Part 2
Irving Liste came around with a throbbing pain in his left temple. He was lying face down on the floor of lost property, and his memory was somewhat vague as to how he got there. Then it all came flooding back.....the mirror.......smashing...pieces of glass and....what was it?...flesh?...bone?! He almost fainted again but made an effort to lift himself up off the floor.
His head spun around giddily, but he managed to steady himself. As his eyes adjusted, he noticed something remarkable, the floor around him was clear. There was no glass, no blood, nothing! He looked up at the shelf and saw that the mirror was intact. Could he have dreamed it? Surely not, he may be getting on in years, but he had definitely not lost his marbles yet!
He went towards the mirror but made sure he stayed a relatively safe distance. It looked normal. No cracks, nothing at all. Then suddenly something caught his eye, he looked to one of the boxes stacked on the shelf. At first his brain didn't comprehend what he was looking at, and then he
realized. All the words written on the box were backwards!!!
He looked around frantically, and it dawned on him everything was the opposite way round. The door to the storeroom was now on the left hand side where previously it was on the right. Everything that had writing on it was written backwards. It was like looking into a mirror........................he suddenly went very pale.
He turned back to the mirror and decided to look into it. He screamed!!!!
There was no reflection of himself, only the room behind him. Everything on the other side of the mirror was the right way. The door was where it should be, and the writing on the boxes was readable. By some unexplainable
means, he was in the mirror or rather the other side of the mirror. Did that mean everything was the same except in reverse? Were the people the same? Or were there people? What if he was the only living soul in this weird dimension?
He suddenly felt very, very frightened indeed. Memories of watching the Twilight Zone in his early years came flooding back. He felt apprehensive about leaving
the room, but he had to know. He decided to take the mirror with him. What ever had happened it was down to this thing, so he wasn't going to let it out of his sight. He also thought about the body parts he had seen when the mirror smashed. Where was she?
Irving picked up the antique mirror carefully. It wasn't hot anymore; in fact it was decidedly cool, like it had come out of a fridge. He walked towards the door of the lost property, feeling disorientated. It was like walking through a fun house at a carnival. Everything was in the wrong place.
As he came out into the corridor the first thing he noticed was the silence. The police station was completely deserted, even the front desk. There was no noise at all except for the sound of his footsteps. He quickened his pace and went out into the street. A perfectly normal, street except for the fact there were no people, no noises and everything in vision was either written back to front or upside down. The bus stop was on the opposite side of the road. The tree, which stood
to the right, was now on the left. He also realized there were no birds. No animals. Nothing.......alive.
He held the mirror up and through the reflection he could see people moving around, walking past, reality, normality contained within this small oval piece of glass. He couldn't hear anything, but he knew that the world he was no longer part of was alive and thriving. He on the other hand was, where?.....an empty space. The place in a
mirror's reflection that you normally never see.......... The place beyond the reflection. "Alice Through the looking
glass," yet he didn't think there would be any white rabbits or mad tea parties here. No. He had a dark sense of dread that whatever was here, whatever controlled this empty soulless world would come looking for him.
He decided to walk towards the direction of his home; however he lived five miles away. He didn't own a car, and as there didn't seem to be any chance of a bus coming along (he felt like laughing), he decided he might as well hot wire one of the stationary vehicles parked along the road. He chose a flash little red Mazda
MX5; if he was going to be stuck in this hellhole he might as well make the most of it. He wrapped his jacket around his arm and smashed the windscreen, opened the lock and got inside. It took him all of two seconds to start the car (one of the secrets of being a former policeman, you get to learn all sorts!!). It purred to life immediately and he set off, with some trepidation towards home, not knowing what he would find.
Robert Earlsfield left Fulchester Police station seething. He was always getting bloody parking tickets. This was the third one this week and he was sick of it. He marched towards the roadside where his shiny new Mazda was parked, except it wasn't. He stopped more out of surprise than anything else. "Where the hell did I park my car?"
He turned his head to the left and the right. His little car was nowhere to be seen. "That's bloody
marvelous!!" he boomed. Passers by looked at him as though he were mad. "They've only gone and bloody towed it away, right...that's it.....I'm going to give them a peace of my mind...its in a valid parking space...." He ranted and raved as he made his way back to the police station. However, a mile down the road, Robert Earlsfield's car was moving along the daytime traffic with ease. The only unusual thing was.........no one was in the
driver's seat!
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