The Looking Glass Test

THE LOOKING GLASS TEST

Johnny looked around the bedroom while Lainy took off her earrings. Her apartment was small, and her bedroom even smaller—just a single bed, nightstand, and tiny dresser. What caught his eye, though, was something hanging on the wall above the dresser opposite the bed, covered with a black cloth.

“Are you sitting shiva?” He laughed as he lifted the corner of the cloth, revealing an ornate, Rococo frame around an oval mirror.

The yellowish light from the small lamp on the nightstand seemed to dance across the exposed part of the mirror. Its opalescent swirl of colors belied the dim bulb as its source. Frozen by the mesmerizing display, Johnny felt an overwhelming desire—a life-or-death need—to see the rest of the mirror in its full glory.

“Hey, Johnny, can you help—” Lainy said as she turned toward her would-be lover, and reached for the zipper on her dress. “Johnny!”

Two steps took her across the room, where she yanked the shroud out of his hands and smoothed it over the looking glass. Covered again, the mirror’s spell broke, and Johnny shook his head to clear it.

“Ah, sorry, Babe. That’s—”

“An eyesore,” she interrupted. “A horrible, ugly, magical eyesore,” she said, although her eyes revealed an excitement he hadn’t seen in them before.

“‘Magical?’ Like ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall…?’”

“Worse,” she spat in reply. “It’s cursed, or just plain evil.”

“That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

Lainy just shook her head. “I hate that thing. Just having it hanging there gives me the creeps.”

Bewildered, Johnny said, “I thought it was pretty cool, the way it made the light swirl around.” He gazed longingly at the shrouded glass.

“It’s evil, I tell you. I’d smash it to bits if I could.”

Johnny’s head snapped around to stare at Lainy. “Why would you do that? It’s just a funhouse mirror.” She shook her head but didn’t respond. “Look,” he continued, “I think it’s pretty cool. I’ll take it if you don’t want it.”

Lainy barked a laugh. “You can’t. I mean, you literally can’t take it off the wall. Believe me, I’ve tried, but it’s stuck to the wall with a binding spell or something.”

Incredulous, Johnny said, “A ‘binding spell?’ You don’t believe that stuff, do you?”

While he stood staring at the mirror, Lainy made a series of signs with her fingers. When she didn’t respond to his question, he grabbed the mirror by the sides and tried to lift it off its hook. It didn’t budge. Lainy mimicked his effort with her fingers, but in reverse, pushing instead of pulling. Straining, he tried to lift it again, and when he couldn’t dislodge it that way, he just pulled on it with all his might, to no effect. Tracing his fingers along the edge of the frame under the cloth, he couldn’t find a gap. Four gouges in the wall below the frame showed where Lainy had probably tried to pry it off.

“Told you,” Lainy said when he gave up and slumped onto her bed.

He just sat there staring at the covered artifact in disbelief.

“Come on,” she said, taking his hand and pulling him to his feet. Then, sliding her arms around his neck, she whispered, “Let’s go to your place.”

Ignoring her alluring tone, though, he looked over her shoulder and tilted his head as if he could hear a murmuring voice. He reached for the black cloth, again.

“Hey!” This time, Lainy slapped his hand away. “I think you’d better just leave.” Her insulted tone left no room for argument.

Johnny hung his head and shook it. “Sorry. That’s just so…”

“Distracting.” Her voice was flat, and he knew that she knew that whatever else happened that night, he would be thinking of the mirror instead of her. And he knew she was right.

“Okay, I’ll go,” he muttered, then turned his back on the mirror and raised his head to look her in the eyes. “I can still see you, though, right?”

Lainy took a deep breath, then nodded. “Just not tonight. And not here.”

When he leaned in for a goodnight kiss, Lainy offered him her cheek. “Nice try,” she said, but the chuckle in her voice told him to try again next time.

###

For the next week, he imagined how Lainy’s reflection might dance in the mirror. How her body, caught within the glass’s gaze, would return even the dullest bulb’s light as a kaleidoscope of colors. He imagined her curves painted in colors he had never seen, colors with no name, colors not of this world. But curiously, while her body was vivid in his daydreams, he could never make out her face.

The chaste peck on the cheek she had allowed him only added fuel to his desire. That desire, kindled on that night in her bedroom, grew with each passing day into a smoldering yearning. He barely slept until Friday came around.

“What’s this?” Lainy shouted over the club’s booming dance music as Johnny handed her a tall, curved glass.

“It’s a margarita,” he replied, lips right next to her ear.

She frowned and shook her head. “I’m a chardonnay girl, not a tequila one. You know that.”

He waved at the pinatas and Mexican flags hung from the ceiling. “It’s Cinco de Mayo, Babe. Everybody drinks tequila on Cinco de Mayo.”

With a skeptical frown, Lainy sipped the cold drink. The salt, lime, Cointreau, and Cuervo turned warm and delicious as it slid over her tongue and down her throat. She raised her eyebrows in surprise and nodded.

“I like it!”

“I knew you would,” he said as he tipped his head back and drained his glass in three gulps. “Let’s dance!”

With a shrug, Lainy took a big gulp, set the glass down on the bar, and rushed onto the dance floor.

Two hours and three more barely sipped margaritas later, she stumbled drunkenly back from the restroom, wiping her mouth.

“I think I hafta go,” she slurred, wafting the scent of breath mints into the air.

“Didn’t you just…”

“No—I mean yes, but…I hafta go ’ome now.”

“But the night is still young.” His leer and tone hinted at more than just dancing.

Lainy shook her head too violently, which made her stumble backwards. Johnny steadied her with an arm around her waist.

“Take me ’ome. Please.” She took a deep breath and tried unsuccessfully to return his leer. “Take me. Home,” she repeated.

Her sexy, though unfocused, gaze told Johnny all he needed to know, and if the seduction didn’t work out, at least the mirror was waiting for him there. An irresistible image formed in his mind of the mirror, uncovered, watching as he and Lainy…

“Gotcha. Time to go.”

###

The walk to her building and the climb up the three flights to her apartment were a struggle, with Johnny doing most of the work. The brisk early spring air was restorative, though, and by the time they reached her door, Lainy was coherent again. She dug through her purse for her keys, then had to lean against the wall to stay upright as she worked the locks.

When they finally stumbled into her bedroom, she sat on the edge of the bed and started to unbutton her blouse. She only fumbled two buttons undone before she gave up.

“You do it,” she mumbled and reached for his belt.

Shaking his head, Johnny pulled her hands away and looked down at the object of his fantasy.

Those drinks hit her a lot harder than they should have, he thought.

Getting her tipsy was part of his plan, but her getting this drunk wasn’t. Was he taking advantage of her in this condition? Would she remember being a willing lover in the morning?

As his mind raced and his gaze lingered over the exposed curves of Lainy’s breasts, a murmuring voice coming from under the black shroud tickled at the edge of his hearing. It was sultry and sexy, and captured his attention like a rabbit caught in a snare.

He turned to face the mirror, Lainy forgotten for the moment. Stripping the gilded looking glass of its clothes was suddenly more enticing than doing the same to Lainy.

But when he turned away, Lainy’s vacant stare hardened into an angry glare, and she drew her eyebrows together into a scowl. Her disappointed sigh was barely perceptible as she cast a spell with sweeping motions with her hands.

Her spell enabled other voices to join the mirror’s murmurings, which seemed to be more thoughts than sounds. But rather than luring him closer, they encouraged him to choose Lainy, and forget the mirror, and even Run!

But Lainy was already forgotten as he, reverently, lifted the shrouding cloth like a groom lifting his bride’s veil, revealing the oval shape of the glass encased by an ornate gilded frame of interlocking vines. The only light in the room was the ambient glow from the cloud-shrouded moon, whose pale, sliver moonlight was sucked into the mirror’s depths, then flowed languidly across its curved surface, hinting at the voluptuous shapes of lips, and hips, and breasts.

The slow movement of the colorless light stole Johnny’s awareness of the world from him, replacing it with a need—a craving—for more. More light, more movement, more color.

Lainy watched, her anger building, as Johnny found a candle and box of matches on the dresser. Mindlessly, he struck a match and lit the half-melted candle in its holder, whose design matched the riotous curlicues and tracery of the mirror’s frame.

Raising the flame level with the mirror, his heart raced, trying to match the shapes and colors the flame birthed as they raced around and over the curve of glass. His breath caught in his throat as beauty he never could have imagined turned the real world dingy and gray. He wanted to be a part of that beauty. He needed to immerse himself in it. He had to possess it and let it possess him.

Overcome, he leaned in closer and closer to the mirror, his eyes unable to follow all the swirling netherworld it revealed. The whispering of strident voices seemed to battle with the alluring one. They drew him in even more as the mirror’s surface softened into a mercurial liquid. He didn’t even notice when Lainy rose from the bed and came up behind him. She took the candle from his fingers with one hand and entwined her other one in the hair on the back of his head.

Struggling against her restraining hand, closer and closer he inclined his head until the whispers became distinct voices shouting warnings from deep within the mirror.

Many male voices echoed up from its depths. “Stop!” “Run!” “Don’t—” “Wake up!”

The terror in their shouts broke the mirror’s spell and made Johnny stop short. But the musical, magical voice in the mirror clicked its tongue and reached deeply into Johnny’s soul.

“Too late,” it said gleefully. “You made your choice long ago.”

When Johnny again pulled his head toward the swirling surface, with the sigh of a woman scorned, Lainy thrust forward, pushing his face into the churning cauldron of color.

Time and space warped around him as the mirror’s powerful spell captured him, wrapping him in a cocoon he was powerless to escape. First his head, then his shoulders, and the rest of his body were sucked into the void the mirror had become. Lainy’s laughter resonated within the blackness where Johnny found himself—a space completely devoid of the fantastical colors that had drawn him in.

The siren spirit, whose voice had promised such pleasure, coalesced into a hideous monster, laughing maniacally. A sea of other tortured souls surrounded him, wailing in torment. In desperation, he craned his neck to look upward through the mirror into a monochrome version of Lainy’s bedroom.

Her face loomed huge in the null space above him. “Your desires were clear to me from the moment we met,” she said, glaring down at him. “You could have chosen me instead of this haunted mirror…but you did not. You failed the Looking Glass Test, just like all the others.”

THE END