Grace Period
The pain was gone. Weightless, like the last gust of wind. Was he dreaming, or was this natural?
He was still in his room, exactly as he’d left it. His bed unmade, desk cluttered, disorganized, a visible liner of dust forming across the flat top. Still, something was off. He remembered locking the door, but now he saw it cracked open—and where had the chair gone?
He turned around and finally noticed the mirror, reaching almost to the floor. Not his. Too old, too ornate to be his. The polished, pattern-carved wood frame stretched outwards from the glass like flames. He walked up to it and, instead of his own bony frame, was greeted with a fog that shrouded all reflection.
His eyes searched deep, as if attempting to reveal a hidden layer. But the surface mounted on the wall was paranoid. It guarded its secrets with menace—a fervor—adding to its allure. He stepped closer, and a voice enveloped his mind.
You know it cannot be undone.
Bristles shot across his skin. He had been caught up in a state of certainty, confidence in his actions. The voice fading in, then out, made him notice the quietness. It was not the sort of peaceful silence one might find on a summer night. A silence should contain the promise of life—screams of joy and delight at the break of dawn. But not this one. This one was complete; matter and air and time moving robotically in a slow, constant rhythm.
It all felt uncanny. Neither God nor nature was responsible for this place. He began to notice the imperfections, missing details. Hints that the creator lacked omniscience, instead drawing from memory, the all-too-human trait of fallibility easily apparent.
The fog that shrouded the mirror began to disperse through the glass. Reaching out. Encircling him, slowly, pacing around with the deliberate patience of a predator stalking a newborn. He avoided the fog as it shot curious fingers towards him. The bliss was gone, turned into a nervous sweat. He became aware of his heart for the first time in a while, beating hard in its confines, as if it was attempting to escape the fog on its own. Not trusting the host to be vigilant at all times.
He was now just shadow, easily erased: the prey had become aware of his own being hunted, but was powerless to stop the predator. He was surrounded. Every exit was blocked, but to his surprise, the hunter relaxed, gave way for breathing a little while longer. Soon enough, eyes found their beginning in the opaque mirror. Life breathed into the inanimate like air carries seeds: with ease, naturally.
He tried to open his mouth in an attempt to speak, but the vocal cords, trapped, did not cooperate. All he could muster was a look of surprise and terror. The mirror did not seize upon this, did not end his panic with a swift killing blow to the neck. The eyes, cold and silent, perceived him, looked at him indifferently. The wait was agonizing. Unable to move, he knew this was real, and it was too late for regret to have any effect.
Ask now, for you will get no other opportunities for answers.
Was that melancholy he detected in the voice’s tone? The vacant eyes rested firmly on him. Not scared now, but rather, surprisingly assured, he knew what question to ask.
“Will she understand why I did it?”
The fog constrained him further, and he felt his breath shorten, but he had to know. The presence took its time, as if debating how much truth it should actually reveal.
She will mourn for you. It will take some time, but eventually she will hope for you to be at peace. The presence halted again, as if unsure. But she will not understand, and she will question forever why you left her so suddenly.
The mirror cleared, and he briefly saw into the place that he no longer belonged to. He saw his mother snoring in the recliner of their living room. The TV flashed, washing over her a tirade of stern, authoritative voices, decrying the loss of the world’s fragile goodness. A half-empty bottle of Beam sat on the coffee table, alongside it, her favorite glass, overturned, spilling its final drops on the carpet littered with the stains of too many similar nights. Her hands hung limp, stretching away from her. The bruises on her knuckles where they had connected with his ribcage a few hours earlier still visible. She was sleeping in the deep sleep of false certainty, knowing she did the right thing and all would be better come morning.
The mirror changed again, and he saw reality as the reflection of his messy room came into focus. He saw the chair finally, overturned on the floor, and himself, suspended from the ceiling fan, surrounded by the silence.
He couldn’t rid his mother’s calm smile from his mind. The regret that he had felt quickly soured into anger. He fired back in a low, trembling voice at the presence.
“How can she not understand?” Speaking stung his throat. “She was already trying to kill me, lock me away, isolate me. She wanted to keep me permanently stuck in a life I would have hated, force me to conform to what she wanted me to be—and for what? Status? Her own ego? Hoping that I would somehow just stop? Become just like her? How could she not understand?”
She did everything she thought she needed to. She could not imagine a world where you did not need to be cured. Where she was your lone rescue. Your salvation.
The sympathy from the mirror was undeniable. He wanted the words to ring hollow, but he and the mirror were predator and prey no longer. The fog was not constraining him. It only longed for its wisps to brush him softly in consolation.
In the other world, his hanging body gave no ground to gravity. Breathing became a harsh thing. His vision began to flicker. Frantic, he turned back to his newfound friend.
“What happens next?”
You are seeking maps to waters I do not know. I can provide reasoning, but you must come to your own decision. Solace, I’m afraid, is impossible to provide at this time.
“And if I don’t want to go?”
You can resist, if you must; all must answer the call willingly. You can be as you are now: an existence on the margins. Blurring the lines of being, agitating constantly. It will be painful, but it will be familiar. To go beyond means to offer up a resignation.
The fog parted slightly, and a path opened up, away from the mirror, leading towards his bedroom door now fully ajar—he could understand what walking through it would entail. He saw pain. Pain so constant it would one day become unnoticeable. He knew the choice he could make: he could persist in suffering in order to inflict it upon another.
He thought of his mother. He knew she would wake up soon, and the scene she would find could never be altered for her. He could compound her suffering even more. The desire to give into the urges—being able to exist as the hunter, rather than the hunted—overwhelmed him. Shortness of breath clouded his vision while the last remnants of his brain’s oxygen fought on for just a few more seconds. The time to make the next decision had come. He said no more words; his vocal cords no longer worked. Turning away from the mirror, he started walking towards the door. Back to his mother, to suffering, to revenge.
But the mirror’s pleading voice stopped him.
In newness there can still be joy. You do not see the future you resign yourself to with clarity.
He stopped. Why would the mirror give him another choice if it was not meant to be taken? It would be so easy to condemn himself to the sweet pain of retribution, but he had heard the fog speak. He had already made one mistake, and he didn’t have to make another.
You do not need to forgive her in order to move on. The fog brightened, turning transparent all around him. You only need a willingness to see what can happen next for you. You are not bound to this world anymore–you can leave.
Inching away, he stepped back from the bedroom door, and turned around. Wisps of fog reached out, caressed him forward. Gliding on, he felt weightless again. He arrived back at the mirror, but it wasn’t a mirror anymore. It was a doorway, a different path emerging.
You will not be you anymore. It will be strange, it will be new. Find solace in the mending of promises to yourself broken. Find peace in that which you will be.
He raised up his right leg and, passing the mirror’s threshold, stepped in, and let go.
Arnaldur Stefansson is a junior at Waldorf University, located in Forest City, Iowa, with a double major in English Literature and Creative Writing. Originally hailing from Reykjavik, Iceland, Arnaldur came to Iowa on an esports scholarship, but has since found a sense of belonging in the creative community at Waldorf. His work has previously been published in the Waldorf Literary Review, where he currently serves as managing editor.
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