#there is a jess and morgan interaction at the beginning that contains none of the content warnings

[solreefs]

Reflection

<- previous next ->

Summary: Statement of Kareem Amir, regarding a series of incidents in a glass shop in Amreya. Original statement given July 17, 2022. Recorded July 1, 2031.

Warnings: injuries due to broken glass, semi-graphic death, implied suicide, unreality, not being in control of your own body

Tagging: @gay-otlc

Words: 2613

A note on naming and locations: Amreya is a real neighborhood in Alexandria, notable for its many factories and petroleum refineries.

You may have noticed that the statement giver here has two names that would be considered first names instead of a first name and a more traditional surname. This is actually a very common naming practice in Egypt. While some Egyptians do use surnames, most use the first name of their father, regardless of gender. On more formal legal documents, a third name, that of their grandfather, is also commonly used.

ao3

[CLICK]

Jess: -started a month ago.

Morgan: I know. And I was supposed to be here then, but there were travel complications.

Jess: Oh.

[he staples a set of files]

Well, don’t get too comfortable here. We’ve lost twelve Postulants already.

At this rate, there won’t be six students left to fill those spots. Here. 

[he hands her a stapler]

Morgan: What are we doing?

Jess: These are all the statements we’ve discredited, and this pile over here is all the supplemental research. We’re stapling them together.

[papers shuffling, stapling sounds]

Morgan: Are these... bones?

Jess: Damn, thought we got them all. Put them on Portero’s desk, he’s the one who found that bag in the first place.

Morgan: Shouldn’t these be in Artifact Storage?

Jess: Technically, yeah, but this place is a mess. There’s no telling what’s in most of these boxes.

[he staples another set of files]

Bones are pretty much business as usual around here at this point.

Morgan: I see. And the tape recorder?

Jess: What- oh. We use these for recording the statements that don’t do so well on digital. Don’t know what it’s doing here, though.

Morgan: [she picks it up] Oh, it’s on.

Jess: How long has it been running?

[CLICK]

[CLICK]

Wolfe: Statement of Kareem Amir, regarding a series of incidents in a glass shop in Amreya. Original statement given July 17, 2022. Recorded July 1, 2031.

Wolfe (statement): This whole thing happened about two years ago, so I’m sorry if some of the details are a bit off. I’ve been meaning to come here for a while, but somehow never found the time until now.

Amreya is mostly a place for factories and refineries, usually not for small, half-abandoned glass shops. So even though the building itself was small and unassuming, it still stuck out like a sore thumb. I noticed it while walking to the train station after work, and since I still had a little time before I needed to be there, I decided to stop and have a look around.

There was no name to be seen anywhere, but the shop’s hours were listed on the door, and the front window displayed mirrors and windowpanes. I couldn’t see anyone inside, and according to the hours on the door, the shop was closed right now. I checked my watch, and saw that I was nearly going to be late for my train. I ran the rest of the way to the station, forgetting all about strange glass shops for the time being.

I like to take the earliest train in the morning, both so that I can be on time to work, and to have a little extra time to walk around. The next morning was no exception, and I found myself retracing my steps back to the glass shop without even thinking about it. The place fascinated me, and even now I still can’t fully explain the hold it had on me. The best explanation I can give is that the shop had a story, and I couldn’t leave it alone until I figured out that story.

Going by the times on the door, it should have been open, but when I tried the handle, it was locked. I looked inside, and again, saw no one.

In that moment, I made a choice that to this day, I don’t know if I regret or not. I had taken the trouble to come back to the shop, so I couldn’t just leave. I had made up my mind that I was going to find some answers, somehow, and that was that.

I walked around the side of the building, wondering if maybe there was another entrance. I found a back garage, with a truck parked outside it, but the garage door was closed, and I drew the line at actually forcing my way in. The lot behind the shop was full of bins and crates and boxes, but they were all empty. Walking around the other side, I saw there was a small hole in the outside wall. I pressed my eye to it, and although it was dark inside, I could make out what looked like a storage space, filled with more mirrors and windows and a few other furniture pieces. I took my phone out of my pocket, turned on the flashlight, and held it up to the hole.

Mirrors. There were mirrors everywhere.

The walls of the storage space were lined with them, and they were all different sizes and shapes. Mirrors hung from the ceiling, and what little I could see of the floor seemed to be made of mirrored tiles. Excess mirrors were stacked in towering piles along the far edge of the room.

Someone tapped my shoulder, and I spun around with a yell of surprise, dropping my phone. Standing behind me was a man with curly blond hair and very long fingers. He smiled and asked me what I was doing. I stammered out that I was just looking to see if the shop was open, a ridiculous excuse, I know, but it was the best I could come up with on the spot.

The man laughed, and there was something wrong with the sound. My head pulsed with a sudden pain, and I took a step back, away from him. He told me he was the owner of the shop, that his name was Michael, and that the shop wasn’t quite ready yet. I nodded, then glanced at my watch. I was going to be late for work if I stayed here any longer. I gave him some vague excuse, and hurried away.

That evening, I deliberately took a different route to the train station, not wanting to run into Michael again. I avoided the shop for a few days, thinking that I’d come back when it was actually open. My encounter with Michael had unsettled me a little, but my curiosity was undiminished, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave the shop alone entirely.

About a week later, I took the train to Amreya on my day off. I went directly to the glass shop, double-checked the hours, and tried the door. This time, it opened, and I went inside.

It was smaller than I was expecting. The storage space in the back must have been easily twice the size of the actual shop. Like the storage space, though, it was almost entirely filled with mirrors. The only windowpanes were the ones displayed at the front- the aisles of the shop all contained mirrors of various shapes, sizes, and styles. I spent a few minutes just wandering, looking at the way each of the mirrors seemed to subtly distort my reflection. On the far side of the shop, there was a small office space, the door of which was closed, but I could see that it was empty through a window in the door. It occurred to me that I hadn’t actually seen a cash register, or price tags on any of the mirrors. Was this place even a store?

I had some other errands I needed to run, so I ended up leaving after only spending about half an hour in there, but I came back the next day. And the next, and the day after that.

I know how that sounds. Writing it down, it seems so obviously stupid, but I was addicted to the mystery of it all. I wanted to know everything about the place, and I was even brave enough to ask Michael a few questions once.

I certainly never learned everything about the shop, but I did find out a fair amount of information. The mirrors were in fact for sale, but only on request. Michael handled the actual payments in his office. The shop also functioned mostly as a place for Michael to store his mirror collection, as he seemed reluctant to actually sell any of the mirrors.

I only ever saw him make one sale. A young woman bought a small, round mirror, and the whole time the two of them were discussing the price, Michael’s fingers kept twitching, like he wanted to grab something. I could never figure out if he was trying to grab her, or the mirror. I watched carefully, but nothing out of the ordinary happened when the woman paid, except that Michael seemed oddly sad about losing the mirror. 

I mentioned earlier that the mirrors distorted my reflection. But that wasn’t all they did. The shop itself looked different in different mirrors. Looking in the full-length mirror with the pale wood frame near the back of the shop, I saw a desk in the corner that wasn’t there when I turned around. A simple, oval-shaped mirror showed the front door as made of wood and painted yellow, instead of being made of glass and having the shop hours on it. A silver-framed hand mirror showed entire aisles that didn’t exist outside of its reflection.

One day, after about six months of this, I came into the shop before work, and saw Michael propping up a new mirror against the wall. It was full-length, taller than he was, with an ornate fractal pattern carved into the dark wood of the frame. In its glass, Michael’s reflection was distorted, but much more so than in any of the other mirrors. In this one, his hair was longer, and moving on its own, the ends twisting and twirling into spiral patterns. His fingers had too many knuckles, and ended in sharp points.

I stood frozen in the doorway, watching as Michael adjusted the mirror, stood back to inspect it, and turned on his heel and walked away into the office, apparently unfazed. As soon as he disappeared behind the door, I walked forward and examined the mirror. Nothing about the shop’s reflection seemed off. All the shelves and aisles were reflected just as they were, and I could see people walking past in the street outside… Except the streets were quiet and empty this early in the morning.

I watched as a young woman walked up to the front door of the shop in the mirror, and was surprised to find that I recognized her as the only person who I had seen buy a mirror from Michael. As I was turning around to check if she was really there, something dug into my shoulder.

I turned back to face the mirror, and saw Michael standing directly behind me, hand on my shoulder. The hand touching me seemed normal enough, but in the reflection, the sharp points of his fingers were embedded in my skin. I pointed to the mirror and started to ask why the woman was coming back, but Michael just shook his head. “She made her choice,” he said. “Whether she knows it or not.”

I took a step back, and my shoulder began to bleed freely from five small puncture marks. Michael smiled at me, and I felt nauseous, though that could have just been from the pain. “I think you should go now,” he told me, and I nodded and ran for the door.

I didn’t mean to come back, I swear. I told myself I was done with that place, and for about a week, it worked. But then, as I was waiting for the train home, I suddenly turned and left the station, my feet moving of their own accord. I knew where I was going, and I fought my body every step of the way, but it did no good. I was standing in front of the fractal mirror before I knew it.

I walked through the shop aimlessly for a few minutes, my legs taking me on a winding path up and down the aisles. Eventually, I was able to stop, and I took a moment to think through what had just happened. I’d definitely missed my train by now, but if I walked back to the station, there was another one in half an hour. I’d be home later than usual, but I live alone, so it’s not like anyone would be waiting up worrying for me. I headed for the door.

Except it wasn’t there. I turned the corner and found another aisle of mirrors. I doubled back, tried going the other way, but only found another aisle I was sure I had never seen before. I hadn’t started to really panic until now; even with everything that had happened, at least I still knew where I was. How on earth was it possible to get lost in such a tiny shop?

I don’t know how long I spent trapped in that place. Every turn just revealed more and more unfamiliar mirrors, and I got desperate enough to try to find my way using the reflections. If anything, that made my situation worse, as I quickly got to a point where I couldn’t tell the difference between reflection and reality.

At some point in my wanderings, I came across a small, round mirror frame. The mirror itself was shattered, and the glass shards embedded in the head of the woman who had purchased it months ago. I screamed, but of course no one heard.

She was obviously dead, and suddenly I wondered if that was what it took to escape. Perhaps if I died in what I had come think of as the mirror world, I would return to the outside world. But I would have to break the right mirror. The woman had smashed her head through the mirror she’d bought, but I didn’t own a mirror from the shop. So which one...

The one with the fractals carved into the frame. I can’t quite explain how I knew the answer, but all that matters is that I found it, eventually.

I approached the mirror- and stopped. Call it cowardice or delayed self-preservation instincts, but I couldn’t bring myself to put my head through the glass. Instead, I raised a fist, and punched through the middle of the mirror, cutting my hand badly but barely noticing. I lost my balance, and fell back through an open yellow door onto the sidewalk outside.

I lay there on the pavement, my hand bleeding, my shoulder wound throbbing with fresh pain, and my head reeling. I don’t know what happened after that, but someone must have called an ambulance, because the next thing I remember is being in the hospital.

Apparently, I had been missing for two days, and one of my neighbors had gotten the Garda involved. Since then, I’ve stopped taking the earliest train, and just try not to think about it too much.

It’s weird, though. Every so often, I’ll look at my reflection in a mirror, or window, or even water, and behind me, I’ll see that yellow door the oval mirror showed me, the one I fell out of.

Wolfe: Statement ends.

Postulant Brightwell tried to contact Kareem Amir, but he hasn’t been seen since July 23, 2022, less than a week after giving this statement. Amir did provide an address for this mirror shop, however, and Postulants Schreiber and Seif investigated it, along with Niccolo Santi from Artifact Storage. I would have gone myself, but the terms of my position are quite clear that I am not to leave the Archives unless I receive specific instructions from the Artifex Magnus. I-

[pause]

[sigh]

The shop was almost entirely empty, except for a few mirror fragments that Santi took to Artifact Storage. Asking around revealed that no one in the area knew anything about any mirror shop that might have been there nine years ago. Another dead end. 

[CLICK]