The Mirrors Crooked
an excerpt

It was a dark and stormy night on the planet of Pluton. It was the kind of storm that makes you wish you were sitting inside a wooden fireplace with several extremely volatile flints and a bucket full of lantern oil. The clouds were vomiting their contents onto the uncaring ground below in a haphazard manner that suggested they were perhaps slightly inebriated. The wind, sounding as if it had several wounds inflicted by jackastraits wheeling about with their wings of iron, howled.

Yes, on a night like this, one most definitely didn’t want to be out and about with the elements or their unpredictable wiles. And yet, this is exactly what a young man found himself doing beneath the darkened sky above the village of Choice.

Trudging doggedly through the shin deep mud – no, wading through the shin deep mud, that very human, fiery red hair plastered to his scalp in a manner not terribly unlike the size-too-small woolen socks shrunken around his feet, found himself wishing himself anywhere but where he was currently at.

It wasn’t the weather that bothered him. He was used to that. Nor was it the socks stretched tight over his clammy feet like a second skin. He was used to that, too. It wasn’t even the fact that those very feet were bereft of shoes. Although he wasn’t used to this, he simply chose to ignore it.

What really bothered this soaked through individual was the task he was going about doing. Why in the name of Pluton am I always the one who has to feed that stupid boat? Went his thoughts.

The boat in question was a special kind of boat. It certainly wasn’t your run-of-the-mill, do nothing wooden boat. No, this boat had a certain level of intelligence about it. Not only could it speak at a level equivalent to eloquent, intellectual four year olds, which meant mostly sentences along the lines of “He bit me with a knife”, but it could also propel itself by using the six, duck-foot shaped flippers attached to its underside. Besides these remarkable qualities, the only other thing about this particular boat that deviated from ordinary boats was the mouth carved into the prow.

It was this last detail that had the teenager slogging down the ramshackle street in this weather that was doing its level best to drown him.

Why in the name of Pluton am I always the one who has to feed that stupid boat? echoed through his head again.

After several minutes of near-mindless trekking, he finally reached a solid, wooden door with an unadorned, wooden handle. Wrapping his pale fingers firmly around the door’s opening mechanism, he gave it a gentle tug.

Nothing happened.

Frowning disagreeably, he pulled again, this time a bit harder.

Again, nothing happened.

Muttering under his breath a string of expletives referring to the door handle’s dubious lineage, he pulled yet again, this time throwing some of his weight around.

Unsurprisingly, nothing happened.

Thus began a titanic struggle between man and door that spanned several minutes, and involved both of his feet leaving the mud-covered ground several times, more expletives denouncing the door as an imposter, and his red hair snagging on a crack not once, but twice.

Finally, with a yank that would have cleanly removed both arms from their respective sockets were it not for the miracle of epidermic tissue, the door cracked open with a satisfying slurp as the outside muck excitedly began to explore this newfound play space.

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[Excerpt 2]

“Mom?” Orion whispered, hardly daring to believe what he saw.

The person turned to face Orion, and he saw that, indeed, it was his mother, but something was wrong. Her face had no color. No, that was wrong. It had a blue tinge to it, Orion realized.

“Hello, Orion.” Her voice was different as well. It sounded almost bubbly, as if she was speaking underwater.

“Mom, how are you…?”

“Alive?” Leila laughed, a lilting, magical laugh that sounded like a thousand, fairy bells ringing underwater. “I’m not, dear. I disappeared, remember?”

“Disappeared?” Orion was confused. He clearly remembered his mother drowning. Then again, she had disappeared in the water. Maybe that was what she meant.

“Yes, disappeared into the mirrors. Don’t you remember?”

“Disappeared…into the mirrors?” Now Orion was really confused. He felt like his mind was trying to remember something that it had forgotten, but something was stopping him. “What do you mean?”

“Things aren’t what they seem, Orion.”

“Things aren’t what they seem…?’

There was a brief stinging on the back of Orion’s neck. Slapping at the spot, he looked at his hand. It had somehow transformed into a clock face. “What…?”

Looking quickly up, he was startled to see his mother was no longer there. “Mom? Where’d you go?” Glancing back at his hand, he saw it had changed back to normal.

“Orion, don’t forget about us!”

Orion whirled at the voice. It sounded so familiar, and yet so strange. What greeted his eyes made them widen even further, if that was possible. “Who…?”

Perched around the room were thirteen yellow birds with black-tipped wings wearing tiny, silver hats. “Who are we?” one of the birds finished. “Don’t you remember?”

“Remember?” Orion thought back. Again, he had that feeling of some forgotten memory bursting to be known.

“My my, can’t you remember us?” another of the birds chirped. “Dear me, dear me.”

Again, there was the stinging on Orion’s neck. Rubbing at the spot without tearing his gaze away from the birds, he stared as they began to waver into nothingness.

The bird who had spoken before managed to say one last thing before disappearing. “Check your pockets.”

Orion was still completely confused. “Check my pockets?” he echoed right before a deafening roar rang out from the other room.

Running there against his better judgment, the teenager, still dripping wet from his bath, found himself inexplicably drawn towards the balcony. Pulling open the doors, he stepped outside, shielding his eyes from the strong wind that had picked up. Blinking when he realized his hand had again turned into a clock face, he tried to drop his arm, but found he couldn’t help but stare at the ticking clock.

There was another roar, this one louder. Finally, Orion managed to tear his gaze from the clock and stare over the balcony. There, hovering not ten feet away, wings beating majestically, was the dragon that was the Briefly family crest painted in the same colors as the stained glass window on the front of the house. The really odd thing about this dragon was the fact that it appeared to be the exact same dragon that was on the front of the house. That is to say, it looked to be composed of stained glass.

Its mouth opened in a third roar, green eyes staring Orion down.

“What do you want?” Orion shouted.

“Do as I say!” it roared commandingly.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Forget!”

“Forget?” Orion frowned. What did it mean by that?

“Forget!” The dragon’s wings carried it higher into the sky before it dove at Orion. He tried to shield himself, but all his arms could do were swing like pendulums. An instant later, the dragon tackled Orion, who flew backwards inside the room.

Skidding to a halt on his stomach, eyes wide with fright, he could feel the dragon’s breath on his back. A large mirror on the wall in front of him allowed him to see the dragon’s head raise while staring down at Orion as if contemplating him. It seemed to smile before its head flashed downwards, biting the back of Orion’s neck.

Pain erupted in his nape. He could feel the dragon’s sharp teeth nuzzling their way past his skin…

Orion's eyes flew open. Sitting up quickly, water running off him in rivulets, he looked around in confusion. He was back in the washroom; back in the bathtub. Orion pushed his wet, red hair out of his face and realized the water was tepid.

“Did I fall asleep?” he wondered aloud. Glancing quickly down at the drain, he sighed in relief when he saw no arms, or any other appendages for that matter, protruding from it. “It was only a dream,” he muttered, resting his head in his hands. “Just a dream. A very vivid dream.”