The Mirror

By Kavi Elwyn

A small-town friendship is put to the test when a portal between worlds sucks in two unsuspecting teens in this short, mostly fictitious account of the mirror. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kavi Elwyn
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223486633

Book preview

Chapter 1

Iactually liked the old house; it was comfortable, small, and just right for the three of us. I’d liked the neighborhood too, mostly seniors who kept it quiet and occasionally squealed up and down the street in their classic cars. I liked the school, it was big, and I could blend in easily, and most importantly, I’d made friends.

Then it happened, again. Dad’s job transferred him to a new area on their big corporate map, and alakazam, new life, just.... like....that.

You know I keep finding derogatory references when I googled Albatrus. Allison’s bubbly voice was masked by the phone's reception.

I knew what she was talking about; I’d also googled my new home, and found that it was affectionately referred to as ‘butt crack USA’ by bloggers and forum junkies. Yeah, try looking for it on a map, it's not even visible.

Is there a mall?

No.

Oh My God! What are you going to do?

I don’t like malls remember?

But still..... It seems so uncivilized.

I haven’t even checked out the neighborhood, the moving vans just left. I stared around at my new room, and the three cardboard boxes sitting on the floor.

Well.... You can visit still, right? Like, for my birthday?

Yeah that won’t be a problem; Dad says he’ll fly me up for a week or two.

Two, say it has to be two, or I’ll kill myself.

I’ll keep your suicide threat handy in case I need an escape plan. I laughed; Allison could always make me laugh.

Well I have to go, Brad’s picking me up. her voice went octaves higher just mentioning her hunky boy toy.

Ok, I have to unpack anyway.

Like that’ll take more than five minutes. Love you Zee, I’ll call you later!

Okay, bye. I clicked my cell off and tossed it on my new queen-sized bed. Oh joy, time to decorate.

The first box was clothes, hung up in the small closet. Second box, books, school and otherwise; the third box, keepsakes, items that came with me no matter what, items that would come before the clothes or the books. A large map my dad had brought home on the first day of his new insurance job. It was wrapped around a baggie of tacks, and pricked in exactly seventy-two places. The tacks came in three colors, blue: stayed less than a month, Yellow: less than six months, and Red: at least a year. I knew where each tack went by heart. Seventy-two homes, which is what happens when your dad excels at his job, they move him around to improve their business.

There were other things in the box, knick-knacks and small mementos from friends, things that linked me to the past. It took me an hour or better to put everything on a shelf and to put the tacks on the map. Then it was done, my room, for better or for worse, for a week, a month, or longer.

Flopping backward onto my bed, I stared at the ceiling, this house bugged me. For starters, it was huge, with way more room than three people needed, and it had all these creaky stairs, and all this worn wood. It looked like it should have been torn down years ago, my parents called it ‘rustic’ and ‘classic’... I called it a dump.

It was Saturday; school started on Monday, and I wasn’t thinking about it. My parents had tried homeschooling, but they didn’t like it. My mom worked from home, running her own party-planning business, and Dad was gone from six in the morning to seven at night. They were lucky I was so smart; otherwise, I’d have been grades behind in school. Flipping blonde hair out of my eyes, I wondered what role I should play. It was a game you see, a new school, a new role, a new identity so to speak.

In Miami, where we’d just come from, I had been blonde and sporty, with enough sun to show my freckles, and enough of an eye roll to lower my IQ. In Dallas it was boots and brown braids, and so on. The game was fun, it allowed me to sort of test-drive different people, and see who I liked, and who I didn’t. The best part was- I was never around long enough for ramifications, so I could do whatever the hell I wanted.

Somewhere in my musings, I fell asleep.

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It was dusk when my eyes cracked open, and I popped off the bed with a mutter. Downstairs, dinner had already been made and put away; I dug cold spaghetti out of the fridge and went looking for the kitchen boxes and a plate. My parents had a unique approach to parenting; it went along the lines of: children pop out fully formed and ready for the world. Unless I screwed up in the major leagues, like setting fire to a shed (it was a haven for rats and deserved to be destroyed) or getting arrested, (only twice, I am not jail bait or anything) then they really didn’t give me much thought.

The spaghetti was eaten cold, as the microwave hadn’t been set up yet, and I decided it was time to go explore my new home. Poking around in my mom’s purse till I found her house key, I slipped on a jacket and let myself out the back door.

We weren’t in a neighborhood, more like, we were a good fifty feet back from the main road and shrouded by trees. When I got to the road and looked back, I decided that if there was such a thing as a haunted house, I was living in it. Pulling up the collar on my jacket, I burrowed my hands into my jeans and started walking along the barely paved single-lane road.

I’d been in hick, Podunk towns before, and there was something oddly comforting in the fact that I was now enveloped in a tiny community. It was barely eight, and house lights were being clicked off, half the houses I passed were already dark, and when I reached the town itself, there was very little movement on the street. A few young people, mostly guys, were leaning against the general store smoking, passing around a brown paper bag. "Yippee, time to partay." the sarcasm sprang easily to my lips, and I bundled deeper into my jacket.

I knew they’d all stop to stare, and stare they did, suspicious, curious eyes followed me along the street. I found the post office; small, and looked like another ‘rustic classic’ to me, and the grocers, stands outside for fresh produce. There were more houses, and further down, I could see the floodlights for the football field. It had a nice, small community feel to it, and I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t such a bad little butt crack.

Behind me I heard loud laughter, and scuffling, casting a glance over my shoulder, I saw that those daring teen rebels had ventured out from behind the general store and were grouped around a streetlight. Fading back into the shadows cast by the post office, I watched curiously, hearing more laughter and several grunting noises. As they moved and shuffled around the streetlight, I figured out what they were up to. Some poor sucker was getting his arse duct taped to the pole, a favorite of bullies and hazers alike.

Leaning against the building, I bit the inside of my lip, on one hand, I had many times been duct taped to things, on the other; I was by myself in a strange little town at night. Contemplating my options, I decided that it would be unwise to barge in while there were still burly farm boys hustling about. Digging deeper into my mental resources, I started looking around for a car, there was an old station wagon parked near the curb.

Pulling out my pocket knife, I sliced a strip off the bottom of my shirt, bringing to mind Allison’s favorite fashion saying, shirts are not cool if they look to be in good condition. Twisting the fabric into a rope, I crossed quietly to the car and unscrewed the gas cap, dipping the cloth in; I left it soaking and went looking for a bottle. As expected there were quite a few littered behind the post office, apparently, those plucky hick boys rotated on their drinking route.

Taking my gasoline cloth, I put the dripping end into the bottle and dug around in my pocket for matches. I always carry matches with me, because, to be honest, I like to set things on fire.

None of the bullies looked up when I struck the match; they were too busy stuffing brown paper bags into their victim’s mouth. Mesmerized for a moment by the bright, warm, alive thing licking its way along the cloth, I smiled. Then I chucked the sucker as hard as I could towards the brick wall behind the boys.

It happened exactly as I’d thought it would. The bottle shattered; there was a brief sheet of fire as the gasoline spread out a bit, and those boys about wet themselves. My plan would have