“Nik...Nik! Are you okay? You don’t look right,” Penny said. She clutched the skillet in one hand and his arm in the other. Nik blinked a few times before he could bring himself to reply.
“Wha...yeah. I’m fine,” he said, shaking the cobwebs out of his head. He slid around the counter and grabbed two small plates so Penny could serve the eggs before they were overdone.
“Are you sure? You look pale. You have plenty of sick days, you know.”
He was well aware. As a teacher, Nik had ten sick days each school year, but they rolled over if they were unused. Even with all the kids’ childhood illnesses, Nik had around eighty unused sick days—about enough to take the entire semester off if need be. But after what he’d just seen, he was in no rush to be in front of that mirror again, let alone spend the whole day alone in the house with it.
“Yeah, I know. I’ll be fine. I think I just need to eat something. Don’t worry about me, I’ll grab some ham out of the fridge for a sandwich. Easy peasy!” he said with a smile that betrayed his inner confusion.
Nik saw the tablet on the kitchen table and thought about updating his Facebook status and then thought better of it. He’d already skipped it the day before. Besides, who would believe it? Some might think he had gone off the deep end or think he was just making up a story. He turned off the tablet without posting and stared down at his reflection a moment.
That split second image from the mirror was burned into his retina and he couldn’t erase it. Blink. He shook his head and grabbed his breakfast and coffee. Penny tapped him on the shoulder twice during breakfast to break him out of his reverie. Blink…blink...
The rest of the day was a blur. Nik went to school and taught, blink… but it was one of those days where everything went on autopilot. blink… Teaching can sometimes be easy when you’ve taught the same subject year after year after year. blink…
That mirror. It was beginning to drive him batty. The Nik in the mirror blinked and Nik saw it. There was no ignoring it.
What is going on?
Nik didn’t go back in his own bathroom the rest of the day after getting home. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back the next morning. He had blinked. And he saw it. Nik thought about it continuously. He barely slept at all that night, pacing in the living room. He was going to be a wreck at school the next day if he even made it at all.
Who...or what had been staring back from that mirror? Was he dreaming? Was it just his imagination? Or was there more to it? He remembered seeing his fair share of sci-fi B-movies and horror classics. Movie logic told him to get out, take his family and go. Thirty-five years of life experience said he was being stupid.
Nik was not sure which was better advice, but eventually exhaustion had its way and he went back to bed.
Remember Me
Acutely aware of every sound or movement, Smith crept up the vertical stairs as quietly as possible. At the entrance, Black whistled before rounding the corner, his own weapon in both hands, held low. Smith motioned for him to hold back and crept the rest of the way up.
At the top of the stairs, a large pile of hay bales sat in a pyramid to the left, blocking Smith’s view of over half of the area. To the right the loft door was open, with a wooden crane arm used to raise and lower the hay bales jutting out from the truss into the air beyond. What looked like a pulley system on an overhead track—presumably to move the hay bales around the loft—was drifting slightly towards the back of the loft.
Agent Smith approached the corner of the bale pyramid and poked his head around to look toward the back of the loft. There wasn’t anything back there but more piles of hay and an owl perched on one of the trusses off to the right. Smith looked down the hole he had just exited and gestured for Black to come up and stop there at the top. After Black acknowledged him Smith crept toward the back of the loft, looking around the piles each time he came to one. He reached the back of the loft without finding anything and stopped just short of standing under the owl.
Just then, there was a sound from behind the pyramid closest to the ladder. Smith saw a green hoodie vanishing toward the stair and then heard a thump and a surprised squeak.
Smith jogged back to the front of the loft and found Black holding one pre-adolescent boy awkwardly aloft by the arm and had another boy collared by the hood. Both were squirming, trying to get away.
“Stop!” Smith ordered, and both youngsters paused briefly in their struggles. The boys couldn’t have been much older than ten or eleven years old. They were both a bit dirty and looked scared out of their wits. Smith tried to remember that as he talked to them.
“Hey now,” he said, “We’re all okay. We just want to ask some questions.”
The boy in the green hoodie looked up, straight at Agent Smith. “You’ll let us go?”
“Sure.” Smith gestured for Black to let go. “Why were you trying to hide from us?”
Hoodie replied, “Cause I seen you last week. Last one anybody seen with Abby’s dad, far as I know.”
Smith was nonplussed. He’d been on furlough last week, and certainly not in Tennessee.
“What are you talking about?” Smith asked, curiously.
“Last week—the day before they all scooted. I seen you in town with Mr. Hall. He didn’t look like he liked you much, but y’all went to the store together anyway. Next day they’re gone; nobody knows where the Halls are a’tall.”
The kid was either lying or someone was fooling him. Smith shook his head. “I don’t know what you saw kid, but I was hundreds of miles away.”
The boy looked straight in Smith’s eyes, then looked away and down. He had the look of a boy who’d had too many run-ins with trouble and took whatever adults said with a grain of salt. “Whatever you say, Mister.” He sounded far from convinced.
Smith had to wonder what was going on. Time travel? Secret twin brother he never knew about? Imposter with a really good mask? When on a mission for The Agency, you never knew.
Whatever it was, Smith decided the boys were not the problem right now so he waved them off. “All right. Get out of here. We’re here looking into the disappearance. I’ve got agents talking to the sheriff’s deputy right now.” And maybe letting them go so easily would convince them that one Agent Smith was not evil? Smith doubted it.
Once released, they took off like a shot down the stairs. Black shrugged at Smith. “Kids,” he croaked with a raspy voice.
Smith chuckled back. “I wouldn’t know.” Black opened his mouth as if to say something when Smith’s phone chirped, saving Black from using his voice. Smith pulled the phone out and found a text from Anna waiting for him. “Found it. Master bedroom. Upstairs.”
Smith replied that he was on his way and started down the stairs. He left the barn and headed for the house.
As he was approaching the front porch of the house, his cell phone rang. The caller ID showed it was Agent Johnson, one of the two agents working with the FBI in Michigan. Smith paused on the porch and answered the call before he went in the house.
“Smith here.”
“Smith,” Johnson began, “We only just got here but things are getting interesting fast. They think they know who the killer is, but it doesn’t make any sense. You’ll never believe what they found.”
“Welcome to the club. I just came across something here that doesn’t make any sense either.”
“Really? This one’s a doozy. Can you get up here?”
“We really just got started here and don’t know what we have yet. You’ll have to get in line. I’m going into a situation. I’ll call you back when I can.”
“Yes, sir. Watch your back.”
“You, too.” Agent Smith ended the call and walked inside. The stairs in this house were right inside the front entrance so Smith went straight up. Agent Black followed behind. Upstairs, the agents passed two bedrooms. At least, Smith assumed they were bedrooms. It looked as if a tornado had hit. In fact, as Smith looked around, everything loo
ked out of sorts, as if… He couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Smith glanced at Black and pointed towards one of the rooms. Agent Black went to check it out.
Smith stopped when he arrived at the master bedroom. Chaos was rampant. After a moment he stepped over the threshold. Anna was right there, next to a closet door. “I think they packed up in a hurry. I don’t see any suitcases anywhere.”
Smith slowly nodded. “The source is in this room?”
“Yes...or at least it was. The signature is very faint now.”
Smith continued forward, looking around. The mirrored dresser was across from the bed, adjacent to a bathroom door, and there were windows on the far side of the room. The room was completely ransacked. Random things were out of place everywhere. As Smith walked around the bed, he stepped on small bits of glass next to the dresser. Smith wondered if it was the mirror. The pieces looked like they had the right kind of backing. It must have shattered in all the chaos.
The mirror.
If the mirror was down here, what was on the dresser?
Smith looked up in time to see his own image begin to draw his weapon.
Sleepless
The clock beside the bed read 4:23 a.m. Nik’s eyes were wide open, staring toward the master bathroom. He didn’t know how long he’d lain like that, but eventually Nik realized he needed to go look again. He slipped out of bed and confronted his reflection in his mirror. Nik stood there for what seemed like ages, but everything seemed normal. Nik didn’t see his reflection blink, nor did he see anything strange about himself.
But then, Nik took a look around the room. It’s an interesting thing. People don’t usually look around the room while looking into a mirror...at least Nik didn’t. When Nik looked in the bathroom mirror, it was to make sure his hair was straight, to check on his tie, or to see if he had any cilantro in his teeth. But after a while Nik couldn’t look at his mirror image any more. He averted his eyes and found himself looking at things around the bathroom. Of course, there was a shower and a towel rack and various shampoos and whatnot inside the shower. Everything matched. He swiveled his head back and forth repeatedly looking at the room and the mirror until his heart skipped a beat. On the towel rack hung a dark blue towel ready for the first shower of the morning.
In the mirror, Nik saw an unmistakably forest green towel.
Nik’s blood froze. Oh crap. Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.
Once again, he hightailed it out of the bathroom. Moments later, he found himself in the other bathroom, puking.
What was going on? How...what...why...he was at a loss. For words—for everything. He held his aching head in one hand and his stomach in the other while bending over and losing the contents of said stomach.
Penny must have heard. Nik heard her knocking on the door lightly, trying not to wake up the kids. Loved that woman. She was great, but Nik just wanted to hide at the moment.
“Nik, are you okay?” she called out through the closed bathroom door. That was Penny—always there for Nik, even when his head was in the toilet.
It took Nik a few seconds to answer, but when he did, he must’ve sounded like he was dying. The next thing Nik knew, Penny was calling the school to arrange a substitute teacher.
“I’m not going to let you go to school and infect all those kids with whatever you’ve got,” Penny said as she tucked him back into bed.
He severely doubted the students would catch whatever was plaguing him.
“You looked terrible yesterday and today,” Penny continued. “And, well, you don’t need to go to school after throwing up this morning. If it doesn’t get better, why don’t you call the doctor this afternoon?”
“Thanks, Penny. I think I’ll be okay, but thanks for taking care of me.”
Nik watched her go to work, but also made sure she shut the bathroom door on her way out. He lay on the bed for a while, but continued to look toward the bathroom. He finally got up and went to the couch in the family room and made it up as a bed. He had to put some distance between himself and that mirror.
Just in case. Of what, he didn’t know. But…just in case.
Shots from a Mirror
The gun was coming up to firing position. Smith didn’t have time to think about the strangeness of it. His reflexes took over. He dove to the right and scampered for the doorway. Shots rang out behind him as he grabbed Dr. Anna and leapt back into the hallway. Somehow he simultaneously pushed Anna out of the way, rolled, and drew his service weapon, all while ending up facing the door, crouched on the floor.
Smith waited a few beats, then slowly approached the door again. In a moment he heard Agent Black’s breath behind him.
Smith gestured for Black to go left in the room while he went over the bed. Black shook his head in response and pulled a small helicopter-like device with several propeller blades out of his coat pocket. He pointed at the camera mounted on the device. Smith agreed with a short nod.
Agent Black pulled out his agency phone and opened the app to remotely control the device.
Smith stood at the door, holding his gun at the ready and Anna retreated around the corner while the drone lifted off.
Black crept up to Smith and whispered in his raspy voice, “Am I looking in the bathroom?”
“No. Dresser mirror,” Smith replied.
Agent Black hesitated, looking back at Smith.
“Just do it,” Smith said with a sigh.
The little device buzzed into the room and turned to point its camera at the mirror. “Uh, Boss, all I see is a broken up mirror and the wall behind.”
Smith edged around the threshold and slowly backed towards the wall opposite the mirror. It soon became obvious that Black was right. Smith dropped his stance in disgust and walked up to the mirror. He examined at the frame filled with shards of broken glass of all sizes, then looked around and through the mirror. There was no sign of his previous image or anything else that didn’t belong, for that matter.
Black was at the back wall, pulling out two slugs with a pocketknife. “These came from the direction of the mirror,” he croaked. “What was that?”
Smith shrugged with frustration. “I could swear it looked like my mirror image. It drew and I ducked.” He called out to the hallway, “We’re clear. Come back in.”
Dr. Anna walked in, shaking some cobwebs from her head—literally and figuratively. Smith told her what he saw. “I can give you a bunch of theories,” she said, “Nothing definitive.”
“Go ahead,” said Smith. That’s what he liked about his team. They took him at his word. Anna, Black, the rest of them all accepted what happened and they went from there. It saved time and instilled trust. Those were good qualities in people you relied on day in and day out.
“Well, there’s always the time travel option, but I can’t think of a reason why the future you would shoot at the past you.”
Smith didn’t think so either.
“It could be someone who just looks like you, but the circumstances here lead me to believe it’s not that simple,” Anna said.
“So, what then?”
“I think what is most likely is some sort of portal to another reality—a parallel Earth as it were. There are several competing theories about such things, and any and all may have some validity.”
“Ok, I’ve heard some of that before. So, best guess is that’s not actually me shooting at me?”
She brushed her hair aside and said nervously, “No certainty sir, but I don’t think so.”
“All right. I’ve got a feeling that had a hand in what’s going on in Michigan. They think they might actually have a live one there, so I’d like to check it out personally. Black, you wait here for Wesson and fill him in. I want you guys to tear this place apart and see if you can find anything. I doubt it, because it looks like it all left through that,” Smith pointed at the broken mirror, “But any hints at this point will help.”
“Anna, you’re with me. We’ve got a plane to catch.”
Rest was a mixed bag.
While Nik tossed and turned on the couch, he managed to sleep a little. The sleep was fitful, and when he was able to get some spurts of sleep he dreamt of Star Trek and the Mirror Universe. In his dream—just like in Star Trek—he envisioned an alternate reality where everyone had goatees. The audience could tell who was good and who was evil—the bad guys sported thin goatees on their face and the good guys were clean shaven. Ultimately though, as soon as Nik woke up enough to remember the strands of the dream, he realized that he was currently sporting a goatee of his own. It was a simple plot device for Star Trek, but this was real.
When wakefulness came, he stayed on the couch for another half hour, staring at the ceiling for a long while mired in his thoughts. On one hand, the mirror universe (he was convinced at this point it really was some alternate universe, minus the evil goatees) seemed very similar. Nik figured the other side was just barely off from this world, differing in only a few ways, like a split second moment when he blinked earlier than his mirror self, or the different colored towel hanging in the bathroom.
Obviously, Nik could only see a tiny portion of that world, but what he did see was comfortable and familiar. It certainly looked like Nik’s bathroom at any rate.
Or… HIS bathroom. Nik was not wild about calling the man over there Mirror-me. The more and more he thought about it, he realized he already had the perfect name.
HE was Nik. The other one was his Rep-Nik-a. Like a Replica, but with Nik at the core. He had to call the guy something.
Nik knew it was cheesy, but somewhere deep inside, he knew he needed that silly name to keep himself calm. It certainly helped to take the edge off so he could think through the situation rationally.
So far, nothing about the mirror—or the man in it—had posed a threat. Was he really freaking out about nothing? It was a green towel and a blink. Shoot, if it was a mirror universe, then it was likely that whatever he was seeing in the mirror with this Rep-Nik-a was likely close in thought and deed to he himself. Nik hadn’t seen anything that would change that.
Utility Company (Book 1): Blink Page 4