Uno and Fog: Upon Reflection

The Fog  and I found ourselves preparing to break into another residence, this one belonging the pizza delivery tattooed guy, aka LMSK, aka Ms. Teri’s research assistant, previously known as James Everett, currently known as Jimmy Daniels, although I suspect he was long gone and assumed an new alias.

Then again, he could be waiting for us.

The Fog looked over at the tenement across the alley from us looking for anyone that might be watching out their window, doing laundry on the roofs or perhaps a little gardening, caring for carrier pigeons which people still do even in the age of instant communications.

We ran into several beehives once.  I’m not sure how a beekeeper got permission within the city limits to do that.  It was a rather unpleasant experience for me because I leaped before I knew where I was landing.  You learn to be more careful after painful mistakes.  The Fog  would say pain is the best teacher.

There was a street party near the front entrance of the place we were going, thus coming from behind and on the roofs.  Occasionally people were in the alley.  The Fog nodded after a moment, pulled out a repel gun and fired a cord across the alley, securing it on the lip of the roof.  He fastened the line where we were, tested it carefully and then quickly walked across the tightrope.

He had a place in our lair set up to practice doing that religiously.  While I had gotten a short nap in, I was still tired and felt it.  I wasn’t up for tightrope walking and I didn’t practice it religiously.  I jazzed up me nervous system, stepped back and giving myself a good head start, ran, picking up speed as I went and leaped to the roof of the other building.

I landed with a small impact, making less noise than you would expect and covered my the sounds of the partying nearby.

The Fog shook his head, “Learn to fly.”

“Hurtful.”  I said, but I was grinning.  I might not be able to fly or leap tall buildings, but jumping from roof tops was thrilling all on its own.  It never got old.  When you love doing something, you will always love it.

The door to the roof was unlocked.  “Go find his apartment.” I nodded, checking to make sure the ear mike was on.  Checking the stairwell to make sure it was empty and descended to the sixth floor.  I peaked out the door and finding the hallway open, quickly checked the numbers on the doors.  Occasionally I could hear televisions playing, or smell food cooking (why is cabbage so common?).

“Found it. Southside, five apartments to a side, its the middle one.  I don’t sense anyone in there or any alarms.” Left unsaid was the possibility of magical attack which I could not detect, which is why we weren’t going through the front door immediately.

“Got it.” There was a short pause, “Window is unlocked, I’m going inside.”  I watched the pattern of his nervous system creep through the window and then made his way to the door to let me in.  The first time I had figured out how to that I had been twelve, and it had freaked me out for days.  Everyone became a hyper real version of Donovan’s Brain.

Once I figured out how to ignore it and shut it out I was fine, but I thought I was losing my mind for a while there.

The door opened and I stepped into the home of a serial killer. He hit the light switch.

The place wasn’t what I expected.  It wasn’t immaculate like that one guy in Florida, it didn’t have crazy ramblings written all over, or candles filling every corner or shelf.  It wasn’t filled with snow globes or clocks either.

It was filled with mirrors: small ones, old ones that were losing some of their reflective surface, ornate ones, and simple ones, gilded and plastic edges, even fragments of them covered every open area of walls.  Reflections of us, fragmented, waivered and disappeared into infinity, there was movement everywhere with each step we took.  It made me uneasy.

A large, full length mirror filled one corner of the room.  There wasn’t any other furniture.  A blanket was on the floor in one corner, it looked like the LMSK slept on the floor.

I bent down and looked at the worn and scratched wood floor, there was something white in the cracks.  I reached down and touched it, a white powder ended up on the tips of my gloves.  I sniffed it cautiously, “I think its chalk.” No way was I going to taste it to make sure.

“Get some of it if you can so we can analyze it.”  I nodded and pulled out a little plastic baggy and put what I could get off the floor into it before sealing it and putting it away.

The Fog was checking the closet.  Something flickered in the periphery of my vision.  I glanced at the mirrors but all I saw was multiple versions of myself.  The unsettling feeling was growing and I kept feeling like something was hovering at the edge of my perception, but I couldn’t see or sense anything.

“Anything?”

“No.  A scrap of paper, looks like vellum or parchment, but I think he cleared out everything of importance for him.”  He headed into the bathroom.

I checked the fridge, there was a single plate with what looked like a piece of meat wrapped in white paper.  Red blood pooled in a circle around the interior grove of the piece of ceramic.  Nothing else. The guy had a more restricted diet than The Fog.

Assuming the meat was for him, a straying and worrying though entered my head.  There weren’t any cooking utensils, and the trash had several white meat wrappers in it and that was it.

That feeling of movement was back, I looked over at the mirrors and saw my reflection waver in all of them.  All of them except the floor length mirror.  That reflection of me wasn’t moving, it was just staring at me with a look of pure hatred.