by Sandra Gerz
So far, the word had never meant anything to her. No connotations positive or negative, no personal memories attached to it. Plainly, it had just existed. That had changed before lunch break when her poor little cat had jumped into the mirror. That moment all her hope had dissolved.
But now she was here to get it back. She hadn’t spent lunch break with the rest of the team. It wasn’t much of a loss though. She didn’t like the others anyway. They kept making fun of her for everything she did even remotely imperfectly.
Instead of dealing with whatever rude comment they might have in store for her today, she had brought her two cats home and had been shopping. Even though she would have loved to kill the frustrations with a box of her favorite chocolate chip cookies, that wasn’t what she had gotten herself.
The bottle of paint thinner was hopefully going to dissolve all the paint she had put on the mirror earlier. It might give the word a somewhat more positive connotation. For now, it was scary. She soaked one of the poor-quality sponges they had given her with paint thinner. If it worked, she was about to reopen the cursed mirror. If she failed, her poor cat would remain lost forever. Hopefully nothing had happened to it yet.
Rubbing the paint thinner on felt like cleaning the door of a wooden stove that was burning inside. The paint softened and smeared.
She looked at her sponge. She couldn’t use a new one every few centimeters. There just weren’t enough of them. She cursed. Holding her hand over the bucket she washed the sponge with more paint thinner. It didn’t work as well as she had hoped, but it would do the trick. She kept going like this. Her hand was shaking more and more the farther she got.
In the corner where she had started, the mirror was becoming clean. She pulled off her glove to touch the spot. Nothing held her back. Her finger passed right through and into what she could not see. It felt strange somehow, though not unpleasant. The sensation was unlike anything she had ever experienced and yet, she was convinced nothing was touching her finger.
Pulling her hand back, she examined the mirror. If she was really going to follow through with her plans, she would need to remove far more paint. The clean area was currently barely large enough to fit her hand. She would need at least a third of the whole mirror.
Rinsing the sponge once again, she went back to work.
Once she had cleaned a significant part, she took a deep breath, stuck her head in and opened her eyes. She couldn’t see much but something screamed at her. She screamed back.
© Sandra Gerz 2023-01-08