You wake up one morning to a world without mirrors. How does your life — from your everyday routines to your perception of yourself — change?

There’s no change really. I only have one mirror in the house. I’m happy to still appear in it. I did download one of those ‘mirror’ apps for my tablet. I got someone else’s though… there’s just a grumpy ancient tortoise in there. Not to worry. I’m not sure there are mirrors in my fictional universe, everybody else knows exactly what they look like. I’ d just selected my excerpt for today’s story… it started with a line about mirrors. 

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I’m not as silly as I look, well in my mirror anyway. I do know things Frank doesnt. Actually quite a lot of things, like who’s the Prime Minister at the moment, or what a Prime Minister is. Frank brushes this stuff off, it’s of no interest to him. He’s remarkably poor on current affairs for a barista. I do know stuff. I know the cemetery well, I’ve taken photographs there. I took a bunch about four years ago on a sunny day while my girlfriend went shopping.

This interests Frank. Can we see them? We could see if anything has changed. They’re at home somewhere, but I do remember them well. No World Serpents at all, I would have picked up on anything like that. There’s lots of cast iron though, strange metal tombstones and a ship’s propellor. Frank is completely awake now. He’s never heard of an iron tombstone. If I didnt know Frank, I’d have thought there was a look of respect there somewhere.

“Iron tombstones, near the serpent?” He’s talking to me almost as an equal, but it’s no use.

“What serpent? I’ve never seen one there.”

Frank’s thinking, weighing it all up. It’s the iron he’s thinking about, not about the tombstones. They’re not actually stones anyway. Standing next to Frank, inscrutable Easter Island idols would look like they’ve just figured out a funny thing somebody told them last Thursday. I can’t read his face at all. You can start, many have, but it’s like that Stephen Hawking book.

I’ve seen this before, it’s need-to-know stuff. As in……well obviously I didnt need to know that traversing the Eon Bands of Daangaarr could make you impotent,blind and mad…. at least before I did the Traverse last summer. That’s Frank for you. If he’d had much in the way of eyebrows, they would have been knitted. A minute’s silence, that’s a galactic age for a coffee jockey.

“It’s in the corner.”

“What corner, where?” I was losing patience.

“Shush” he said, “We dont want everyone to know.”

Another water mirror, Amsterdam

More Frank

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