It was a fortunate coincidence that an antique-style, full-length mirror walked up to him at that instant. The mirror gave him a full view of his reflection, even though he didn’t recognize the boy he saw, a teenager, no more than fifteen or sixteen, with short unruly red hair and black horn-rimmed glasses. Freckles dotted his cheeks just below his cloudless blue eyes. The boy brought his pale, skinny arms to his face to ensure that he could feel what he was seeing and to confirm that it truly was his own image in the mirror.
He observed the gaudy clothes he was wearing–a lime green t-shirt and fuchsia cargo pants. He quickly recalled that the mirror in which he was examining himself had walked up to him. Even in his disoriented state of mind, he knew that mirrors couldn’t just walk around wherever they wanted. At least, he thought he knew that.
“Hello?” the teenager said to the person he presumed was holding the mirror. He attempted to walk around to the back of the looking glass to see who was quietly taunting him. The mirror, though, spun with him to keep the reflective surface facing forward. “This isn’t very funny, you know,” the boy said
Much to the young man’s surprise, the top portion of the mirror opened like a mouth and responded, “It also isn’t very funny to try to look at someone else’s butt without at least introducing yourself first.” The looking glass emphasized its apparent disgust with a firm nod of the top of its frame.
“How are you doing that?” asked the boy, still trying to look behind the tall mirror.
“Well, if you are that interested in my backside, fine!” the mirror said in annoyance. It turned around, giving the red-haired boy a full view of a dark wooden backboard, such as one would expect to see on the reverse side of a tall looking glass. The mirror turned back around. “Are you satisfied?” it asked. Then it turned its back toward the bewildered boy again and began walking away on its very tiny legs.
The teenager looked down at his hands and back up to the mirror that was hobbling away as fast as its short legs would allow. “Wait,” the boy whimpered quietly without really expecting the mirror to hear him. He had a million questions running through his mind but was unable to vocalize any of them. He paused to take an inventory of what information he had to work with to figure out where he was.
Before he could begin, the mirror was back in his face, showing the boy how much his forehead was crimpled in confusion. “Wait for what?” the looking glass asked, tapping one of its legs impatiently.
“Where am I?” was the question that jumped out of the boy’s mouth. He didn’t even have time to wonder how the mirror could hear him since it had no discernible ears.
“How should I know?” the mirror retorted. “I’m just an antique looking glass.”
The young man suddenly had an idea inspired by a story from his childhood about a young girl who, like himself, found herself in a strange land full of bewilderment. It was with this thought in mind that he decided to run headfirst into the mirror. A loud thud and his rump landing on the grass were all he earned for his bright idea.
“Ow!” shouted the mirror. “What in the world did you do that for?”
“I guess I can’t travel through you, huh?” The boy rubbed his head. He rose to his feet gingerly.
“I’m not sure why you thought you could. If you’re quite done, I’d like to be on my way.”
“On your way where?”
The boy thought he could make out annoyance in the upper frame of the looking glass, but he still couldn’t figure out how it spoke. “Why, to Toonopolis, of course! It’s where all of us begin our journeys.”
The mirror spoke as though it was common knowledge. The young man wrinkled his brow with a grimace that clearly showed his ignorance of this information. “What is your name?” asked the mirror.
“I don’t know.”
“What an ill-formed thought you are,” the mirror began. “You don’t recall anything of your name or who you are?”
There was what seemed like a long pause as the boy struggled to come up with something that might be his name. He had plenty of vague memories floating in his mind, like the one about the girl and the looking glass, but to him it seemed that the only real existence he had ever known began moments ago when he became aware that he was sitting down in a field.
Only one word seemed to be a common thread in all of the jumbled memories that he was not sure were even his own. “Gemini,” he said more to himself than to the mirror still standing impatiently in front of him.
“That’s your name, kid? Gemini?”
“Kid . . . Gemini?” he mumbled, still mulling through his murky mind.
“Well, Kid Gemini–”
“No, just Gemini.”
“Okay, Gemini,” the annoyed mirror said. “I’m on my way to the big city. You can sit here and look dumb all you want, but I’ve got things to view and people to, er, view themselves.” The mirror wobble-walked itself away from the boy.
“Gemini,” he said out loud to test the name on his own ears. He wasn’t entirely sure it actually was his name, as it did not sound very real to him. Then again, he thought, it was about as real as a walking, talking, standing mirror.
He decided to accept Gemini as his moniker. He felt good to have at least come up with a name for himself. The name alone did not, however, come close to answering the question of who he was, how he ended up in this strange field, or why he didn’t clearly remember anything before the field.
While thinking about what he didn’t know, the boy looked over the top of the retreating mirror and saw the large city on the horizon. As his gaze swept over the completely foreign city skyline, his eyes fell on the sun overlooking it.
Normally, the phrase “sun overlooking” would be an overused personification. In this case, however, the yellow-orange sun that Gemini was staring at actually had eyes and was quite literally looking at the city. Feeling the heat of Gemini’s gaze, the sun turned its attention to the lone figure standing in the grass.
Gemini suddenly felt very small. When the sun winked at him, he nearly passed out. Gemini gaped at the cartoonish sun until the large ball of gas lost interest and turned its attention back toward the city. Gemini followed the sun’s lead and also looked at the city skyline.
While there were some elements that reminded him of cityscapes he knew he had seen somewhere else before, there were also elements that reminded him of nothing he had seen before. He was not sure if it was because the city seemed so odd or if it was because his memory was so hazy.
Gemini saw tall skyscrapers made of glass, metal, wood, stone, and countless other materials, and could have sworn that one large building resembled a papier-mâché piñata. There also were numerous statues and monuments, some of which resembled ones he knew existed in other places. Some were completely new to him.
It was most difficult trying to absorb the vast diversity of the city he was looking at because it was constantly changing. Buildings were switching places, some of the monuments completely vanished only to be replaced by something new, and several of the buildings were changing colors, sizes, and even the construction materials right before his very eyes.
Gemini stood in the field trying to take in all he saw. He realized that he could not see an end to the city in either direction. The entire horizon at the edge of the field was covered with this shifting, varied cityscape.
“What is that?” he wondered aloud.
A loud popping sound next to him distracted Gemini. He turned toward the sound to find a large creature that appeared to be a cross between a kangaroo and a duck standing in a previously unoccupied space. The kangaroo-duck was wearing a yellow vest, a yellow sombrero, and nothing else. The creature looked like a five-year-old had drawn it.
“Hello?” Gemini ventured.
“Hola con queso!” screamed the kangaroo-duck and sprinted toward the city. After about fifty yards, the kangaroo-duck suddenly disappeared, leaving Gemini scratching his head and wondering if stranger things were even possible at this point.
Not knowing what else to do, he started walking toward the ever-changing city in the distance. As Gemini walked in the open field, he became aware of a path that he was fairly certain was not there when he began.
The rainbow-colored walkway was made of oddly shaped rectangular rocks with rounded edges. Or so he thought. He knelt down for a closer inspection and found the pathway to be made of a plethora of PEZ candies.
“Follow the Rainbow-PEZ Road,” said a cheery voice behind him.
Gemini turned and discovered a being that resembled a garden gnome, who was smiling at him. The teenager thought his own fuchsia and lime clothing was gaudy, but the gnome made Gemini’s clothes look plain in comparison. He was decked head to toe in rainbow-colored clothing including a giant bow tie and a pointy hat that looked like an old-school dunce cap.
“And who are you?” asked Gemini.
“My name is Roy,” answered the gnome, his smile never faltering. “And you are?”
“Confused.”
“Well, nice to meet you, Confused.”
“No, my name isn’t Confused. I’m confused.”
Roy continued to smile, but his eyes narrowed a little. “Well, now I’m confused.”
Gemini slapped himself in the face and groaned. “My name is Gemini. I am confused because I don’t know what is going on and all of a sudden I find myself standing in a strange field talking to a garden gnome dressed in rainbows.”
“Ah,” said Roy, “I can see how that could be confusing.”
Gemini sighed and stepped onto the Rainbow-PEZ Road with a loud crunch as the miniscule candy bricks crumbled under his sneakers. A wooden sign popped up in front of him as soon as his feet touched the road. He looked at Roy, who was still wearing a beaming smile.
“And which way should I follow this road?” asked Gemini.
“Read the sign,” said Roy, the smiling gnome.
Gemini looked at the sign, which had a crudely drawn arrow on it pointing toward the large city at the end of the field and words written above the arrow: Toonopolis – 202,752 PEZes northeast. Just below that direction was an arrow pointing away from the road with the following words: Field of Dreams – 0 PEZes that-a-way.
Thanks to the timely intrusion of the magically appearing sign and Roy the gnome’s encouragement, Gemini knew that the city he was walking toward was the same Toonopolis mentioned earlier by the mirror whose name he failed to catch.
“Well, I hope you learn a lot! Maybe we’ll meet again one day!” Roy called out with more optimism than Gemini felt was healthy. He then vanished in an explosion of color that made Gemini shield his eyes.
Gemini turned away from the spot where the gnome had been standing and began his crunching, PEZ-dust-creating trek toward the city in the distance. He eyed the Rainbow-PEZ Road as it cut a colorful line in the otherwise plain green field around him.
He moved closer to Toonopolis, occasionally picking up handfuls of PEZ to eat along the way. He could only imagine what would await him inside the city limits. Gemini munched on the road and he knew his journey was bound to get even more interesting before he had any answers to who he really was and why he was in this weird place.
Buy Toonopolis: Gemini on Smashwords:
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Anchihiiroo - Origin of an Antihero Page 7