse and Floris Koyen who kept the store. This store was a hang-out for old-timers, who sat around the pot-bellied stove and reminisced about pioneer days. In more modern days after the high school was moved to the Washington Harbor school, the store became a hang-out for high school pupils at noon hour. They could buy candy, gum and pop, and learn early history of the Island from Jesse and Floris. Jesse would also sew up a torn shoe for them while they waited. Koyen's store has ceased to operate since the death of Floris.
Ted Thorarinson was the first owner of the store now known as the Harbor Grocery. The main part of this store building had been the old Detroit Harbor school (the picture of which was taken in 1887), and was moved to the present location when the new school was built. Sigrid and Ted Gudmundsen next owned and operated Ted's store for many years. Ted and Sigrid had the custom of holding open house at Christmas time each year, and for all who attended, there was fresh homemade Christmas bread and coffee. The recipe for this bread was brought to this country from Norway by Mr. Hagen (Sigrid's father), and many Islanders use it every year, as it appears in the Island Cook Book, put out by the women of Trinity Lutheran church.
The store has changed hands several times since then, and is now owned by Ruth (Young) and Fred Boniface.
Mann's store has the longest history in one family. George O. Mann came to the Island as a young school teacher, and taught the Lucke school (now Roger Gunnerson's store), at a salary of $16 a month. After a few years he and his brother opened a general store. After a time he bought out his brother's interest. His first store was two stories high, with furniture kept in the upper story. This store burned down in April 1932, in spite of the gallant efforts of the bucket-brigade. This occurred before the Island owned any fire-fighting equipment. He carried on his business in Harry Hansen's hall across the road temporarily, and rebuilt his store on the same spot, which is the present Mann's store. There had been a garage adjoining the south side of the old store, but it was thought unwise to have it so close again, so it became a separate building. Fred Mann's house was moved from next door to the store to its present location.
George O. Mann acquired several farms, went into the fish brokerage business find other business enterprises. He was president of the telephone company, a member of the board of education, an officer of the Mutual Fire Insurance Company, the R.E.A. cooperative, and other organizations; one of the busiest men on the Island. In July 1953 he celebrated 50 years in his general store, and served coffee and lunch to everyone who attended. Since his death four years ago, the store has been operated by his son, Fred, with the help of Fred's son, Jerome.
Milton Cornell and his son, Kirby, operate the Clover Farm store, which is of more recent vintage. Milton was a clerk and delivery boy in Mann's store from the time he was 14 years old, and boarded next door with the Jim Boyce family. After he grew up and married, he started a store of his own where Gordy's Tap is located on the Main Road. Before long he decided to build a store in its present location across from the post office. He has added more space and changed the face of the building in the past few years.
Roger Gunnerson bought the Lucke school building when the four grade schools were consolidated, and opened a store called "Gunnerson's Hardware." However, he has expanded until you can get practically everything except groceries there.
All cooperative organizations on the Island, such as the Telephone company, the R.E.A., the Fire Insurance Company, and the Washington Island Cooperative Dairy (formerly called Island Creamery and privately owned then, have sprung up of a necessity. As the need for these organizations occurred, the business men met and elected officers and started the ball rolling.
One of the most unique facts about Washington Island is that there is no jail, and there has never been any need for one. In early times the people did not even elect any constables. Later on, when constables were elected, they didn't even bother to qualify for the job, because they felt themselves unnecessary. It is only in these past few years that constables have been necessary, mostly to check on traffic violations, since there are so many cars. Most bad infractions of the law have been traced to outsiders, like the vandalism in the cemetery. When the constables do find it necessary to arrest someone, they just call the sheriff on the police radio and have him meet them across the "Door." It is not easy to get away from the Island, so culprits think twice before attempting anything.
​
BEGINNING OF THE END for the old hitching rail, right foreground. Tom Nelson is pictured in shirtsleeves and vest. These are the first cars on Washington Island. Antique car buffs say there's a 1916 Buick at left, a 1914 Hupmobile or Overland at right.
One of the strangest incidents that ever happened on Washington Island occurred back in 1937, when Islanders at a town election had voted the Island dry, in spite of the fact that the rest of the country had repealed the Volstead Act. The tavernkeepers were hard up, so they started selling "bitters," and other drinks containing alcohol. It had always been a custom for people on the mainland to warn Islanders of the approach of game wardens, revenue men, etc. It seems that someone reported the tavernkeepers for their illicit business, so four or five state revenue men, disguised as sport fishermen (because it was the bass season in October), travelled to Washington Island unsuspected, and raided all of the taverns simultaneously. Where they made their mistake was drinking up the evidence before the case came to trial, so the tavernkeepers all got off with suspended sentences.
The Washington Island Maternity Home; or Pearl's Baby Center, as it is called, had its beginning in the 1940's, after Pearl Haglund graduated from a nursing school in Evanston, Ill. in 1942.
Prior to this time all babies were delivered either at home, or if there was any fear, an occasional woman would travel to a hospital. There had been a number of mid-wives who went with the different doctors to the homes. Mrs. Clara Boyce, Pearl's mother, could point to dozens of children and say, "That's one of my babies." She not only cared for the baby and mother, but also did all the work for the rest of the family in the home. Mrs. Lizzie Hansen, Chas. O. Hansen's mother, was another woman who helped with nursing.
Pearl was prevailed upon to open her home on the McDonald Road as a maternity home. She has had as many as three babies and mothers in her home at one time. When she needs help, she calls on Esther Wylie, who is also a nurse. Pearl's home is well-equipped with hospital beds, etc. Pearl also cares for other sick people in her home, when there are no babies around.
In off seasons, when no babies are expected, Pearl goes on private nursing cases down in Illinois.
————
The Icelandic family with the most members living here is the off-spring of Magnina and Peter Gunnlaugsson (original Icelandic settlers), who are: Steve, Peter, Magnus, Louis, Bjorn, Mrs. Haldon Johnson (Magnina) and Mrs. Maurice Andersen (Dagmar). The first four of the men are 80 to 85 years of age.
Steve, the oldest member of this family, was born Feb. 22, 1877, in a house on top of the hill quite near Bjorn Gunnlaugsson's present home. Right here it is interesting to note that two houses burned at different times almost on the same spot. Steve attended school at the Schoolhouse Beach school.
As a young man he says he "sailed on the Northland, one of the finest passenger boats on the Great Lakes." He then went sailing on different sailing schooners, namely, the "Madonna" whose bones were burned just a few years ago) with Ole Christiansen, and then with Capt. John C. Jessen (grandfather of the late John Jessen).
Steve was engaged in commercial fishing with Fred Richter (brother of Carl G. Richter), then with John W. Cornell (father of William Cornell and Mary Richter).
After his marriage to Bertha Andersen in 1907, he started farming, and has continued to the present time (now just helping his son, Raymond). In the absence of a veterinarian, Steve acted as midwife to hundreds of cows. He says they are just as inconsiderate as humans as to the time of birth, and most cases came in the middle of the night.
Steve's brothers been farmers on Washington Island up to the time of their retirement.
Ben Johnson, who formerly owned the Washington Hotel, came to Washington Island with his parents and his brothers and sister from Iceland in 1887, when he was 12 years of age. He attended school at the Schoolhouse School.
In 1912 he built the Washington Hotel down in Detroit Harbor. He was the owner, operator and cook until 1946, when he sold it to William Jepson, the present owner of the Washington Island Boat Works. The hotel has changed hands several times, but has been known as Wrasse's Washington Hotel for the past 10 years.
Ben did the cooking, and kept his guests entertained with his unlimited store of funny stories. Then in the evenings he often played cards with them, if they needed another player, so versatile he was. He had the first hotel on the Island with indoor plumbing, and there was an occasional summer resident who would pay him 25 cents to let them take a bath. Ben was a cook on steamboats on the Great Lakes for many years. He now resides with his children in California, although Washington Island is very dear to his heart. It is too difficult to travel back and forth spring and fall.
Thomas Johnson, brother of Ben, age 89, cut cordwood for a few years after the family came to Washington Island, then became engaged in commercial fishing for the next 45 years until his retirement. He lives here with his daughter and husband, Lettie and Fred Mann.
————
​
Jens Jacobsen, who started Jacobsen's museum on Washington Island.
One of the most interesting men who helped make Island history was Jens Jacobsen, a Danish immigrant, who came to Washington Island shortly after 1900. He fell in love with the Island because it reminded him so much of his homeland and the stormy Baltic Sea.
Jens farmed and fished, and studied the early history of the Island and the Indians who inhabited it. He bought the land around Little Lake, and in clearing parts of it, dug up rocks, two skeletons of unknown Indians, arrow-heads, mortar and pestle, and many other items. Jens wove a wonderful story around his collection of museum pieces, which attracted many of the same people to return again and again. He included in his narrative the "cross" in the ground, which is a hallowed spot on the property at Little Lake.
In 1931 Jens and his son, Ralph (who now carries the burden of repeating his father's stories) built the museum to house the collection of relics. The museum attracts about 3,000 visitors every summer, some of whom have come from Singapore, India, Australia, Chile and Iceland, as well as many of our states.
The prize pieces in the collection are several fossil rocks, which geologists say date back several millions of years to a time when a tropical sea covered Washington Island. Peace pipes, old stone dishes, Indian beads and other items are on display in glass cases or on open tables. Ralph believes he has many relics here that perhaps are not duplicated in any other state museum.
Also on display in the museum is a large collection of wooden ships with birch bark sails, which were expertly carved by Jens Jacobsen on long winter evenings. He learned carving at a vocational school in Denmark at the age of 9, and since there was no radio or television for diversion (and Jens was not a card-player), he spent his evenings carving. Each ship is named after a famous Great Lakes vessel.
"The Griffin, a many-sailed flagship of Robert LaSalle, the famous French explorer, anchored just off Washington Island in 1679 and traded with the Indians," Ralph said.
Jens Jacobsen was a versatile man, who was as much at home writing poetry as carving ships. One poem, which he wrote concerning the Michigan-Wisconsin boundary dispute (in 1926), was entitled, "The Pearl of the Lake," and is as follows:
"Oh, Wolverine State, 'am amazed at thy course, Did Washington Island e'er sue for divorce? Ne'er courting the mermaid would straightway take This Washington Island, the Pearl of the Lake. This bone of contention to which I allude Some cities and mines of the state might include; The Badger, however, will never forsake Her Washington Island, the Pearl of the Lake. And now they have gone to establish a line, Directing our fisher in setting his twine. And woe to the fisher who makes a mistake Near Washington Island, the Pearl of the Lake. These beautiful shores again and again, Our father preferred for your favorite main. Your favorite mainland, the place could not take Of Washington Island, the Pearl of the Lake."
Jens and Ralph built a number of cabins around Little Lake to rent to summer residents. These have now been sold to visitors, who return here year after year.
George Nelson, one of the Island's last remaining pioneers, passed away during 1961 at the age of 91. At age 18 he left Norway and came to Wisconsin. For six years he worked as cook or mate on the lake schooners. On Washington Island he sailed with Captain Pedersen (Chester and Hazel's father).
Before his marriage to Martha Anderson, he made his home with the Jacob Richter family, and had the companionship of Carl G. Richter.
He bought the farm where his daughter, Virginia Bjarnarson now lives and farmed for some years, fishing thru the ice in the winter months.
George eventually set up a commercial fishing business in Jackson Harbor, and his sons, Russell and Spencer, fished with him.
The Washington Island baseball team will miss him and his loyal support. One dollar from him went to each player who hit a home run, and he seldom missed a game.
George never learned to drive the new fangled cars, and a Model T Ford even proved too much, since it wouldn't stop when he hollered, "Whoa!"
​
CLASSIC PIONEER PHOTO — The subject is Bo Anderson and Aurora Shellswick's mother. The cabin is now in ruins. Clarence Koyen took the picture.
————
Islanders have felt the need of a local newspaper at different times, and back about 1930 Jacob and Eugene Gunnlaugsson (cousins) set up a print shop, where Mrs. Tillie Ellefson lives now. They printed a small sized newspaper called, "Island Reporter," which was a credit to their integrity but a liability to their pocketbooks. After a time Jacob sold out to Eugene, and he continued alone for a few years, until July 1936, when he printed a larger issue advertising the Washington Island Centennial (which was 100 years since some Danish people had settled on what is known as the John Larson place). Eugene finally left the Island and went to work in a printing plant in Chicago.
Since that time different people have put out an Island newspaper (mimeographed) called the "Islander." The Girl Scouts and their leader, Mrs. Hans Baasch (Synnove) were the editors of the "Islander" before the days of electricity 1941-1944. When they tired of the job, Martha Stelter and Margaret Smith assumed the task. They continued publishing the paper through 1947, but since both of them were involved in their own businesses, it became too much work and ceased. They had a staff of typists and reporters, but the burden was too heavy. This staff did a good job of collecting all the news, as existing copies of the paper will verify. Since that time Island news has been published only in the Advocate and the Bethel Tidings, put out by the church and containing community news in brief as well as Bethel church news. This is a non-profit paper, and donations are made by interested people to defray the expense of paper, postage, and other supplies. Rev. C. H. Lundberg and his family started this publication, and it is now kept up by women in the church.
————
​
POTATO SHIPPERS waiting to be weighed in at Koyen's store, after which the wagon-loads were driven down the hill to the waiting schooner.
Potatoes, now the main crop on Washington island, held the same place to a much lesser degree 50 years ago. In those days there was no "potato king." Every farmer raised potatoes, hauled them by wagonloads to Washington Harbor dock, where they were loaded on schooners and taken to Chicago to be sold. Wagons were weighed at Koyen's store and would be lined up past Bethel church waiting in line to go down to the dock.
There were many years in between when the lowly potato was simply raised for home consumption until Edward H. Anderson, a former Islander, saw the possibility of raising, first, certified seed potatoes, then great quantities for market. He had long been one of the largest carlot potato merchants in the country.
The unique feature about Ed Anderson's operation, is the way he gets his potatoes to market. He bought twofold automobile ferries from the State of Michigan, converted each into a massive storage bin by building bulkheads on both ends and adding insulation. One held 100,000 bushels, the other 70,000 — then towed them across Lake Michigan to Benton Harbor, Mich. Enroute the potatoes were sorted, graded and packaged, so they were ready for customers' trucks waiting at dockside.
​
Steam threshing rig at Washington Island.
https://archive.co.door.wi.us/jsp/RcWebImageViewer.jsp?doc_id=1e8fc801-90a4-4104-8e86-19a1ea0947dc/wsbd0000/20151119/00000232&pg_seq=81
https://archive.co.door.wi.us/jsp/RcWebImageViewer.jsp?doc_id=1e8fc801-90a4-4104-8e86-19a1ea0947dc/wsbd0000/20151119/00000232&pg_seq=82
https://archive.co.door.wi.us/jsp/RcWebImageViewer.jsp?doc_id=1e8fc801-90a4-4104-8e86-19a1ea0947dc/wsbd0000/20151119/00000232&pg_seq=83
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
​
Articles about history: https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/history
Articles about churches: https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/churches
Articles about the postal service: https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/postal-service
Education-related articles: https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/education-related
submitted by ThrowAway7s2 to DoorCountyALT [link] [comments]

2023.09.09 00:47 JuanRiveara Reddit Chosen Oscars: 1946 Winners

Best Picture
1. It’s a Wonderful Life
2. The Best Years of Our Lives
3. Notorious
4. A Matter of Life and Death
5. Beauty and the Beast
6. Gilda
6. My Darling Clementine
8. The Big Sleep
8. Great Expectations
10. The Killers
Best Director
  1. Frank Capra for It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. William Wyler for The Best Years of Our Lives
  3. Alfred Hitchcock for Notorious
  4. Jean Cocteau for Beauty and the Beast
  5. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger for A Matter of Life and Death
Best Lead Actor
  1. James Stewart as George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin in Notorious
  3. Dana Andrews as Captain Fred Derry in The Best Years of Our Lives
  4. Fredric March as TSgt Al Stephenson (The Best Years of Our Lives
  5. David Niven as Sqn Ldr Peter David Carter in A Matter of Life and Death
  6. Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep
Best Lead Actress
  1. Ingrid Bergman as Alicia Huberman in Notorious
  2. Rita Hayworth as Gilda Mundson in Gilda
  3. Lauren Bacall as Vivian Sternwood Rutledge in The Big Sleep
  4. Lana Turner as Cora Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice
  5. Olivia de Havilland as Miss Josephine 'Jody' Norris in To Each His Own
Best Supporting Actor
  1. Harold Russell as PO2 Homer Parrish in The Best Years of Our Lives
  2. Lionel Barrymore as Henry Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life
  3. Claude Rains as Alexander Sebastian in Notorious
  4. Henry Travers as Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life)
  5. Orson Welles as Franz KindleProfessor Charles Rankin in The Stranger
Best Supporting Actress
  1. Donna Reed as Mary Hatch Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. Teresa Wright as Peggy Stephenson in The Best Years of Our Lives
  3. Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations
  4. Myrna Loy as Milly Stephenson in The Best Years of Our Lives
  5. Anne Baxter as Sophie MacDonald in The Razor’s Edge
  6. Ethel Barrymore as Mrs. Warren in The Spiral Staircase
Best Original Screenplay
1. Notorious
2. A Matter of Life and Death
3. Gilda
4. Shoeshine
4. The Stranger
Best Adapted Screenplay
1. It’s a Wonderful Life
2. The Best Years of Our Lives
3. The Big Sleep
4. Great Expectations
5. The Killers
5. My Darling Clementine
Best Non-English Language Film
  1. Beauty and the Beast
  2. Shoeshine
  3. Paisan
  4. No Regrets for Our Youth
  5. Murderers Among Us
Best Documentary Film
  1. Atomic Power
  2. Let There Be Light
  3. Theirs Is the Glory
  4. Seeds of Destiny
  5. Death Mills
Best Original Score
1. It’s a Wonderful Life
2. Notorious
3. The Best Years of Our Lives
4. Beauty and the Beast
4. Duel in the Sun
Best Original Song
1. "Put the Blame on Mame" from Gilda
1. "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South
3. "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" from The Harvey Girls
4. "Personality" from Road to Utopia
5. "Ole Buttermilk Sky" from Canyon Passage
Best Sound
  1. It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. The Best Years of Our Lives
  3. Beauty and the Beast
  4. Notorious
  5. Paisan
Best Production Design
1. Beauty and the Beast
1. A Matter of Life and Death
3. Anna and the King of Siam
3. It’s a Wonderful Life
5. Great Expectations
Best Cinematography
1. A Matter of Life and Death
2. Notorious
3. Beauty and the Beast
3. It’s a Wonderful Life
5. Great Expectations
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
1. Beauty and the Beast
2. Gilda
2. It’s a Wonderful Life
4. Great Expectations
5. A Matter of Life and Death
Best Costume Design
1. Beauty and the Beast
2. Gilda
2. Great Expectations
4. A Matter of Life and Death
5. My Darling Clementine
Best Editing
  1. It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. Notorious
  3. The Best Years of Our Lives
  4. The Killers
  5. The Big Sleep
Best Special Effects
  1. Song of the South
  2. A Matter of Life and Death
  3. Beauty and the Beast
  4. It’s a Wonderful Life
  5. Blithe Spirit
Best Directorial Debut
  1. Ingmar Bergman for Crisis
  2. Joseph L. Mankiewicz for Dragonwyck
  3. Richard Fleischer for Child of Divorce
  4. Chetan Anand for Neecha Nagar
Best Ensemble Cast
  1. The Best Years of Our Lives
  2. It’s a Wonderful Life
  3. Great Expectations
  4. Notorious
  5. My Darling Clementine
Best Choreography, Stunts or Dance
  1. The Harvey Girls
  2. Gilda
  3. A Matter of Life and Death
  4. Beauty and the Beast
  5. My Darling Clementine
Best Musical
1. The Harvey Girls
2. The Jolson Story
3. Road to Utopia
4. Blue Skies
4. Night and Day
6. Make Mine Music
Full charts for all the categories
submitted by JuanRiveara to oscarrace [link] [comments]

2023.09.09 00:46 JuanRiveara Reddit Chosen Oscars: 1946 Winners

Best Picture
1. It’s a Wonderful Life
2. The Best Years of Our Lives
3. Notorious
4. A Matter of Life and Death
5. Beauty and the Beast
6. Gilda
6. My Darling Clementine
8. The Big Sleep
8. Great Expectations
10. The Killers
Best Director
  1. Frank Capra for It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. William Wyler for The Best Years of Our Lives
  3. Alfred Hitchcock for Notorious
  4. Jean Cocteau for Beauty and the Beast
  5. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger for A Matter of Life and Death
Best Lead Actor
  1. James Stewart as George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin in Notorious
  3. Dana Andrews as Captain Fred Derry in The Best Years of Our Lives
  4. Fredric March as TSgt Al Stephenson (The Best Years of Our Lives
  5. David Niven as Sqn Ldr Peter David Carter in A Matter of Life and Death
  6. Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep
Best Lead Actress
  1. Ingrid Bergman as Alicia Huberman in Notorious
  2. Rita Hayworth as Gilda Mundson in Gilda
  3. Lauren Bacall as Vivian Sternwood Rutledge in The Big Sleep
  4. Lana Turner as Cora Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice
  5. Olivia de Havilland as Miss Josephine 'Jody' Norris in To Each His Own
Best Supporting Actor
  1. Harold Russell as PO2 Homer Parrish in The Best Years of Our Lives
  2. Lionel Barrymore as Henry Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life
  3. Claude Rains as Alexander Sebastian in Notorious
  4. Henry Travers as Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life)
  5. Orson Welles as Franz KindleProfessor Charles Rankin in The Stranger
Best Supporting Actress
  1. Donna Reed as Mary Hatch Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. Teresa Wright as Peggy Stephenson in The Best Years of Our Lives
  3. Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations
  4. Myrna Loy as Milly Stephenson in The Best Years of Our Lives
  5. Anne Baxter as Sophie MacDonald in The Razor’s Edge
  6. Ethel Barrymore as Mrs. Warren in The Spiral Staircase
Best Original Screenplay
1. Notorious
2. A Matter of Life and Death
3. Gilda
4. Shoeshine
4. The Stranger
Best Adapted Screenplay
1. It’s a Wonderful Life
2. The Best Years of Our Lives
3. The Big Sleep
4. Great Expectations
5. The Killers
5. My Darling Clementine
Best Non-English Language Film
  1. Beauty and the Beast
  2. Shoeshine
  3. Paisan
  4. No Regrets for Our Youth
  5. Murderers Among Us
Best Documentary Film
  1. Atomic Power
  2. Let There Be Light
  3. Theirs Is the Glory
  4. Seeds of Destiny
  5. Death Mills
Best Original Score
1. It’s a Wonderful Life
2. Notorious
3. The Best Years of Our Lives
4. Beauty and the Beast
4. Duel in the Sun
Best Original Song
1. "Put the Blame on Mame" from Gilda
1. "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South
3. "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" from The Harvey Girls
4. "Personality" from Road to Utopia
5. "Ole Buttermilk Sky" from Canyon Passage
Best Sound
  1. It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. The Best Years of Our Lives
  3. Beauty and the Beast
  4. Notorious
  5. Paisan
Best Production Design
1. Beauty and the Beast
1. A Matter of Life and Death
3. Anna and the King of Siam
3. It’s a Wonderful Life
5. Great Expectations
Best Cinematography
1. A Matter of Life and Death
2. Notorious
3. Beauty and the Beast
3. It’s a Wonderful Life
5. Great Expectations
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
1. Beauty and the Beast
2. Gilda
2. It’s a Wonderful Life
4. Great Expectations
5. A Matter of Life and Death
Best Costume Design
1. Beauty and the Beast
2. Gilda
2. Great Expectations
4. A Matter of Life and Death
5. My Darling Clementine
Best Editing
  1. It’s a Wonderful Life
  2. Notorious
  3. The Best Years of Our Lives
  4. The Killers
  5. The Big Sleep
Best Special Effects
  1. Song of the South
  2. A Matter of Life and Death
  3. Beauty and the Beast
  4. It’s a Wonderful Life
  5. Blithe Spirit
Best Directorial Debut
  1. Ingmar Bergman for Crisis
  2. Joseph L. Mankiewicz for Dragonwyck
  3. Richard Fleischer for Child of Divorce
  4. Chetan Anand for Neecha Nagar
Best Ensemble Cast
  1. The Best Years of Our Lives
  2. It’s a Wonderful Life
  3. Great Expectations
  4. Notorious
  5. My Darling Clementine
Best Choreography, Stunts or Dance
  1. The Harvey Girls
  2. Gilda
  3. A Matter of Life and Death
  4. Beauty and the Beast
  5. My Darling Clementine
Best Musical
1. The Harvey Girls
2. The Jolson Story
3. Road to Utopia
4. Blue Skies
4. Night and Day
6. Make Mine Music
Full charts for all the categories
submitted by JuanRiveara to Oscars [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:43 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to TalesOfDarkness [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:42 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to stayawake [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:42 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to spooky_stories [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:42 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to SignalHorrorFiction [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:41 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to RedditHorrorStories [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:40 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to Nonsleep [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:40 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to MecThology [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:39 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to libraryofshadows [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:39 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to joinmeatthecampfire [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:37 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to Erutious [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:37 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to Creepystories [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:36 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to CreepyPastas [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:36 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to creepypasta [link] [comments]

2023.03.28 04:36 Erutious The Broken Mirror

​
The Mirror showed Dominic reflections that weren't his own.
The Mirror was an oddity, but an oddity that he would come to rely on.
"What the hell is this thing?"
Dominic had been browsing for things he could sell at his local thrift store, and the Mirror had caught his eye. It stood out because this shop didn't usually put trash out with their junk. The Mirror was fractured in seven places, and it looked like someone had punched it in the center, sending spider cracks through the glass.
At first, he thought it was some kind of joke mirror because when he looked into it, he saw seven different reflections and only two of them were him.
The two that were him were on the top right and the bottom left. The left one showed a much younger Dominic as he shuddered on a metal frame bed in Clarence County Prison. At first he thought it was just some inmate, everyone kinda looked the same with a bald head and stripes on, but he would never forget that cell. It had the swastikas carved on the wall behind it, the legend that stated "Cops are Bastards" below it, and the picture of his then wife that he had stuck up there with toothpaste to add some color to the cell. It was him alright, but the one across from it was much more interesting.
The top right showed Dominic picking up a painting in the art section, a painting with a price tag on it that read two grand for you.
Dominic was no fool, he wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird trick first. He'd grown up in gangs and living rough, and he knew a hustle when he saw one. It was an impressive hustle, to be sure, but it still smelled like a hustle to him. Dominic went to the little section they had for art and, sure enough, there was a picture of some women sitting on a balcony, their faces looking scared as they grinned like corpses in their expensive dresses. The price tag on the front was not for two grand, however, and was for a much more reasonable ten dollars. Dominic thought it over, pulling out his phone as he snapped a picture and looked to see what it was worth. He found a page for some artist named Roland Depriest and it just so happened that a lot of his paintings were going for big bucks since he had recently offed himself. A quick look told Dominic that this was, indeed, a Depriest, and the going price for it was about two grand as of this afternoon.
He picked up the painting and the Mirror, deciding to take both home with him.
"Whatcha want that ratty old mirror for?" Asked Mr. Drucil, looking at the broken glass without much interest.
Clearly, he couldn't see what Dominic saw in it, and that might be for the better.
"I like the frame," Dominic lied, "I think I might use it for something."
Mr. Drucil looked at the painting in a precursory way, but shrugged as he tapped it all up on his calculator.
"Ten dollars," he said, holding his wrinkly hand out with expectation.
Mr. Drucil did business in cash, and did not truck with those little card machines.
"And the mirror?" Dominic asked, not wanting to get scammed after the fact.
"Take it," the old man said, "I can't sell a broken mirror and the frame looks ugly anyway. If you want it, then, by all means, take it off my hands for me. Just don't cut yourself on the glass. I'd hate for you to try and sue me after I gave you such a great deal on it.
Dominic nodded, thanking Mr. Drucil as he left the little shop with a tinkle of the bell overhead.
The painting he sold for the prophesied two grand to a scalper friend of his, and the Mirror he hung in his bedroom.
For a week, the Mirror did little but show him going about mundane tasks, and Dominic began to wonder again if he had been had. The little inmate still stayed in his cell, sometimes going out for chow but mostly just staying and looking sad. That tracked, Dominic had spent most of his bid being sad about one thing or another. Sad that he was stuck in prison for five years, at first, and then sad that his wife had left him towards the end. He tried to figure out what the other spots meant, but they were kind of a mystery to him. The middle two showed him awful things, things he didn't like to think about. He was a tough guy, he'd been in his share of scraps and seen people get killed in his lifetime, but this stuff was so much worse. People beating kids, people killing their wives, people hurting animals, and everything in between. The one next to it wasn't much better. He could see mothers tucking in starving kids, homeless people crying as they used the last of their money on a bottle of cheap alcohol, even little kids huddling together as they hid from someone.
Some of what the Mirror showed him was terrible, but some of it was as helpful as the painting had been.
The top left panel showed a woman he knew all too well as she went about her day to day life. He should know her, she was his ex wife. The bitch had divorced him while he was in prison and took most of his stuff while he was too incarcerated to do anything about it. She had taken advantage of him while he was at his lowest, and for that he hated her. In that respect, he thought of that tab as his Enemy Panel, and even wrote it on a post it note as he stuck it to the wall. The Mirror turned to be very useful when it came to avoiding her, proving itself one day just as he was about to leave. He was going out on a date, his hair freshly cut and his cologne not too heavy, when someone knocked at his door. His date was supposed to meet him at the restaurant, but he thought she might have decided to pick him up instead and came out of his bathroom and towards the front of the house.
He was walking past the Mirror, when he suddenly saw his ex standing outside a very familiar door.
She did this sometimes, especially if she could facebook stalk enough information to realize he was serious about someone. He hid out, letting her knock for a while longer, but she finally got bored and left. Dominic was only a few minutes late for his date, and used his little peep hole often so he could avoid running into his ex.
On the other hand, the bottom right panel showed him an older man he had never met before. Watching that guy was like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He ate expensive food, drove expensive cars, wore expensive clothes, and went to bed with someone new every time Dominic noticed. He decided to leave that label blank for now, not really sure what he was seeing or how it would affect him.
He found that on days when he didn't have anything better to do, Dominic was checking the Mirror to see what he could see. He had definitely found some windfall from the Mirror, the three scratch offs he'd won kept his rent paid, but he was looking for another big score like the painting. In the top right Dominic was back at the thrift store, but it was a different one today. Dominic watched as he picked up an expensive looking fur coat, putting it on as he preened a little in front of the Mirror. Then, he stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled out a diamond watch that, even to an untrained eye like Dominic's, looked expensive. The thrift store was known to him, a little second hand store on Mulbank, and after checking that his Ex was still at her job, he decided to go see if lightning would strike twice.
The thrift store wasn't crowded, and the coat was loud enough to be seen from the entrance. Dominic assumed it would reek of liquor and cheap cigars, looking like some wannabe pimps prop, but the coat was in immaculate condition. The tag said it was a Vanderfur, a brand even Dominic was familiar with. He put it on and went to the Mirror, preening a little as he'd seen himself do. The coat looked good, very good in fact, and it would go well with some of the shoes that Dominic had at home.
As he stuck his hand into the pocket, however, it was time for the moment of truth.
At first there was nothing, then, suddenly, his fingers touched the harsh surface of the expensive watch.
He pulled out a Rolex with, honest to god, diamonds on the face. The whole thing gleamed obscenely, and Dominic longed to slide it on and feel the weight of it. This was the sort of thing that he had dreamed of as a kid, driving around town in a fancy car, with a hot girl in the passenger seat, an expensive timepiece on his arm, in a primo coat. He would be the envy of anyone he knew, but as he turned to go, he heard someone at the counter asking about the coat.
"It was a Vanderfur. I donated it this morning, but my watch must have fallen out in the pocket. Please, I beg you, I need that watch back. It belonged to my father, and it has great sentimental value."
Dominic intended to walk right on by without acknowledging the man, finders keepers and all that, but as he caught sight of him in profile, he felt his breath whoosh out in a gasp.
It was the guy from his broken Mirror, the guy who lived so lavishly.
Dominic couldn't have said why, but suddenly he was tapping the guy on the shoulder and holding out the expensive watch.
"I heard what you were saying, sir. I came to buy this coat and found the watch in the pocket. It's too nice for me anyway." he said, smiling as the joke fell flat.
The older man's smile went from ear to ear, "Oh my God, thank you, young man. I can't believe how kind you are."
"Yeah," said Dominic, “neither can I."
The man stood mooning over the watch for a few minutes as Dominic paid for his new coat. It was a little more than he strictly wanted to pay for a coat, but he found that he liked it and it would help him remember a time when he'd been so generous. He started to think that maybe he could sell it for more than he'd paid for it, when someone stopped him on the sidewalk.
The guy was running after him, asking him to wait as the watch threatened to slip off his wrist
again.
"I owe you something at least for being so kind." he said, panting a little as he caught his breath.
"It's really okay, Mr. You don't have to,"
"I insist," the man said, taking a watch out of his suit coat that looked almost as impressive as the one he was wearing, "My father bought me the watch you found when I was eighteen and about to leave for college. This watch doesn't have nearly as much sentimental value, but I think it will help you, nonetheless."
He put the watch in Dominic's hand, and patted it warmly.
"I am in your debt, sir. Hopefully I can find a way to repay you someday."
The watch was nice, not as nice as the one he'd had, but still nice. It sold for about thirteen hundred dollars, and Dominic used the money to not only float him for a while, but also buy a much cheaper watch that still looked richer than anything he'd ever owned. He too wanted a reminder of that warm feeling he had felt when he'd done something nice for someone else.
With the rent on his dingy apartment paid for the next few months, Dominic began spending a lot more time watching the Mirror. He had decided that the panel with the rich man might be his greatest friend, if his ex wife was to be his greatest enemy. The top and bottom corners were his future and past, and he used the former to enhance his own future often. The middle two were still a mystery to him, but he felt like they might make sense in time.
The top panel, the one that took up the most space, however, made him more than a little uneasy.
It was gray, the sky full of cracks as it swam like a puddle when you threw a rock into it. Dominic felt like he knew that sky, but he couldn't place it. He had never seen a gray sky like that in his life, except he had. He knew he had, he just didn't know when. He tried to look at that space as little as possible, but it just kept drawing his eye, making him want to take the Mirror and throw it somewhere where it couldn't make him feel that way.
That was usually how he got stuck looking at the middle two panels.
Anything to take his mind off that gray sky full of cracks.
The Mirror kept showing him things and leading him to opportunities, but it wasn't until he saw one of the faces from the middle panel that he thought he knew its true purpose.
He would later reflect on what leap of ego had led him to believe that he knew the purpose of something like this.
He was at Marcie's buying groceries one day, when he saw a familiar face in line, and the true nature of that panel came to him. He had seen the woman before, too many mouths to feed and not enough hours in the day to work to feed them. She was standing at the register, her card having been declined, deciding between a gallon of milk and a box of diapers.
To diaper the baby, or have milk for the other four?
"Here," Dominic said, paying the cashier the remainder from his own wallet. He had no idea why he had been moved to help, but it made it feel good to do so. The woman thanked him profusely, almost to an embarrassing degree, but Dominic told her not to worry about it. She could pay him back if she felt strongly about it, and there was a little more to get her through the week if she needed it. The woman cried as she tried to refuse him, but the money went into her purse, regardless, and Dominic smiled as he watched her go.
After that, he began using his money to help others more often. The Mirror helped him invest his windfalls, helped him change his life for the better, and as he grew, so too did his altruism. Suddenly, he was no longer giving money to single mothers or tipping bills into the homeless peoples cups, but he was helping the city open shelters, providing programs with start-up capital so they could offer meals to people in need, and changing the poverty stricken neighborhood he lived in for the better. That was how he reconnected with the man from the thrift store, and it was a meeting that would change his life forever.
The Mirror had shown him that today he would meet someone who would change his life, but he had never expected it to be the man who had begun his charity.
As he gave the keynote speech, he could see an ocean of faces that had once looked hopelessly out of the Mirror at him. He had given them the hope he now saw there, and the feeling made him tingle. He had always wanted to be someone who could help others, even as he struggled to help himself. He had never realized it before. He had something worthwhile to give now, and he was on top of the world.
As he sat ladling punch into a plastic cup, he heard a voice he hadn't thought of in four years.
"Looks like you've come a long way since the thrift store. I almost didn't recognize you until you started to speak up there."
Dominic turned and there was the man who had given him the watch.
He extended a hand, "We've never been formally introduced. I'm David Rothchild, philanthropist and tech mogul."
"Dominic Frazier, it's nice to see you again."
And it was nice. The two of them talked for the rest of the afternoon, and when they parted ways at sunset, the two were already working on plans for a venture together. Dominic had given him some stock advice, something the Mirror had shown him the day before, and the two parted with promises that they would get together again very soon.
Dominic returned to his apartment, the same dingy one bedroom he had lived in for years, wanting to see what the future had in store now that he had found a man like David to partner with.
Instead of grand business ventures and philanthropic outreach, however, he was greeted with himself stabbing his new friend to death.
Dominic stared at the Mirror for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. This couldn't be his future. Why would he do such a thing? He had a lot of respect for David, and couldn't imagine why he would hurt him. It had to be a fluke, a trick of the light, but every time he came back to the Mirror, it showed him the same thing. His knife red with David's blood and David laying on the floor of his tiny apartment. It never changed, it never wavered, and Dominic decided that enough was enough where the Mirror was concerned.
He put it in the hall closet, shutting it and its proposed future away for good.
At least, he hoped so.
He spent a lot of time with David in the coming months. The two did a lot of good for the community, for many communities, and Dominic found himself living a part of that lifestyle he had only seen through the mirror. Jet setting, eat lavish meals, living the sort of life he had always dreamed about, and with a friend like David Rothchild, he could live that life with an ease he had never known. Dominic was the happiest he had ever been, or he would have been if not for the dreams.
In the dreams, he always saw himself standing over David's corpse as he bled out onto his tacky carpet.
In the dreams, he could hear the sirens approaching as he stood over the man like a conquering hero.
In the dreams, Dominic knew that his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.
It started very subtly. Dominic began spending time at home instead of with David. He was busy with other projects, he needed to give some attention to his other charities, he needed to reconnect with his roots and remember the people who needed him. These were all excuses he gave to his new friend, but in reality, Dominic had begun to resent his business partner. David Rothchild, who had everything, except a criminal record and a checkered past. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if David was doing this to mess him up? Did he know that Dominic was supposed to kill him? Was this his way of stealing his happiness? Just like that bitch of an ex wife of his. Were they in this together? Was she so unhappy with this success that she would stoop to this to make him miserable.
He neglected his work, neglected the things that had brought him joy, and spent all his time in his apartment, begging the mirror to show him anything but the bloody end to his happiness.
When the knock on his door came, Dominic realized that he hadn't left his apartment in weeks. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, or was it the week before? They clung to him sweatily, and the smell from his pants made him think that he might have soiled himself. Now that he was back from his trance, he wondered when the last time he had eaten was? His stomach growled angrily, and he had gotten up to go to the kitchen when he heard the knock again.
"Dominic? Are you there? Your secretary said I could find you here. Are you home?"
David again.
Dominic got up, walking angrily to the door. He would send him away. Better to lose a friend than lose his life. He liked David a lot, he was a good friend, but he liked being a free man more. He had wasted five years in prison, and he would be damned if he'd go back. He didn't care what some mirror said, he wasn't going to let anything jeopardize his future.
"Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"But why? What did I do?"
Dominic closed his eyes, trying not to let the rage that was building behind them out. What had he done? Like he didn't know. He was only trying to steal his life from him.
"I don't owe you an explanation. Please, just leave. I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're acting like this. I'll stand here all night if I have to. I just want to see whats going on with you. I'm worried, Dominic. I'm worried about you."
Dominic didn't remember opening the door, but suddenly the two men were face to face. Some of his neighbors were peeking out of their apartments, trying to see what was going on. Dominic just knew they would have something to talk about tomorrow, and he shuddered to think what sort of stories they might weave. A lovers quarrel? Maybe David had stolen Dominic's girlfriend? Maybe they had stolen money from each other? Who was to say, and all of it would likely paint Dominic the worse for it.
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Can't you just respect my wishes and,"
"Somethings going on here." David cut over him, "You're not acting like yourself. Did someone say something to you? Did you hear something? There's a lot of rumors going around about me, its the same with most rich guys in our circles. I just wanna know why you're so,"
Dominic was sick of hearing it, and shut him up the only way he knew how.
David's tooth flew down the hallway when he hit him, and suddenly the two of them were rolling around the floor and throwing punches. It was the kind of ugly fighting you see in desperate people, and as it rolled into his apartment, Dominic realized he couldn't pummel David into submission. Despite being a decade older than him, the man was in better physical shape than he had a prayer of being. As David rained down blows on him, Dominic sent his hand searching for something to defend himself with.
The knife was something he had lost years ago, a steak knife that had tumbled from his plate and rolled under the couch forever, but when his fingers locked onto it, he knew what to do with it.
Before he knew what was happening, he was standing over David, the other having been stabbed more than a dozen times.
The sirens were coming and as Dominic let the knife slip from his numb fingers, he realized they had taken it from him anyway.
His life, for better or worse, was over now.
Well, not all of it.
There was still a little more left.
The trial had been short. They had found him in the apartment with the murder weapon and the victim, his prints all over both. There had been witnesses to see the two fighting, and it seemed an open and shut case. The Rothchilds found a slew of witnesses willing to testify that Dominic had been the aggressor and with his checkered past, all his lawyer could do was get him life. It had been a sham of a trial, and Dominic didn't know why the court bothered with it. They wanted him to be guilty, the Mirror had told him as much, and now his life was over.
The guards at Clarence County smiled knowingly when they saw him get off the bus.
"Welcome home," that smile seemed to say, "and didn't we tell you you'd be back."
As he lay on the floor of his old cell, the cell they'd seemed to think it was so funny to put him back in, he realized what the gray sky had been showing him all along.
As he lay on the filthy floor and looked at the cracks in the ceiling, he finally realized why they had looked so familiar.
This was his life now, his life and his death, and he wondered how long he would have to look at these cracks and this pitted, pitiable concrete before someone came along and put him out of his misery?
If the Mirror knew, it certainly wasn't telling anymore.
submitted by Erutious to u/Erutious [link] [comments]

2023.03.19 06:39 Odd-Psychology-4747 Spare Ch1

Chapter 1
Legal Disclaimer
Truth or lies will be the first part. Things I find interesting second for those who are interested. And My opinions/observations last. (Working on how to format this, and everything is temporary while I work through the book. I will add to it as I find more.)
Truth or Lies:
"Still, I don’t think I heard those stories until much later. Or maybe I heard them and they didn’t register. To me Balmoral was always simply Paradise."
•Harry loves Balmoral. Most of the Royals have expressed this sentiment, including Prince William about himself and Harry. I haven't found a similar direct quote from Harry, although he does mention enjoying himself their in the documentaries Diana: 7 Days, and Diana: Our Mother (47:40). I hunted up a few pictures out of curiosity.
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•Most of the royal family was there. For varying amounts of time in August, most of them leaving at the same time on the Royal yacht. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-queen-with-some-other-members-of-the-royal-family-on-news-photo/829941260?phrase=Peter%20Phillips%20
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/prince-philip-helps-his-grandaughter-princess-eugene-board-news-photo/829943388
 "Actually, we’d been with Mummy weeks earlier when she first met him, in St. Tropez."
•St Tropez was the first time Dodi and Diana met. Dodi Fayed's obituary states they met at Polo match in 1986. I couldn't find any pictures, quotes or articles about this. I did find pictures of Dodi sitting three seats away from her and Prince William at a 1988 Polo match that was sponsored by his father whom she was seated next to and conversing with. Diana and Charles attended many Polo events sponsored by Harrods and the Al-Fayad's, often with William and Harry. Diana would socialize and entertain while Charles played Polo. Dodi often played for or accompanied his father at these matches. They ran in similar social circles, and found themselves at similar charity events. And Diana's Stepmother Raine Spencer, was on the board at Harrods. She became closer to her when she split from Prince Charles.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-dodi-fayed-1237096.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raine_Spencer,_Countess_Spencer
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/the-crown-diana-first-meet-dodi-mohamed-al-fayed/
https://youtu.be/FEgjudgEZE0
https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/polo-event-guards-club-sponsored-by-mohammed-1348334a
https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/search/al-fayed-polo
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/princess-diana-windsor-polo.html?sortBy=relevant
•Harry and Prince William had only just met Dodi Fayed? See the information above
•Harry vacationed with his mother in July, and drove Jet skis Multiple pictures of this. 1
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•Planned to stay for another, as they did every year. They did visit Balmoral every year. I didn't find any traditional length or specific dates. Just that it was every summer.
Multiple sources close to Diana stated she was returning to London on August 31, to meet with her boys when they returned that day to spend the final week together before school began. As well as press, and newspapers. (A few listed in the comments. Links won't let you into see the article itself unless you sign up so I screenshot them.)
In the Documentary Diana: 7 Days That Shook The World, Diana's personal chauffeur stated he was supposed to pick Diana up on August 31, 1997.
The boys returned to school on Sept. 10, 1997, but no word on whether that was when school let back in or, they began attending again. And no source lists the term dates in 1997. Upcoming term dates list the first week of September as starting dates. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1997/09/10/Young-princes-return-to-school/7865873864000/
•Been at Balmoral Castle one week. Here's where things get tricky. In Mid July Princess Diana took the boys on vacation to St. Tropez, which was cut short by the murder, and later funeral of Gianna Versace, causing Diana to return to London with them to make the funeral in Milan on the 22nd.
"There is evidence in comments that the Princess of Wales made to friends on her return that she enjoyed this holiday. She flew back to England with her sons on Sunday 20 July 1997" - Operation Paget Report
The family usually leaves for Balmoral in August:
+Aug 1, 1997 - Charles Playing Polo in London
+Aug 2, 1997 - Charles Playing Polo in London
+Aug 4, 1997 - The Queen Mother's birthday
+Aug 7, 1997 - Royals board the Yacht for Balmoral
+Aug 11, 1997 - C/W/H arrive at Port Askaigh, Islay Isle while royals continue on yacht.
+Aug 12, 1997 - C/W/H photographed on The River Dee on Balmoral Estate
https://youtu.be/2Ij8lGeKm_s (August 12, 1997 W, C, H at balmoral)
+Aug 16, 1997 - C/W/H photographed at the Falls of Muica on Balmoral Estate
(No mention anywhere I've found of C/H from the 16th to the 30th. No pictures, news articles, nothing.)
+Aug 30, 1997 - Last call with Diana, confirmed by William in the ITV special Diana: Our Mother and Her Legacy released in 2017.
So it seemed pretty straight forward. They did their first day Photo Shoots, and enjoyed their vacation. Until I stumbled on this picture.
It's listed in several places with various dates, including August 21, 1997. Although I didn't find anything from that time publicizing it.
So I tracked Diana to see if she was even in London:
-Diana's Schedule
+Aug 1-7, 1997 - "on Thursday 31 July 1997 they flew to Nice and holidayed together on the French and Italian Riviera aboard Mohamed Al Fayed’s yacht, the ‘Jonikal’. It was during this trip that the famous ‘kiss’ photograph was taken by the Italian photographer, Mario Brenna.... The Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed returned to England on Wednesday 6 August 1997." - Operation Paget Report
+Aug. 8-10, 1997 - Landmine Charity trip to Bosnia 1
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+Aug 13, 1997 - Diana and Dodi visit Derbyshire psychic Rita Rogers
+Aug 14-20, 1997 - Diana on a cruise in Greece with friend Rose Monckton.
+Aug 20, 1997 - Diana returns from vacation
+Aug. 21, 1997 - Diana Jogging from the gym.
+Aug. 21-30, 1997 - Diana vacations again on the Fayed's Yacht with Dodi.
+Aug. 30, 1997 - Diana lands in Paris with Dodi. Calls her son's. https://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Diana_Study.pdf (Warning PDF download. Paget Operation Report)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/09/03/dianas-boys/e373d4d4-4af7-4f9d-af06-235f585d61a3/ (I know it's the mirror but the events are verified, so it's a good timeline)
Harry says in the ITV Special 'Diana:Our Mother'(45:40) to the two men from Bosnia that "They had seen his mother more recently than he had." (She was in Bosnia August 8-10.) After sitting through several news reports, and documentaries I can't find anything about a lunch other than a couple tabloid articles from after 2015. It's not mentioned in any of the documentaries I saw or by William himself. Being that it was 10 days before her death I'd think it would've been everywhere.
I haven't found any other pictures of Prince William or Diana in those outfits. And again no mention of Harry, William or Charles in the last two weeks of August before Diana's death.
•Dodi gave Diana a diamond bracelet. " Bulgari bracelet On 31 August 1997, the Princess was wearing a Bulgari seed-pearl bracelet that was held at each end with diamond-encrusted dragons which were given to her by Dodi Fayed. It was last worn by the Princess on the day of her death and subsequently became one of the 14 personal effects recovered from the crash scene.[64] It is said that due to the impact of the collision the bracelet broke "scattered on the back seat and floor", what was recovered of the bracelet, in part, was "6 white pearls"." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewels_of_Diana,_Princess_of_Wales (Diana's Jewelry)
Interesting Tidbits (At least to me)
"The long-ago Queen, for instance. Mad with grief, she’d locked herself inside Balmoral Castle and vowed never to come out. And the very proper former prime minister: he’d called the place “surreal” and “utterly freaky.”"
•The Queen was Queen Victoria following the death of her husband Prince Albert. And the Prime Minister was Tony Blair.
•What Other Royals Have Said About Balmoral. For Queen Victoria, Balmoral was “ my dear paradise in the Highlands.”
Princess Eugenie has called it “the most beautiful place in the world.” -Our Queen At Ninety
“I am never so happy,” King George V once said, “ as when I am fishing the pools of the Dee.”
"He chatted us up. chatted Mummy up. Specifically Mummy. Pointedly Mummy. His eyes plumping into red hearts. •He targeted Diana.
Dodi was a romantic, playboy who was rich-by-daddy. He was married and divorced once already. Had been photographed with a string of Hollywood starlets, though whether he dated them or not was unknown. He was also at the very least in a relationship with an American Model, Kelly Fisher(Ms. Fisher says engaged, and even filed a lawsuit claiming such. Mohammed Al-Fayed (Dodi's Father) claims they were not. (Although he's been embroiled in enough controversies, including the Diana Death Conspiracies which were investigated and ruled false, to make his word questionable at the least.) I don't think there's any way to truly know for sure if Dodi went after Diana, his father orchestrated their relationship or if it just happened.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodi_Fayed
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Al-Fayed
https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-videos/detail?itemid=79b153d4f20210ad69548676309c9c2b&mediatype=video
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/model-kelly-fisher-admits-to-having-292416
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a41792377/kelly-fisher-dodi-al-fayed-ex-girlfriend-facts/ (Copy of phone transcripts. Warning link is a PDF download.)
•Harry admits his memory is faulty. Are we distancing ourselves, Informing, or making excuses? Noteworthy.
•"We were having a grand time, just the three of us, staying at some old gent’s villa."
This sounds a bit rude to me. A million dollar ghost writer, and 'we stayed at some old guys mansion' ends up in the book? Who's proofreading this? Not to mention entitled. If someone let you spend two weeks at their 30 bedroom villa, hang out on their yacht and ride their jet skis, you'd think you'd have the decency to at least have a fact checker google their name. Or simply 'we stayed at an older gentlemans villa, an acquaintance of my mothers.' Hostility, maybe?
•"There was much laughter, horseplay, the norm whenever Mummy and Willy and I were together, though even more so on that holiday."
This could be important for later, so noting it.
•"The whole family, with the exception of Mummy, because Mummy was no longer part of the family."
It may just be me, but again one name for a person. No nicknames. And he continuously calls his mother 'Mummy'. In past interviews, and comments made pre-meghan he calls her 'mum' and only really refers to her as 'Mummy' occasionally when speaking to William. Like the ITV Diana:Our Mother documentary. He was young when she died(Almost 13), but not so young that he'd commonly be referring to her as mummy. I don't know if this is a normal thing for people who lose a parent as a child, a cultural thing that is normal in the UK, or an attempt at manipulation, but it's odd.
•. "Wherever Mummy was, I understood that she was with her new friend. That was the word everyone used. Not boyfriend, not lover. Friend."
Friend would be the right term when speaking to, or in front of a 12 year old boy about his Mom. Especially if you don't know the official status of the relationship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Diana,_Princess_of_Wales
https://www.crackle.com/watch/2BAED314-7A7B-4DF5-A850-9B3AF794D2FB (Diana: 7 Days. Free but with ads)
https://vimeo.com/252549098 (Diana: Our Mother)
submitted by Odd-Psychology-4747 to Meghans_Truth [link] [comments]

2023.01.23 19:52 Dog_Bread Parental Paradigm Primer

Just a post to recap my thinking in a big picture way that might assist. There is no proof of what is said here. It's just the result of absorbing the game repeatedly, talking about it online and thinking. This is not a troll post. I'm sure this is one way the game is meant to be understood, even if my own view of it is imperfect and subject to change. It's important that when you read this, you understand that I'm not trying to negate your view of the game. I believe there is room is GTA V for many different perspectives and outcomes.
Virtually everything I post is based on the idea that in the world of GTA V, the parents of humanity were not Adam and Eve but a dinosaur and an alien. The mother was a dinosaur living on Earth. The father was from another planet. When he arrived on Earth, he committed genocide against the indigenous life, but spared a female to have as his mate. They had a dysfunctional relationship which ended with her biting off his dick, sort of a messy divorce.
The mother is represented by the moon, the father is represented by the sun, and each of those celestial bodies is a parental eye keeping watch on activity in San Andreas. They are god and goddess, and their story is the basis of various belief systems. Here's an illustration of these parents embedded in the GTA map.
I believe that this underlying mythology (or meta-verse) is central to the Chiliad Mystery and informs at least three potential paths our protagonists can walk in order to unlock secrets.
I associate the mother with conservativism, and the father with liberalism. This is the opposite to how those political views are usually characterised, because both parties are operating unhealthily. On one hand we have the ruthlessly conservative devouring mother, who'll take anything from the alpha male but is a castrating bitch to everyone else. On the other hand we have the excessively liberal and hot tempered father, a bad example to his kids because he's an egotist who cheats.
These ideas are taken from the game, which has metaphorical references in dialogue, songs, TV shows, ads, billboards, plot and radio chatter. Characters and situations parallel the underlying meta-verse, for example in Trevor's relationship with this mother, Michael's relationship with his family, Ron's divorce, the killing of Leonora Johnson, Impotent Rage's hypocrisy, and the misguided righteousness of Republican Space Rangers and Kung Fu Rainbow Lazer Force. When familial relationships are mentioned in the game it is frequently in the context of dysfunction to humorous effect (especially bad parenting, incest and infidelity), but each mention ties in to the meta-verse, illuminating a small part of it.
I think the makers of the game spent time to develop this meta-verse and seed it subliminally throughout GTA V in every way possible. The intention was that we as mystery hunters would play repeatedly, examine everything, and eventually have an “aha” where we understood the situation, as bizarre as it may seem, because it's supported throughout the game.
When you have these images in your mind, playing a few missions or listening to a radio show invariably leads to spotting many, many references to the meta-verse, to the point that it helps refine the picture you started with and makes your understanding more accurate. This is “Assuming the Truth”. Sometimes you have to make a guess about what a metaphor means, and see if that assumption is borne out by other observations.
The Chiliad Mystery appears to be faith-based by design, in that it exposes little when approached sceptically. That's a cop out to some, especially we atheists, because we usually require proof before we believe anything. However, if you can allow yourself to be suggestible, the mystery can be a sort of spiritual journey through changing beliefs or shifting paradigms.
Here are some bare-bones speculative roadmaps for each character based on this underlying premise. I feel like these theories need some more work, but this is where I'm at:
Trevor has metaphorical sex with his goddess mother. He proves his manhood by killing other men, hunting animals, engaging in risky stunts, and by avoiding harming women. He may even refrain from returning Patricia Madrazo to her abuser by abandoning the mission path once he has her at his trailer, to show how much he cares for women. He strips down and goes for days without bathing (saving) to enhance his pheromones and ignores the temptations of sex, saving himself for his true love. Finally, he judges when she is most fertile during her cycle, then shoots the moon repeatedly on consecutive days (crescent moon glyph, three times, three am), using the moon cycle tracker at the observatory. He may believe that the torrential rain is a sign that mother is getting wet with excitement. However, his rape of her is actually a gross sin that results in a rain of mother's tears (rain glyph), and she may even snap at him with a lightning bolt. The end result is that the part of the map is drowned by rising water levels. A jetpack will become available from Fort Zancudo as a result of the rain's effect on UFO security monitoring signals (radio tower glyph) that could be detectable by CB. Trevor can use the newfound mobility granted by the jetpack in his personal war against the attacking UFOs that now want to put him in his place.
Michael metaphorically sucks his father's cock. He shows he is just like his dad by sleeping around and ignoring his family, even abandoning his mission path to avoid their return after they leave in Did Somebody Say Yoga? Since he's a good guy who knows that daddy is watching (all-seeing eye glyph), he takes care to triple tithe and to kill people “organically”, that is, only after they have already shown themselves to be unsaveable by shooting at him. The exception is that he sometimes kills women at night (faded glyph as sunset) while the moon watches, to show his spite for her. He could even abduct Amanda for the purpose of such a sacrifice when the moon is full and mother's vision is clearest. The sucking part is the yogic breathing of Michael's daily morning ritual. He's up at eight on the mountaintop to deal with Morningwood, in-2-3-4, out-2-3-4. The extra sunny weather that results could be interpreted as the patriarch beaming on his favourite son in the afterglow of emptying his celestial balls, but is actually boiling anger at his son's attempt to fellate him – it says he's failed as a father. In the end the Earth cracks from lack of water and dinosaurs emerge from the underground in Blaine County. As a good Epsilonist, Michael is given a UFO with which to prevent the reptiles from devouring LS.
The remaining protagonist takes a more innocent view of what he can do to please both his parents. Franklin is going to metaphorically make love. He does this by not killing anyone at all, promoting the dove of love. This could be accomplished by driving carefully during Franklin and Lamar, and then abandoning the missions in favour of community outreach work. Franklin goes out into the streets, and listens for the sound of his dinosaur mother. The sound is referred to as an “ommm”, which is actually the mother blowing on the severed penis of the alien father. This reminds me of how the parasaurolophus, apparently depicted on the GTA V map, is thought to have made a horn blowing sound. When Franklin hears that sound, he should speak. Speaking to coincide with the voice of the goddess makes Franklin speak only positive things and thereby spread love and peace in crime stricken neighbourhoods. I prefer this path to the others because it will result in a heavenly outcome instead of hell, and I believe it to be an accelerated path that doesn't take as long as the others to execute.
There's more to this that I'll expand on in another post. Hope you will comment with questions.
EDIT: Here are some references as requested by Azmatang. More to be added...
Listening for clues and metaphors
The Parent Gods
Faces in the map
Trevor's path:
Michael's path:
Franklin's path:
updated 08/02/23, 17:45 GMT
submitted by Dog_Bread to chiliadmystery [link] [comments]

2022.09.03 02:03 freedcreativity A Manifesto: Contagious Mental Illness

We're living through not a traditionalist collapse, but the second-order simulation of collapse - the collapse of collective meaning. The real one comes later.
I'm not crazy, you're not crazy, but together we’re collectively crazy. Let me explain:
What we are currently rollercoastering along (us in God's own country), is the gradual shattering of the communal meaning of symbols. This is to say nothing of violence, climate change, plague, and social breakdown. The sum-of-all-ideas has decayed. Our collective ability to act upon the world around us has decreased. Predatory ideas - beautiful in their transmissible simplicity - are choking out the house of cards which scientists have built since the dawning of the Enlightenment. Like a grove of Kudzu, predatory falsity creeps over the semiotic landscape. The memeverse replaces discourse, just as TicTok replaces TV. Hypernormalisation, the misuse of words, and single-digit-second-long videos hide the vacuousness of modernity. Human rights have been curtailed. But it is only now that we notice the noose having tightened. The police state was already here. The brothers in the street knew it 40 years ago as their forefathers knew it on the slave ships.
To return to the click bait: we are seeing the rise of a contagious mental disease. A memetic, stochastic, hyper-neuro-techno-epistemological miasma. A disease which sees the complex technological world around us as natural. A mental contagion - one which destroys the Truth. Reality crumbles aided by biotechnological agents which are now evolving to prey on sentient life. Skies without stars, flowers without bees, land separated by asphalt, money without work, health without life. Beauty is simplicity. Ignorance is often said to be bliss, but we now inhabit a representation of the real world, a system of deliberate ignorance. An idiot nirvana, held within the torment nexus.
The vaulted kings of the capitalist order, despite their inherent superiority have failed. The conditions which allowed their rise, will not live longer than their artificially extended mortal coil. Cheap abundant energy, international cooperation, a lack of outright fascist ideology, a stable monetary system, functional ecological services and a general lack of deranged assholes operating in the open… We lack the slightest idea how to behave in all but the most favorable circumstances. Much less when there is a plague happening. Much less during the Greatest Depression 3.0, now with AI_Hitler™ by Metalphabet.
We know the coming recession is one straight out of the Panic of 1895, just as we have known the draft content of the supreme court jester's ruling long before its ghoulish reveal. We have known for years that the catholic majority would likely shake Roe's interpretation. We have known since 2014 that the court would fall to conservatives, although the rate was indeed, 'faster than expected.' The outrage is merely the realization of a white, urban, left-leaning creeping fascism having finally overstepped its sanitized boundaries of the female majority's social-media dominated Overton window. The criminalization of abortion and economic ruination is analogous to the war in Ukraine; a unthinkable but readily existent reality. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her wisdom and folly, knew Roe was unsound based upon the unenumerated right to privacy. A more sound ruling would use the Equal Protection Clause, but power is more attractive than good policy. With her death, the post-liberal simulation of governance faltered. Our referents to liberal policy, have been since 9/11 based mostly in fiction, stump speeches, and misplaced ideas of how the legal system works. The world that we have intuited is already dead. Uncle Thomas, Trump, Putin and Murdoch are just its gravediggers.
The death instinct has prevailed. A million people are dead in the US; the specter of war looms over Europe once more; the seas and skies and glaciers themselves buckle under the crushing weight of humanity; healthcare criminalized; rationality has ceased. Step back, see the cloying void but consider how we reached this point.
Our marvelous brains are excellent at watching plants grow from dirt. Our brains specialize in making changes to the environment to increase our own fitness. This meat calculator is for hunting and gathering and fighting and fucking. This blossomed from primitive structures like the firepit, the fish weir, and the metlapil into urban technological society. Yet as the ard destroyed the forests, through slash and burn; the horse collar and moldboard destroyed the grasslands, turning over rich sod of ancient prairies; the bessemer process has turned over whole mountain ranges, wrecking the delicate balancing act of global temperature and climate. In the same way, the transistor of Bell labs has destroyed meaning; digital society in the mold of its forebears has wrecked the very process by which we build shared ideas over the seething leviathan of humanity.
To quote Schopenhauer:
“No difference of rank, position, or birth, is so great as the gulf that separates the countless millions who use their head only in the service of their belly, in other words, look upon it as an instrument of the will, and those very few and rare persons who have the courage to say: No! my head is too good for that; it shall be active only in its own service; it shall try to comprehend the wondrous and varied spectacle of this world and then reproduce it in some form, whether as art or as literature, that may answer to my character as an individual. “
Trump's coup was predictable, Putin's war was predictable, Uncle Clarence's vow to end liberal society was predictable. A strange mood, an effervescent modern immunity, stops professional media personalities from framing the police state as the boot stamping on a human face forever. In the US, you live in a dictatorship without a figurehead. Capital has won, even its keepers have fallen under this spell of a primordial marketer's art-deco dreams. It has come unmoored from the reality which holds our society, and the hyperreality which we’ve built on top. Capital has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its keepers, JP Morgan and the Panic of 1907 only endeavored to keep their heads. The guillotines were melted down, and we beat our social contract into battleships, planes, and tanks and then fell asleep to dream of endless bloodshed.
JP Morgan and the bankers saved his rival forging a behemoth of early 20th century corporate history. At its peak in 1943, US Steel employed 340,000 people and produced 35 million tons of steel. Creating the arms, armor, ships, planes and bombs which fought the largest conflicts in human history, so far. However, this great Moloch-furnace to human death could not be sustained, they rusted in the uneasy peace of the late 20th century. Falling off the S&P index in the 2000’s and leaving behind only the failure of managerialism, decaying wages, and the rust belt. Those dreams of blood became dreams of capital, but blood still seeps under the door. Thy orisons forgotten.
The myth of progress continues. Whig historiography, the idea that history moves toward positive progressive outcomes, is like a sheet covering the human remains at a particularly bad motor vehicle collision. We can fret about the traffic and drive by a few tarps, unperturbed only for a roll of the cosmic dice that was not our meat spread thinly across the pavement. We do not consider how a temple of steel, war and death could falter. But falter they do, consider GE, Boeing, IBM, and eventually Tesla.
Joe Biden, for all his faults and sins, is the most conservative president since the first George Bush and in a darker interpretation since Ike. He co-authored the modern police state with notorious racist Strom Thurmond. He's sat on the Senate's ghoulish committee of intelligence bootlickers since before I was born. He is a Catholic, sharing that faith with 5 Justices of the Supreme Court. Biden has made disparaging comments about abortion, socialized medicine... But somehow, nearly half of the voting public believes this milquetoast neoliberal dog-and-pony show to be 'too left wing.' The US GOP has lost their grasp on reality, and to add insult to injury, some tech bro has thrown a rock through their Overton window and stolen their TV.
History has, in the short few years between the collapse of the Soviet Union and species death, inverted the Whig's ideals. Climate change could have been averted by serious lawmakers, embracing bleeding-edge technologies of the 1890's, 1950's and 1970's. Electrified transit, the fission reactor and photovoltaics could have kept the industrialists on top of the pile and the progressive hyperreality functioning. Coal has crept into the soul of industry, soot is the breath. The machine does not just need money, iron, and fire - it also needs blood. Increasing technological progress is driving humanity backward.
The witch-kings of capital have bloody dreams of conquest in their perfect sleep. Human beings must be ground down in the mill as well as steel. Even with the promise of perfection, mechanical workers could not keep the machine from needing blood, even if that blood is now in the form of mental burnout from the unrealistic necessity of a thousand times normal human productivity.
This dilution and dismemberment of meaning is added to by the attacks of SARS-CoV2 on the nervous system. Long 'Rona and the deaths of 3 to 10 million worker's productive lives have allowed Generation Z a brief gasp of fresh capital. Which was cruelly denied to the Millennials. The collapse of the economy, and true monetary ruination forestalled only by the infirmity of the management class. Managers who have retired at rates far beyond those in 'essential' positions.
Contagious mental illness… Not just a philosophical rot, but a disease which weakens its host’s faculties. Those mental abilities are our best defense against the virus. But just like your T-cells, they have been eroded by SARS. We have glimpsed the terror of the randomness, the pattern screamer. The void itself hates life, and random mutations will one day reach a fitness to use industrial societies, as a mold infects an ant hill. Now that virus has become so sharpened in the evolutionary arms race, the miracle cures of the pharmaceutical industry will falter. AIDS did not mutate fast enough to evade the antivirals in the same way. The monoclonal antibodies embraced by the anti-science-save-for-myself crowd, those treatments are now ineffective. Antibody escape is here. With BA.4.6 we are now seeing the end game. How much more transmissible can the virus become, and does it matter if the whole population are infected?
The breakdown, the anger, the burnout, the violence are being driven not only by economic, social and epistemological factors but also epidemiological issues. The water has not started to boil, but the quiet shrieking of superheated water circulating from the heating coil has started. The warning signs are blaring. We can look to China as a perfect control for this grand, unplanned epidemiological study. The draconian measures taken to control the outbreak, could replace the US as a superpower. As the ravages of war spared the US, the virus is taking a special place in God’s own country. A neuro-social-epidemiological study conducted on the whole world population. A disaster which we will grapple with until the end of our days. It is SARS-CoV-2, an actual disease of the mind. We tend to focus on the human costs of the virus, the outright deaths. It is verboten to discuss the lingering effects of an uncontained neurological illness. The virus’ ancestors infected neural tissues, as does SARS-CoV-2. Long-term psychiatric morbidity in SARS survivors is nearly 60%. Three in five people. They knew in 2009:
“The outbreak of SARS can be regarded as a mental health catastrophe. PTSD was the most prevalent long-term psychiatric condition, followed by depressive disorders.”
Everyone was exposed, and even if we take the 93 million total peddled by the CDC the official count represents 30 percent of the population. But if we take the Household Pulse survey data from the much older Census Bureau, about 45% of the population is depressed. Table 2a and 2b from Health subset, suggests that 48% of people have “Frequency of feeling down, depressed, or hopeless” for at least “several days.” These reports are interpolated to the whole population, but the picture is clearly dire. Nothing like only 13% of children not getting enough to eat some days, in the richest country in the world. Half of respondents are depressed. The epidemic of mental illness is just beginning.
The hubris and stupidity of the capitalist order on disease will be an interesting study, if anyone is in any shape to make those analyses in 50 years. It will not be much different than the hubris on the environment, social contract, or the finite nature of the world - but the variety gives it some unique flavor. One that tastes of phlegm, antivirals, and failed public health programs.
This failure can be expanded, this is the failure of sentience. We have reached the point at which, even those specialists with a lifetime of study, cannot make good choices. Each line of code, each law, each executive proclamation, sends unintended ripples across the noosphere. The overlapping complexity of good governance has grown into a burden which cannot be shouldered, even by the Einsteins of our age. There are no renaissance men, no scientist-barons, no alchemist-courtiers left to become the new John Rambo of the mountains of data. The mental work is too great, and our AI progeny has not had time to mature.
The failure of rationality, the failure of the Will has come to us in full force.
We can feel the truth. The rust grows on the soul of humanity. Louts, idiots, and psychos have come to dominate our society. The gnawing death eats outward, first corrupting the simple pleasures, then the higher mental faculties, followed by the nervous system and then finally the lungs. The death drive has won, your health, your mind, have a one third chance at degradation for each wave of plague you endure.
To quote Hume:
“This deficiency in our ideas is not, indeed, perceived in common life, nor are we sensible, that in the most usual conjunctions of cause and effect we are as ignorant of the ultimate principle, which binds them together, as in the most unusual and extraordinary. But this proceeds merely from an illusion of the imagination; and the question is, how far we ought to yield to these illusions. This question is very difficult, and reduces us to a very dangerous dilemma, whichever way we answer it. For if we assent to every trivial suggestion of the fancy; beside that these suggestions are often contrary to each other; they lead us into such errors, absurdities, and obscurities, that we must at last become asham'd of our credulity. Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright fancies may in this respect be compar'd to those angels, whom the scripture represents as covering their eyes with their wings.”
You live within the flights of imagination of some 1980's financier coked out of his skull. Decry China's social credit system all you want, the USA built a worse one with credit scores in 1989. For our technological fever dreams of a civilization, we still live in a reality which needs a bed, food and comfort. What beats at the heart of every machine is naught but the distilled essence of ten thousand years of technological development. Each server is a million, million spears thrust through an innocent heart. It starts innocently enough, the discovery of fire, metallurgy, writing but has rapidly devolved into building systems to maximize human suffering for profit.
Behold, Truth. Actual reality stares us in the face everyday, but we hide behind our increasing complexities, compounded ego, antidepressants, and logarithmic growth. The line cannot go up forever. Progress does not come without waste. Science cannot move forward without heaps of dead monkeys, but governance requires mass graves. Any wildlife biologist can tell you what happens when rabbits see rapid population growth. Any climate scientist can show you that the last 500-odd months have been the hottest ever. Any (competent) historian can show you similar up and downward trends in Rome, China, India, and Mesoamerican empires. Any virologist can show you data from the previous plague to make one's blood run cold.
Infinite knowledge, unlimited power. We have become Gods, in ways that even a 19th century philosopher would struggle to comprehend. The Will has become deranged, disorganized. Even our dictators, populists, and modern-day bloodletters of all kinds, have become so weakened. They flail ineffectually at the totality of human condition. We have created a new complexity, far surpassing all attempts of entropy. Static is as incompressible as information packed QR codes or edited six second videos. Our multifarious thoughts -- every sight, sound, feeling -- are now documented in endless electronic storage. But for all the ennui of the human condition which now stands recorded in digital ephemera, we have not advanced our collective soul.
The Will has weakened. Between the wars our great-grandparents dreamed of dams, train tracks, skyscrapers, electricity, gas, and televisions. They built them: only one river flowed to the ocean undammed on the West Coast. We grew wheat on rocky plateaus, tomatoes in deserts, and almonds in salt flats. The US west is a desert civilization, beating the scale of the Indus River Valley Civilization, or Anasazi by ten-thousand fold. But that water is drying up, just as the bustling cliff dwellings, Kivas, adobe fortresses were abandoned, so too will Phoenix be scoured by the desert winds.
Like our rivers, our Will has dried up. The dreams of Buckminster Fuller, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier of a shining city of well-planned dwellings, beautiful ergonomic furniture, open parks, and glittering towers of intellectual activity are dead. Replaced with the moldering ruins of late 1970’s apartment complexes, endless miles of 1980’s strip malls, stroads whose original intent was lost in the 1990’s orgy of greed and duplicity; we sit in an anti-urbanism, a people-last philosophy of maximized shareholder value.
Beauty is simplicity. Truth is beauty and understanding is a hurled knife. Me, a low-brow idiot, trapped by massive forces beyond human reason, possesses functionally infinite knowledge. Every second more videos are uploaded than you can watch in a lifetime, every minute a ceaseless drum of email notifications pound the entire globe, every day priceless scientific knowledge is printed and burned for warmth (and grant funding).
Know this: it all ends.
We have coddled the viper. Beating in the hearts of humanity is our death. The urge to drive over a cliff, the urge to suck on the sweet blued steel, the urge to yell fire, the urge to amass troops, the urge to blanket the earth in nuclear holocaust... How many people have actually died of old age, throughout all of human history? A lucky few.
We stand on that precipice, but our compatriots have already jumped. Venus by Tuesday. Global financial collapse. Ecological failure. Complete nihility for just a few dollars more. Save two pennies for the reaper, so you might pay the final toll across the river Styx. We have breached the third seal, and the fourth is waiting in the wings.
The desert fathers knew human nature as well as we do. John of Patmos knew the debauchery of our billionaires from the lives and vices of the propraetors, the Roman governors and aristocrats. He was boiled in oil for it, and perhaps our fate rhymes.
Know this rot is not just the personal debauchery of the orgy, or the black mass. This is not the Massacre of Innocents, the Feast of Chestnuts, or the Hellfire Club. Those are only abominable to the finely tuned morals of a dead sky-father. WE have much better abominations to practice, the kind which can only be developed through two thousand years of finely tuned perversion. I'm not talking about adrenochrome or some other thrice-damned wacko talk...
Our world has become a cruel inversion of those ancient empires. Where their crimes were those of a lack, ours come from a false and fleeting abundance. Childhood poverty is now in the majority. We (in the US) have the largest prison population, the richest gangs, the lowest tax rates on those most able to pay. Soaring overdose deaths. Massive pollution on a global scale. The complete failure to contain two deadly pathogens. Decayed human rights. Mass shootings. Criminalized women's healthcare. Resurgent fascism, stochastic terror amid the decayed decadence of a burning NeoBabylon. “[God] has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries. He has avenged on her the blood of his servants … Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever.”
What base cruelty can be so adamant about creating suffering? This is not suffering from the lack, the cruelty of nature, that of famine. Although famine is coming. This is not the natural background of cruelty which has arisen from the process of carbon based life attempting to survive in the face of the inexorable universe and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This is not the lion eating the gazelle, facing off on their limited energy budgets on a grassy savanna.
Collapse is the shriek of two nitromethane-fueled dragsters, charging headlong into the void. This is the brief, hideous cry of Tory-IIc, a nuclear fire to put all engines of the world to shame. We’re going to burn white hot and consume the entirety of the world’s easily harvested resources. The thin skin of the earth only holds so many riches, oil, timber, tungsten, iridium. They have been piled up toward the sky, in a sacrificial pyre.
The believers, they are called to: 'Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.' Surely, an omnipotent God will welcome these true fiends. These are the Antichrists, true progenitors of apocalypse. As a non-believer, or even a Nihilist, one must put on a certain sardonic smile that the Good Book so aptly knew its adherents.
We are rich, and fat like sacrificial lambs. The dark priesthood of American exceptionalism, or perhaps Chinese nationalism, stands ready with the bloodletting knife. This is an active suffering of systems built to create dysfunction. Complexity has bred pain. Every bill, every ad, every car. Each one is designed to create the most unpleasant experiences. That suffering drives one to purchase, where scarcity has failed, artificial needs have been created. The nursemaid of suffering was the advertiser, and the midwife is consumer culture. Together, they have built such unpleasant experiences that we now cling to sanity. Society possessing many of the qualities of a conquered nation put to pillage by a hungry, unpaid mercenary army. But in a flash of modern brilliance, we are at once the pillager and the pillaged.
The pounding of the bar's sound system, its poor seating, cheap drinks. These conditions form a self reinforcing system of drunkenness and unpleasantness. One cannot communicate because of the ear splitting noise, so one must continue to drink. One cannot sit comfortably, so we crowd the bar to spend money and eviscerate those higher cognitive functions brought out to speak of great ideas. One has become drunk, making the suffering tolerable; the company and comfort forgotten. Spend money to suffer, and in alleviating your suffering achieve that false death of one enraptured in beautiful agony. Perhaps your suffering and rapture will attract some stranger to share your pain and purpose? Likely not… Just as our bar patron, we will be cast out into an empty, darkened world.
This contagious mental illness is the FNORD, invisible to the conscious mind.
"Your heart will remain calm. Your adrenaline gland will remain calm. Calm, all-over calm. You will not panic. You will look at the fnord and see it. You will not evade it or black it out. You will stay calm and face it."
We can feel this fnord, it is the manifestation of the death drive, too long denied by modernity. It is the face peeled off of the industrial society. It is the acceptance of the surreality of our second-order simulation. We no longer merely ape the pleasures of a decayed Victorian sensibility. We have created new meta-pleasures divorced twice to the original social pleasures. Image as representation, as reality. Just as the post-war United States basked in the false glow of an abundance which will likely be forever unequaled. We now bask in the heat lamp of the warmed over dreams of that earlier age. Home ownership, education, health all shared social undertakings which cannot be merely quantified by a single individual. The asbestos shoveler who was resistant to mesothelioma, or the psychopath who runs the company are merely different manifestations of the same failure of social thinking.
This is the paradoxical negative freedom of our late capitalist system. The individual is bound only by the unbreakable bars of physics, the reality of capital, and the bondage of the mind to a normative reality. To paraphrase John Gray’s commentary of Isaiah Berlin: “Negative freedom is the absence of obstruction to pursuing the discordant end of human beings, positive freedom applies to a type of human being that does not exist.” Positive freedom is the prescriptive, essentially religious, ideal life in which all humans would live a single, ideal life by God’s own hand. Negative freedom is that ability to make choices, which may be at odds with the greater number of freedoms. Negative freedom is that which has propelled our society, it is the endless selections of cereal, it is the freedom to publish the Daily Stormer (that neonazi rag), it is the freedom to purchase a Dodge Ram and drive drunk. “The freedom to engage in racist expression cannot be protected in the same context as freedom from racist abuse: the two are logically incompatible.”
Do not mistake my argument, it is not advocating for dictatorship, police, or hierarchy. Despite the best efforts of nation-states, mega-corps, banking clans, landed nobility, consulting firms, maoist revolutionaries, chaebols, think tanks, universities, armies and a thousand, million middle managers the system has failed. Complexity did not make humanity more fit to survive. Fire was a mistake, compounded by a million generations of suffering. Interlocking bureaucracies did nothing to prevent their own destruction, despite warnings dating back nearly 150 years.
Surely, even if global carbon emissions, social dysregulation, or plague could not reasonably be controlled, the great, crushing weight of all of social hierarchies would draw one toward building systems which could survive?
Apparently not… For all the wealth and brains, apparently only the scientific researchers could possibly envision a better world, one which steers the fragile boat of civilization away from the rocky shoals of nihility. All the world’s petty dictators' ill intent are only matched by their impotence. Each tiny dictator, each landlord, each capitalist had the opportunity to make some small change, but is instead still greedily scrabbling for the last scrap of meat off the table. They now fight over the bones of the world. We have not yet seen the Jackals who will crack the marrow from those bones, but a tiny Pol Pot grows in the soul of everyone.
A Napoleon, a Hirohito, a Kim Il Sung, a Leopold the Second, a Nixon - they quietly gestate in the spirits of our unhappy world. One could not say that your boss would not have you put to death for any tiny infraction, only that they do not have the power to do so yet. Our society has become one of fractionalized dictatorship, every tiny interaction wearing on the social contract. Those selfless workers - nurses, teachers, servers - have failed to keep the world working. They lack the Will, the political ability.
The kindness of the individual has been wrung dry, a better world comes not from a strong national leader, but the aggregate actions of those caring for our sick, dumb, hungry masses. They would soothe the infirmities of the individual, and create a better world. But no, any ideas of managerialism, utopianism, utilitarianism are rapidly snatched away by those who have still bought the lie. If they just stamp on a thousand faces, perhaps their jackboots could be revered for a thousand years. “Here are the boots which your great-great grandfather personally kicked 589 people’s dreams to death with, it took him his whole career.” They’ll get a medal, and a letter from the CEO, and a supermodel wife, and a pile of gold… In the next life. Just as their Christian forebears would, after putting a protestant city to the torch.
This modern dictatorship is one which places an undue burden on the social bonds. Bonds which once had clear guardrails, some form of social reciprocity. This reciprocity may not have been particularly pleasant, but it kept the mass of humanity struggling forward. Each landlord, each cop, each loan officer - they are required to create human suffering. It is not of their own volition, but some may grow to enjoy the dark, sadistic pleasures of the ruination of human life. It is likely better that the worst offenses are committed uncaringly and following the letter-of-the-law. A luxury house is much more luxurious when there is a lack of housing. A wagyu steak is much more savory when the world is on the brink of starvation. A college degree is much more valuable when the world’s information has been locked in ancient buildings, overgrown with ivy. The scarcity is artificial, and so is the value.
This suffering is not as apparent in the broader world, in the slums and rural fields. They have not seen the horror of manufacturing consent or the constant, omnipresent propaganda world in which the urban individual is submersed. Truly the Hyperreality is rooted and flowering, it is not only the cloying perfection of Disneyland or the carefully manicured store displays on 5th avenue. Those are the test pads of an earlier age. Hyperreality has subsumed our whole social interactions, we are no longer atomized individuals but actors in a great Twitch stream of consumption and quiet pain.
Which is not to say that the rural individual lives in reality; in their grief, their despair, and their unanswered want have clung to a cheap imitation of the American Dream. To quote a great philosopher: “It's called the American Dream because you’d have to be asleep to believe it.” Central to this vision is a predatory version of Chrisitanity, worse in many ways than those structures of the Church called the Pornocracy or late Byzantine civic religion. It is the bastard child of the 3rd Great Awakening and American Civil Religion. Raised in an abusive post-war home borne of the twin Americanisms of televangelism and consumerism, it is a dark inversion of the city-on-a-hill which underlies the urban hyperreality. A field-in-a-valley, the dream of a dark serfdom ruled by a modern Mad Max dystopia of F150s, flag print clothing, amphetamines, fentanyl, guns, and freedom.
Freedom! Freedom to what? Freedom to die, die as an individual. Ungoverned, ignorant, solitary. They cling to their bibles and guns. As if a hurricane, drought, flood, famine, or heat dome can be shot. As if a bank can be converted to respectable behavior. As if their pitiable existence has meaning, that somehow Sleepy Joe Biden has conspired personally against every one of them. Joe has prevented them from re-roofing the double wide after the winds, Joe has increased the cost of goods and depressed wages. Clearly, the answer is a new Jesus Christ, orange and litigious. An east coast elite; the notorious con-man, who literally owns a golden toilet; an individual raised in the lap of luxury, who fought his own Vietnam against venereal disease and coke.
Clearly a Man made in God’s rotting corpse’s image. ‘Ecce homo,’ they say as the libs rage against his horrific visage. Somehow, his words contain fractal untruths. Each statement, having layers of un-meaning like inverse Shakespeare. Falsity upon fatality. Lies upon untruths upon marketing pitches. Governance through the filter of reality TV production. Some evil brownian motion has sharpened this superior man’s wit to a razor edge, the sudafed, diet cokes, and call girls have created a true monster of base instinct to rival any dozen virtuous thinkers. An idiot Einstein of crawling perversions, bad manners, and 1980s business power plays. He does not do it consciously, indeed one could question the very sentience of this blond beast.
The digital rot has allowed a memetic predator to infest the dopaminergic pathways of our collective frontal lobes. Truth, with a capital T, has been slaughtered, just as an earlier generation killed God. We still hear these gravediggers of God's death, clawing fresh dirt from the holy funeral barrow. But those who have come to bury Truth have a much harder time. For all of the Rät's power, your own skull casing is still impenetrable to even the wealthiest unicorn breeder.
Global temperature cannot be hidden. The birds, flowers and trees know it to be spring however many weeks early. The collapse of abundance, the monetary supply, the rates of inflation, shrinking wages, and complex interrelationships of poorly maintained infrastructure are not something explained by anything short of self-evident work. Elon's dead monkeys were no more plugged into the Metaverse than our elected representatives, bosses, and landlords are plugged into the ground state of reality.
Through technological creation, we have crept over the ledge. The loss of collective meaning is a profound issue - perhaps greater than the shifts we’ve seen from the global wars of the 20th century superpowers, the death of the aristocracy of Europe in the 19th century, the enlightenment of the 18th century and the renaissance of the 16th century. Finally, we have reached the end of our wits. The brain, functioning at its highest reaches, cannot make good choices. Even conceptualizing this shift is difficult; it is not staring into the abyss, or feeling the abyss’s cold gaze returning upon the soul.
The process of producing Truth through falsification has reached its apex. Science has won, but at the cost of life itself. What is our industrial society but an even bigger pile of dead monkeys? For the progress of the last 100 years, from electromechanical computers to global digital networks, we can only prophesy our early deaths - not avert them.
Growth cannot be infinite, the Earth is bounded. Resources, like the universe, are finite. Truth, the real stuff, is not bound by capital. Truth cannot be buried, reasoned with, corrupted by venial pleasures, or blackmailed with moral sins. It cannot be killed by the knife of a thousand, thousand marketers; no matter how hard they attempt to stab at the ocean. The tide comes and goes as it pleases. Those witch-kings of capital can make any prophecy from their desert temples of excess, but they cannot bend Truth the same way a few million quid can bend the built environment.
Truth, the kind with a capital T, is like the dead God of the Christian religion. Omnipresent but absent. To guide the perplexed, Maimonides opined that we could never say that God's hand was present but only that the hand was not present. Negative omnipotence. The Void as monad, the absolute. One should remember not to stare.
Truth has become the void, inhabiting only the edges, the negatives. One can see it in the trash littering a street, the preventable deaths, the choking philosophical atmosphere of modernity, the fact that all information sits only a digital hair's breadth from one's fingers.
Infinite knowledge is not a blessing, but a curse. Even those of an academic persuasion chafe at the omnipresence of knowledge, a correct factoid is only an inconvenience. The totality of our knowledge cannot be distilled, as like Truth, it only inhabits the void. We can only guess at the shape of correctness by where we have pinned down falsity through the reproduction of scientific papers.
This Shape of infinite knowledge is a maddening eleven-dimensional specter. It is a Truth which darkens the eyes, clouds the heart, hides behind the spectacles of modernity, lurks in the white lines on the mirror. Even those uninterested in building a better world can feel it creeping in the quiet moments between work, that new sushi place, the gym, and bed. This societal disquiet is not loud, but it is deafening. Every hipster bar, every inauthentic experience, the instagram story roll, they all bleed a sinister perfection which holds the vast majority in its hyper-real spell.
Scientific truth is a careful measurement of wetbulb temperatures, as compared to homeostatic mechanisms of thermoregulation. Bloody Truth, is the entirely preventable deaths of a thousand-thousand children across the global south this summer. Bloody Truth is the implosion of ten trillion dollars of imagined value. Bloody Truth is the last, terminal gasps of the unvaxxed as the vent tube gets pulled. Truth is the storm surge over-topping the sea walls. Bloody Truth is the coathanger, a woman dying of sepsis in a well-stocked clinic in the richest country in the world. Truth is a knife, a missile, a virus.
Truth is the beauty and simplicity of death. Know Truth: it all ends.
But do not despair, my friends. We are called to love our fate. We are blessed to be the Atlantians, the Progenitors. Our society is that which sinks beneath the waves. Our refugees may build an interstellar empire, or die alone in a cave ten decades from now.
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.
Bear this knowledge faithfully, do not revel in the death of our world, but with sadness in your heart bear the heights of human civilization into the gathering dark age. Our impotent angst has meaning in its placement, much worse fates await the timeline. We all have plans on how to avert the collapse, be it the idealism of the protestors in the streets or the cynicism of the banker class’s New Zealand bunkers. Know that it will not ultimately matter, the world has far too much momentum. Know the bloody Truth, our trajectory is set. The ticket is punched. The void has not won, it was always there.
There is hope, remember Neitzsche’s catechism of the lost, the affirmation of life:
If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.
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2022.06.06 07:00 slightlyassholic [Tales From the Terran Republic] Tea, Sympathy, Cows, and Guns! (Part two of two)

This part two of a split chapter.
Part one
The rest of the series can be found here
Check out my Patreon or my Ko-fi! There's free pictures on there.
***
“Tell me about this place, Zip,” Littlefoot said as she and Charlotte flew across the countryside in an armored grav cargo carrier. (Zip didn’t want Charlotte punching holes in a normal van like last time.) “Is it legit?”
“Venus Ranch is both very legit and very upscale… very upscale…” Zip replied, “The place is a ‘bespoke beef producer,’ whatever the hell that means. From what I can see, they just raise cows like any other ranch. They also have horses, lodges, riding trails, nature tours… the whole song and dance. They are pretentious as all get out, but they are good people… at least the ones who take deliveries are. Shanda Lagrange (She’s Venus) is pretty cool, too. A couple of her people are kinda snooty, but they are doing that whole ‘cowboy chic’ crap that went out of fashion like forty years ago.”
“Cowboy?” Charlotte asked.
“It’s some ancient thing,” Zip replied, “It has to do with cows, horses, and revolvers. They have movies about it, but they are about as historically accurate as my heat vents… Actually, those are vintage. They’re more historically accurate. Want to watch one while we travel?”
“Another time,” Charlotte replied.
“Thank God!” Zip exclaimed. “I don’t like Westerns one bit.”
“Why?”
“Oh, it’s the whole genocide thing,” Zip replied, “They either ignore it or minimize it. Other times, they focus just on that and go on and on about it to the point that it loses all impact. Every now and then, they actually make it look noble and make the indigenous population the villains! Can you believe it? Well, you don’t get too much of that these days. The Nations own most of the continent. A studio doesn’t intentionally piss off an entire continent if they can help it.”
“Huh,” Charlotte replied. “That’s… disturbing…”
“You think the Sol Wars were a one-off thing?” Zip electronically snorted. “Read up on Earth history if you want to find out how ‘human’ those walking psychopaths really are, especially if your people are considering establishing relations with the fuckers. I love the little shits, I really do, but goddamn. They can be the best, most noble beings in the entire universe or complete and utter monsters, sometimes at the same time. Most of them are good, and I cherish each and every one of them, but the ones who aren’t? They are so horrid they make up for all of the good ones some days. I love humans, but damn. The really messed up thing is that they came so close to becoming something more, something better. Then, one disaster happened, and they all just went back to being animals all over again. Yeah, it was a huge disaster, but my beloved humans showed their true colors that day and every day for the next ten years, and it broke my heart. Charlotte, I love my humans, but study them closely before your people enter into any agreements with them, please.”
“Wow,” Littlefoot laughed, “you don’t pull punches, do you?”
“Not when there aren’t any humans around to get their panties in a bunch, no… Hey, are you really going to bring that gun into the restaurant?”
“Thumper?” Littlefoot asked, hefting a short-barreled semi-auto .410 shotgun, “You betcha! This thing smells funny from top to bottom.”
“How can you even shoot that?”
“Extra short tactical shotshells,” Littlefoot replied. “Paid a mint for them, but they are nasty, AND I can pack a lot more of them in the magazine than people expect. They don’t normally make them in .410, but you can special order them if you want. Clarence adjusted things, so they feed properly and the gun cycles quicker. It doesn’t have a whole lot of range, but nothing is getting close to us.”
Littlefoot sighed.
“I would have rather brought my Little Buddy, but I already gave it to Clarence to work on. Wouldn’t you know the one time I actually needed that thing, I wouldn’t have it? Thumper will have to do.”
“Am I not here for your protection?” Charlotte asked.
“You’re just here to cost that asshole more money,” Littlefoot laughed. “I figured you deserved a treat for all you do around the Drop… and an extra set of eyes never hurts. With all the ones you have, it’s like bringing a whole crew. Just keep your eyes open and stuff your face with as much ‘bespoke beef’ as you can.”
“That will be a great deal of flesh,” Charlotte replied.
“So much the better,” Littlefoot laughed, “I want to burn his asshole so bad he never comes back… Hey, Zip?”
“Yes?”
“What’s the most expensive thing on their menu?...”
***
“You are certainly well… accessorized…” the man said as he approached their armored car, “and I love your ride.”
“Charlotte here shreds normal ones,” Littlefoot smiled.
“While we do value our right to bear arms,” the man said, “It is not customary to bring in something so… notable… into an establishment of this nature.”
“Then you should have invited us to somewhere that…”
Mooooo….
A cow mooed in alarm at the sight of Charlotte as it fled. While not the smartest creature on the planet, it couldn’t help but feel that her appearance was not a good sign.
“Oh…” Charlotte purr-rumble-hissed, “Those are lovely… so… plump… so… fleshy…”
Her legs started to twitch.
“We’ll take one!” Littlefoot said happily.
“One… cow?!?”
“I said Charlotte could eat a lot, and you said we could order anything we want! Charlotte orders the cow!”
“I see… You truly do want me to fuck off, don’t you?”
“I will have the wagyu boneless ribeye… A5 please…, a whole one, with a bottle of Chandreux ’58, and I think to start…”
“I see where this is going,” the man said, “Shall I just save both of us the trouble and tell them to put together the most expensive meal that they can?”
“That would be great!” Littlefoot smiled.
“Aren’t you just a little afraid of offending your potential client?”
“Not one bit! He can go and fuck himself… which is exactly what I am going to tell him over dinner!”
The man just faintly smiled.
“Just to be clear,” he said, “Charlotte eats her meat raw?”
“Yep?”
“Does she want the animal dressed, or will she just grab one out of the field like a lion or something?”
“Hey, Charlotte, what do you think?”
“Wha?...” Charlotte asked, still staring at the cattle, her claws digging little furrows in the earth.
“Do you want the cow cleaned, or are you just going to grab one?”
“…grab…one…”
“She will take hers to go,” Littlefoot said brightly.
“Allow me to speak to the manager. Do you think your friend can wait just a few minutes?”
“…wait… stalk… choose…”
“She’s good… I think…”
“I will make this as quick as possible.”
***
“Holy shit!” an old woman in blue jeans and a straw hat said as she approached. “You’re one big scary-looking motherfucker…”
She looked over at Littlefoot.
“And one little scary-looking motherfucker.”
“…black one… white spot… number fifty-two…”
“An excellent choice,” the woman said as she wrote a number on a little ancient notebook.
She handed it to the man, who winced… and nodded…
“One problem, though,” the woman said, “I do raise animals to eat, but they are raised and handled humanely. We aren’t doing a bullfight or any fucked up shit like that. You can have the whole thing as-is, but it’s going to be killed…”
“… won’t… feel… it…”
“It will cost you dearly if it does,” the woman said. “And you aren’t just running out there and scaring the other steers, either. We’ll lead it over behind the restaurant where we are going to be serving you… people… You can take it there. When you say it won’t feel it, how fast…”
“…instantly…” Charlotte said as her mandibles slid over each other, making a sound exactly like a pair of shears… a very big set of shears.
“Alright,” she said. “They are setting up a table outside. Go around back, and we’ll get you started.”
***
The man sighed as he sipped the wine.
“You may be perhaps the most annoying creature on the planet,” he said, “but this wine is excellent.”
“Bleah,” Littlefoot said, sticking out her little tongue. “Hey, she said to the server standing nearby. Can I get a beer?”
“Certainly,” the server said as the man twitched, “We have a wide selection of artesian…”
“Do you have any Shitz?”
“Shitz, ma’am?”
“You have to be fucking kidding me!” the man exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Littlefoot grinned, “good ol’ Shitz, it does exactly what it says on the carton.”
“I’m… I’m not sure, ma’am…”
“You are doing this on purpose!!!” the man shouted.
“Ma’am,” the server said, desperately trying not to burst into laughter, “do you wish me to check?”
“Yes, please.”
“…We were able to find a few containers among the workers,” the server said as he approached a bit later with a small cardboard carton and a frosted mug.
Barely able to contain himself, the server, with great ceremony, snipped open the carton and carefully filled the mug, setting it in front of Littlefoot.
“Oh yeah!” she grinned as she took a big (for her) gulp. “That’s the stuff!”
“I suppose you are going to ask for steak sauce for your wagyu as well?” the man sighed.
“They don’t have ketchup here?” Littlefoot asked, reminding herself to thank Zip for all of the anti-pointers.
The look on the man’s face was priceless.
Charlotte fidgeted anxiously as the man twitched and sipped fine wine, and Littlefoot, absolutely delighted with herself, guzzled Shitz.
“Um… Not to be overly demanding,” she said, “But when can I expect my meal?”
“We… we were planning on presenting you with… um… your meal at the same time the other guests were receiving their entrée. Would you like something while you wait?”
“It may take me longer to feed,” Charlotte replied, “Perhaps I could be given the beast now?”
“Very good… ma’am?...”
“Yes, I am female.”
“One moment, please.”
“If it starts to run,” Charlotte said, “let it.”
“Um… Yes, ma’am.”
The server departed.
The owner soon appeared, leading number fifty-two.
Moo?
“Okay, here he is,” she said. “Now remember, I will not allow it to suffer,” she added while patting a large caliber revolver now on her hip.
“… Step… back…”
Shaking her head, the old woman started to back away.
M—
Before the steer could even “oo,” Charlotte covered the distance in a blur.
The cow fell. Its head also fell, just a little bit farther away.
“Son of a bitch…” the old woman gasped.
Charlotte knelt in front of the fallen cow.
“Thank you, fellow creature, though you have been judged less fit than I, I hope your life was full and your passing quick. I welcome you, brother, into my maw, my body, and into my soul. May your substance become my substance, your soul my soul, and may we now, as one, wander the trails, joined together in the hunt, until I, too, fall and we join yet another. May our blood and our souls flow ever forward through life and death now and forever.”
“That was… disturbingly beautiful,” the old woman said.
Charlotte buzzed quietly as she rose.
“Forgive my distraction earlier,” she said, “It has been far too long since I have hunted such a large creature. It… inflamed… my passions.”
“It’s alright,” the old woman said as Charlotte effortlessly picked up the cow and carried it over to Littlefoot and her increasingly reluctant dinner companion.
“Will this be okay, Littlefoot?” Charlotte asked, “I am aware that my style of dining can be… distressing… to others.”
“You’re good,” Littlefoot said as she took another gulp of her incredibly cheap beer. “It’s not that much different than nature shows… or watching my brothers clean lopers back home.”
“I wanted to ensure that to be the case,” she said, “I shall tuck in.”
“So,” Littlefoot said, raising her voice to be heard over the tearing and gnashing noises, “When is this mysterious client supposed to show.”
The man, now quite beyond being rattled, refilled his glass.
“He specified that you be treated to a fine meal first. We shall speak with him after dessert.”
“Cool.”
***
Littlefoot and Charlotte enjoyed their meal immensely, and while Littlefoot did indeed ask for ketchup, she could not bring herself to pour it over the most amazing cut of meat she had ever tasted in her entire life (much to the relief of their host).
Charlotte was beside herself. The meat was impossibly tender and fatty, a true luxury.
“So,” the old rancher asked, “how is fifty-two.”
“Astounding,” Charlotte replied, “It does not have the character of the game back home, but its tender subtleness is absolutely sublime… and to think you actually cook it…”
“With meat of this quality, you don’t cook it much,” the rancher replied. “I like mine almost as rare as you do. I pretty much just sear the outside and warm the middle not much hotter than what’s in your mouth. If someone orders my beef well done, I throw them out. I will not have my animals wasted like that.”
The woman looked at Charlotte as she ate.
“You’re one of those Nopes, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“You one of them, ‘trail layers’?”
“You know about us?”
“Only what I’ve read since I heard you were coming. So, what does a trail layer do? Recon? Trade? Diplomacy?”
“All and none,” Charlotte replied between bloody mouthfuls. “I don’t think you have an exact equivalent. We go ahead of the swarm and lay trails to follow. We search out opportunities, find hazards, and lay scents so those who follow are forewarned and forearmed… Of course, we just use email these days,” Charlotte said with a rumbling laugh.
“Oh, like an old-school explorer.”
“Explorer is the best term for what we do,” Charlotte replied.
“And your kind are carnivores?” the old rancher asked with a twinkle in her eye.
“That we are…” Charlotte rumbled with a similar glint in hers.
***
“I have to say,” the man smiled, “You aren’t nearly as unpleasant once you have a belly of cheap beer and fine steak. I’m also relieved beyond words that you did not slather that steak in ketchup.”
“I was gonna,” Littlefoot said as she sipped from her mug, “but I just couldn’t. There is screwing with you, and there is ruining that.”
“I can also see you enjoyed your dessert,” the man smiled.
Littlefoot grinned through the chocolate sauce and whipped cream on her face.
“So that’s what ice cream is supposed to taste like!” she exclaimed. “I had no idea!”
“That’s the real stuff with real cream,” the man smiled.
He looked over at Charlotte and the rancher.
“Looks like they are getting along famously.”
“And it sounds like Charlotte does a lot more than pour coffee,” Littlefoot replied. “They are talking about supplying the swarm, and I don’t think she’s talking about a few whores who want help with their homework… unless she is planning on fattening them up a lot.”
“Interesting,” the man replied.
He smirked.
“And now my revenge,” he said smoothly.
“Your revenge?” Littlefoot asked, not reaching for the shotgun beside her but idly moving her hand under the table towards a .25 ACP in her skirt. (The ammo made the exact cartridge irrelevant.)
“Allow me to introduce your potential client,” he said as he pulled out a small disc from his pocket and set it on the table.
“Little fella, isn’t he?”
The disc glowed, and a handsomely dressed and absolutely gorgeous Loo appeared floating just above it.
Littlefoot’s jaw dropped.
“Did you enjoy your meal and your entire cow?” the Loo chuckled. “Do you have any idea what the bill for tonight is? A cheap date you are NOT.”
“I… I…”
“If that ‘iced cream’ is as delicious as you made it appear,” the Loo smiled, “I will definitely see if I can obtain some. I believe there are some cattle on Raylesh. But, unfortunately, it is rather difficult to get shipments from there. More precisely, it is rather difficult to get those shipments without having to answer some rather inconvenient questions.”
“I… I…” Littlefoot stammered, suddenly aware of how underdressed (in every sense of the word) and chocolate covered she was.
“I’m so sorry!” she finally managed to blurt as she furiously wiped her face with a napkin. “I had no idea you were one of us! If I had known,” she added, looking at the human across from her with death in her cute little eyes, “I would have never…”
“Oh, it’s perfectly fine,” the Loo laughed. “In fact, I made a point of telling him not to reveal who I was, especially once it was clear how you were going to approach this.”
“Wha?”
“Allow me to introduce myself,” the Loo said as he idly groomed his magnificent fur. “I am Councilor Longpaw and have the rather dubious honor of representing our people’s interests in the Federation.”
Littlefoot’s blood almost literally froze in her veins. (Her heart considered stopping. It would be much simpler that way.)
“I… I… I’m Littlefoot.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Littlefoot,” Longpaw smiled, “It was also a pleasure to watch you shaft my representative and commit a culinary war crime.”
Littlefoot made a strangled squeaking noise.
“No, it was,” he smiled, “It honestly was. I admire a woman who isn’t afraid of enjoying herself regardless of appearances and will plunge her face into… whipped cream?... like that. I also truly enjoyed watching you put the screws to my representative. Once you realized that he was truly committed to getting you here, regardless of the cost, you made sure it cost him. You showed no hesitation in making him pay… even if it was the Loo who will foot the bill for this one.”
Littlefoot squeaked again.
“I… I didn’t know…” she said with true agony.
“It’s quite alright,” Longpaw chuckled, “There are most likely a few other things concerning the Loo of which you are also unaware. It has been a most eventful year…”
A few minutes later, an even more stunned Littlefoot stared at Councilor Longpaw.
“We did to the whole Federation what you just did to me,” he laughed. “However, we didn’t stop at just one cow. By the way, ordering the most expensive bottle of wine they had and then requesting… Shitz?… A masterstroke! I wish I had you on this side of the blockade.”
“Almost gave me a real stroke,” the man snickered. “That was just evil, Littlefoot.”
“Setting aside amusement, though,” Longpaw asked, “did you actually enjoy the meal?”
“Very much so,” Littlefoot replied, absolutely mortified, “It was the best meal of my life… sorry…”
“You wouldn’t have celebrated our people’s victory as freely if you knew it was courtesy of our people and comes nowhere near what you are owed.”
“Owed?”
“What happened to you and so many of our people,” Longpaw snarled, revealing a Loo’s true nature for just a moment, “is unforgivable, as is the fact that we allowed it to happen in the first place. I swear upon my line that we will find every single one of you and bring you home, and we will make Jessica Morgan look like the paragon of forgiveness when it comes to those who have abused our people. We may not have the Harlequin, but we are not without our resources. Nobody will ever victimize a single Loo for a thousand years after what we do. Were it not for the blockade, I would be sending a ship immediately.”
“It’s… It’s okay…” Littlefoot said after a moment. “We both know how it was, and I was a fool to climb aboard a ship that…”
“No,” Longpaw said firmly, “it was desperation, not foolishness, and you are not to blame. It was my job, and those who came before me, to protect you and everyone else, and we were the ones who failed, not you. I only regret that it took as long as it did to pull the blade from our back and return it to its rightful owner. We own them, Littlefoot, all of us, including you.”
His eyes blazed fiercely.
“We fucking own them!”
He smirked.
“If you wanted, you could walk into any of their houses and simply take what you wanted,” Longpaw said with a malicious smile, “Of course, we aren’t doing that. We aren’t the Besl. But, we could.”
“The… Besl?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Longpaw said, and then he sighed. “I understand that you have had to resort to rather… extreme measures… to support yourself.”
For the first time in a long while, Littlefoot was filled with shame. She looked away, unable to even meet his gaze.
“You did what you had to do, and from what I understand,” Longpaw said, “You have achieved no small measure of success in more than one respect. What you and the others at the Drop of Oil have achieved for those in your circumstances and others is nothing less than inspiring. I also understand that you have assumed a position of responsibility and authority and are someone many rely on as both guide and protector. You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of and much of which you can be very proud. You have my sincere respect and admiration.”
“I… I do?”
“You honestly do,” Longpaw said, “I know of few of our kind, or any kind, who would have not only kept themselves whole but step up and be a leader under not only the crushing circumstances in which you found yourself but in the face of the Harkeen. There is respect, respect, and then there is respect. You truly carry the essence of your line and of the Loo.”
“But I am a… a…”
“Prostitution is legal on our world,” Longpaw said, “And I personally believe that it should bear no stigma. If only all of our people would believe the same. The same desperation and lack of opportunity that drove you to climb aboard a ship drove many of them to do what they have done, and all of you… all of you… have simply done what you had to in order to support yourself and provide for those who rely on you. The only people who should be judged, and harshly so, are those who allowed our people to be put in such a state. Unfortunately, the real culprits have all passed away, or I would have them all divorced from their heads.”
Littlefoot started to weep, her tears mixing with the chocolate and whipped cream still remaining in her fur.
“Excuse me,” the man said as he rose and walked away, pausing to gently lay his hand on Littlefoot’s shoulder before entering the restaurant.
“We can never make it right,” Longpaw said, “but we will do what we can. You don’t have to return to the Drop of Oil if you do not want to. Your share of the spoils will be more than enough for you to be comfortable either in the Republic or anywhere else you wish to go.”
“I… I don’t know…” Littlefoot said, “I’m happy that things are better… I really am… but… the girls… Craxina… Sheloran… They need me. I… I can’t leave them… not yet…”
“Nor should you have to,” Longpaw said, “you will receive a rather significant stipend no matter what you choose. You do not need to leave the Drop of Oil if you do not wish to do so.”
“I don’t?”
“No, and it is to your very real credit that you do not wish to do so,” Longpaw said. “Once again, you have my respect.”
He paused.
“I have no right to ask, absolutely no right,” he said, “But, Littlefoot, you are in a prime position to help our people, the very people who failed you. I will not even attempt to sway you except to tell you that the opportunity exists.”
“You mean guns, right?”
“Among other things,” Longpaw replied, “We are interested in many things besides guns, and you have proven yourself reliable beyond measure, trustworthy, courageous… and quite willing to be a hard bargaining and nasty little irontooth,” he added with a smile, “exactly what we need in the Republic… It would also make you a very wealthy Loo. We have money, Littlefoot. We have so much money…”
Littlefoot just sighed a little sigh…
…and smiled.
“I’m not abandoning the girls… or the boys…”
“I wouldn’t dream of even asking you.”
“Bring me another ice cream, and let’s talk guns. Want to see my concealed carry?”
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