man in room with mirror

charlie menke in May 2021

He bares his teeth in front of the mirror, letting out a whisper of a sigh in the exhibition. Four or five of his ivories are speckled with plague, others are less grotesque. Luckily his nasal canals are stuffed, having been so for years, and this prevents the fumes which his own dying mouth emits from entering into his olfactory receptors, neurons, and sniggling their way into his brain. Slackening his jaw slightly, the hide of his tongue appears in the mirror, recoiling from the light. It amuses him to contract the muscle and embody different forms, which admittedly are only a few in type. Looking in the mirror now he doesn’t attempt to shape his tongue because he is tired. The job of assessing his own face tires him immensely, but today’s session is particularly tiresome, and he figures it is because of the residual damage of the day’s events on his psyche. If he were to turn his head ninety degrees to the left, or even eighty-ish, he would see that the sunset had finished and black vacuous night now pooled outside him. The room in which he stands, barren but for the mirror and a few trifles such as the mattress askew on the floor, surrenders none of its light to the external; Blinding LED tubes lined his ceiling, two long strips evenly spaced in the center and four shorter ones outlining the square parameter, which caused everything within to be visible– it was inhuman, like a hospital. His head does not turn towards the window, however, and he does not notice the night, for he is still transfixed on his own shining face. The four canine teeth have maintained their sharpness over the years, and maybe grown sharper. Most hardened vegetables, like carrots or turnips, are left with pin-prick indents after a solid bite. Where his teeth end his lips begin, and past those it's just the pale, easily burnt epidermis of his lower face. The corners of his mouth have turned downwards so frequently that now a channel remains permanently imprinted. An abrupt cough interrupts his hypnosis.

Suddenly he notices the whole of his face, the survey of the bits having been interrupted by the outburst: His mug is unsettling. All the pieces belonged better on their own, he thought, together they’re much too nasty. He places the palm of his right hand on the right side of his face, or the left from the mirror’s perspective. Now as he stares he only has to face half his face, and the other half of his face is hidden under a palm which faces away from his left eye and towards his right. The right side of his face is warmer than the left, now that it has a place under the warm calloused skin of his right hand. The man turns his left eye to the right, trying to get a more direct peek of his right hand without the intermediary of the mirror, but his nose, placed in between the left and the right, blocks his rightward looking glance. So the man whores himself back out to the mirror, which scoffs at his foolish attempt to transgress homosapien boundaries. The man rues the mirror; The mirror does not have homosapien boundaries: it has no limitation but that ugly mahogany frame upholding it. The mahogany is perhaps oak? The man rues the oak frame. Still with his right hand covering the right side of his face, or the left and left as seen in the mirror, the man nods towards the mahogany/oak frame in attempts to get a whiff of it. A turgid inhalation, the airborne molecules thrust violently past the blockades which are present in the man’s long standing stuffy nose. He had expected to smell something woody, like a pleasant stroll through an enchanted forest, and maybe he would have smelled such a pleasantry had he spent time consistently brushing his teeth all these years– what enters into his nose, and the receptors etc. etc., is fetid. His eyebrows crease and the corners of his mouth take up the all too familiar downward orientation. He pulls away from the mirror while simultaneously dropping his right palm down to hang limp, parallel to the right side of his torso. There’s that stranger in the mirror again.

The mirror, which truly could be anything, stands upright in front of the man. It is tall; it is too tall. He remembers the relative dwarfism of his condition when standing there in front of it. Collecting so much space within its stare, the man can raise both his right and left arm above his one head and still fit completely within the reflection. Both arms in the air and the bottom of his t-shirt rises enough for the belly button to be visible. Now his arms float above his head and his hips oscillate side to side rhythmically, slowly, and he closes his eyelids and lets the mirror gently rock the puppet of his frame. Swaying in what could be called a dance, if anyone was around to notice the movement, the man tarries, gaining respite from the crux which awaits him upon gaining sight again. There he is, spinning easily around his central axis, turning from right to left, or left to right, in a circular rotation. Faster, faster he now spins. He is spinning around faster, and the hips which oscillated now shutter uncontrollably, as if he is a bicycle that just ran over a shard of glass. The man continues to gyrate, however, and hands which had served to crown now descend outwards to his sides, and he resembles a plane propeller with a loose bearing. Still the mirror contains his chaotic deteriorating mass, framed in the wood that’s smell is a mystery, inversing the left and right, and undergirding his slow dissolve. He is spinning with his eyes closed, thus the mirrored image remains anonymous. Faster and faster he goes around. The nausea begins to spring itself upon him now, bubbling up from his core and eventually reaching his head. Why is he still spinning? Death encroaches now, he knows it does. He hears her song, feels the marvellous breath. Gravity’s chains drag the man down. No, not like a propeller taking flight but instead of a type similar to a firework which annuls itself in spectacle. Annulling, annulling, the man goes on downwards and– An abrupt cough halts his procession.

Bent over with hands on knees, both left and right, the man gasps for air between brutal coughs. He can’t handle this; He thinks about some foreign idea which is supposed to ease his mind, but the difficulty in conjuring the idea with such pervasive nausea and dizziness only aggravates his state further. The seconds wherein his coughing breaks his eyes open to see shrapnel littered across the cement floor around him– he must have knocked over some of his mother’s old porcelain dolls. There is a fragment of some poor baby’s scalp; Poor baby, the man’s conscience manages to offer. Before he has time to fully ruminate, the aching cough strikes him again. It feels as though his ribs are forcefully prodding the lungs which he has treated so poorly. Beads of sweat fall from his forehead down to the floor, a few drops landing on the dismembered doll pieces. Finally, his forearms can no longer bear his weight right as his knees begin to buckle, and he spills onto the floor ass first. Sprawled out on the cold hard floor the dolls jab at him and his chest quakes, and his pores cry then freeze. His right eye has been stained by the salt of the surrounding perspirations and consequently squeezes shut in wincing pain. Contradistinct to this, the left eye pleads with the ceiling up above– a futile prayer. A body has been consumed in the cement, overtaken by its ravaging solidity. Bereft of hope, the whole man lays in sorrow. A sorrow which burnt into his spirit and left nothing but charred rubble. The coughs cease, and the room is now quiet. That is, quiet everywhere but the mirror: towering above him now and berating him with sardonic laughter.

What does he tell himself, lying so miserably on the floor? Violently, his arms begin to thrash and pound against the ground. Rising and throwing themselves downwards, they continuously beat and beat. His legs begin too, and despite the revived pain caused by the baby shards piercing deeper, all appendages are now convulsing. Spasming, convulsing, and orgasming, minus the last– Eros firmament in place, swelling fast. Steadfast beating, chaotically trouncing, and clobbering the cement. The cement was not flexing. The man’s limbs were, and bits of skin had begun to separate from his branches. Still he thrashed more vigorously. Without being aware of the process, a yell creeped out from the man’s gut. He roared viciously as his denunciation continued. For he had been a sinner ever since his will took on this flesh, and no longer was he willing to continue on in bondage. What he thought now was, more, more, and he fulfilled his wishes. Until he heard a snap, like he had just broken a carrot in two, and the pain in his left hand blossomed from stabbing into agony.

Now he’s crying, and the guttural scream gives way to a wail. He turns onto his right side and clutches his left wrist in a prone position. Salty tears combine with salted puddles of sweat which surround him. Yet still he moves, the left shoulder leading a pulsating rocking motion forwards and back. The outward appearance of his hand is tidy, but he feels a shocking source of pain inside. With the settling, too, the man recognizes aching bruises all around his body, and is concerned about the gashes from the few particularly sharp ends of porcelain. In all this pain he now surrenders, and ceases making noise and rocking. Having dried enough, his eyes open only to see the diabolical mirror. He knows that thing is him, lying there on the ground, but he does not want to believe it. It really is just like this. She left him, she left. He reached out to her, told her to stay, and she kept going. There he was and there she was, infinity, and then she was no more– no more, no more. I can’t take it anymore. No more no more no more. Just this light, and this blinding cement, and not her, not me with her. No more. Not him either, where did he go? Not not either, not did not go? Mo nore, mo nore. Stupid little man, you little crumb. You little little man. It's you! You… no more, no more.