Glasswalker: Seven Years Bad Luck

This is the third part of the short Glasswalker story I've been writing as a spin-off to the Daily Lie section. If you want the other two parts, links to all the Lies can be found here. The previous Glasswalker links are numbers eleven and twelve.

Enjoy!

The Lie

Steam misted in front of Frank Gossamer's vision. Then it cleared. He was staring at a hundred copies of himself.

He let out a startled yell before he realized what he was staring at. A mirror. Mirrors, actually, a long hallway of them, leading to his right and left. Mirrors ahead and mirrors behind. What more could a glasswalker want?

Well, home, for one thing . . . .

"Hello, Frankie."

He yelped again and whirled. A man in a bowler hat was standing there, one who definitely hadn't shown up in the reflection a moment ago.

"You know those stories," the man said, "where the monster makes friends with the unwary traveler, first earning his trust, then luring him to his death? Well, I'm not going to do that. You should count yourself lucky. Isn't that gracious of me?"

Frankie blinked. The man leapt.

His face twisted and warped, the eyes becoming larger, the skin becoming tighter and more waxen. His teeth elongated and curved into vampiric fangs. His fingers reached for Frankie, each of them sprouting a wickedly long, yellow nail. Frankie screamed and ran.

He'd been around mirrors all his life, learned to take comfort in them. Young Frankie, tossle haired and with tear-stained cheeks, running his fingers over a mirror's cool surface. The night his parents died. Blackness, then . . . .

"No," Frankie whispered. Mirrors were his. His safety. His refuge. When the world scared him, then were what he had. They were the only thing he had.

"Please run faster, Frankie," the man said. His voice rebounded off the corridor as Frank sprinted away. "I am The Parasite, and I am coming to feast on your marrow, twist in your gut. You haven't even started glasswalking, yet!"

Frankie ran. With all the mirrors surrounding him, distance lost perspective. He threw a glance over his shoulder. Where was the Parasite? His reflection wasn't right. It showed up on different mirrors, but not mirrors across from each other, and with different poses and different expressions for the reflections. Here the parasite was sprinting forward with a snarl, here it was standing with a smirk, arms folded . . . .

What was that awful smell?

Frankie turned back around, and smack. His head struck a mirror. His only warning had been a brief glimpse of his own reflection growing larger as it ran towards him. Ordinarily, Frankie could run through mirrors, but to do that, he had to know about them first and had to have a jumping location fixed in his mind.

Blackness . . . and the smell of rot . . . .

"Break a mirror, seven years bad luck!" the Parasite's voice called. It seemed to speak from right beside Frankie. "Though in your case, I think the time will be significantly shorter . . . ."

There, to the left! An opening! Frankie dashed through it, forcing himself not to gag at the rising smell. It reminded him exactly of the smell on his first mirror-jump. He ran down a straight hallway till he came to an intersection with another hallway. He took the first left, and . . . Oh, Lord.

A body lay slumped against the mirror, partly decayed. A girl. The source of the smell, with brown claw marks across her through. From finger nails.

Frankie was back, seven years ago, vividly remembering his first-ever jump.

His parents' funeral, earlier in the day. He went home, no more tears left, ran his fingers over the cool glass of the bathroom mirror . . . a flash of mist . . . blackness, and the smell of rot . . . he'd mirror-jumped to inside his parents' joint coffin. The reflective black siding had made an excellent doorway.

No. He wrenched himself from the memories. He couldn't panic. He forced himself to stop. The mirrors were his. Running like this -- like a frightened rat in a monster's trap -- it wasn't right. He looked to the mirror wall beside him and took a breath, then stepped into it. In his mind, he fixed the first point where he'd entered the maze. It looked the same as every other point, but he differentiated internally.

He stumbled out of the mirror, and . . . the Parasite was standing there. No, that was just his reflection. But it smiled, and it spoke.

"I am always so amused by your mad scrambles. Every time I bring one of you here, you think you can outrun me. Out-jump me. Hide from me. But I am above you, looking down, and so I see the whole, and am in every part of the maze. What do you hope to accomplish?"

Frankie started. The Parasite saw the whole . . . but . . . .

Frankie took off running for a mirror. Laughter echoed around him. It pursued him.

The Truth

I don't have time to really edit any of these lies, so the quality is crummy, but I quite like the ideas and mythology that went into these Glasswalker ones. Maybe I'll do something longer with them, if I ever get the chance. I think one more left!