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 Ink in my Blood (prose edition)
Kaleidoscope

Mark Ali

    The truth that had always eluded Bill Cooper came to light one evening with no purpose other than to tear through his world. A truth that had clouded his dreams for so long, a truth his conscious would not allow him to remember.
    It was the truth about the flying elephant.
    And if he had known what had actually been banging at his mind, he would have left it alone. His life would have continued just the same and his world never would have fallen. But he pursued it.
    And so the truth came, and it came from the smallest of people.

    The tiny woman pushing the baby carriage caught Bill’s eye as he approached her near the bridge. From a distance, she had looked like a child maneuvering an oversized cart; but as he neared her, her mature walk showed the experience of a woman.
    Maybe the first midget I’ve ever seen, he thought.
    “Hello,” he said, in passing.
    She glanced at him without stopping or returning his greeting. She looked worried and Bill noticed a large mole between her lip and nose; it reminded him of chocolate covered raisins.
    Her lack of response was offensive and he stopped, watching her push the carriage down the sidewalk, the sound of rolling wheels ringing out. She disappeared around a corner.
    The park was lit with a few street lamps but otherwise deserted this late at night. Bill continued his walk, heading towards the arching bridge that hovered above the park’s stream. He walked up and stood at its peak, leaning on the rail. The stream below coursed from the forest to the left and drifted underneath the bridge. Behind him it emptied into the park’s lake.
    Bill lit a cigarette and inhaled. He rolled-up the sleeve of his coat, staring at his scar. It ran the course of his forearm and twisted into the crevice of his elbow, a part of his body for so long now it seemed like nothing more than a bulging vein; a gift from his father.
    The cut he had seen on one of his patient’s arm this afternoon reminded him of it. He ran the tip of his cigarette along its path, ashes scattered to the wind, but no pain, no feeling at all. His patient’s scar had been fresh. His had long since lost any trace of life.
    The boyfriend of his patient, Amy, had cut the underside of her arm. She had come to his office hysterical, screaming of finally leaving. But Bill knew he would see her in the same situation tomorrow or the next day. She was a new patient, but he could already see how her case would end.
    She was no stronger than the rest; none of them were ever strong enough to get out. And after working as a psychiatrist and counselor to victims of abusive relationships for the past five years, he still couldn’t figure out why. But he couldn’t blame any of them; he himself could never confront his father.
    He finished his cigarette and tossed it into the stream. The running water of the stream sounded like an unsteady hum; a hum which spoke of brokenness and emptiness. A void that almost had a voice.
    His dream from last night was still with him. The dream he occasionally had that was so vivid and repetitive. He was a child, sitting at the dinner table with his mother and father, a pink glass elephant was flying around, flapping its ears and giggling. Bill would jump up and chase it while his parents sat eating in silence. But he could never catch the elephant, as many times as he had the dream, he never caught it.
    He began to walk along the bridge towards the other end when the sound of rolling wheels chimed through the air again; soft at first, but growing, sailing towards him. He turned and saw the midget with the carriage walking back towards him, but this time she was coming at a much faster pace.
    She looked as if someone had plucked off the head of an elderly woman and spliced it onto the body of a child, creating a lopsided image which wasn’t amusing.
    The midget broke into a jog as she neared the bridge, thrusting against the cart. She was obviously running from something. “Are you okay?” Bill called out.
    She didn’t reply.
    She reached the bridge and began to ascend. “Be careful with your baby!” he yelled. But the woman not only didn’t respond she seemed to not notice him.
    He looked out past her and saw nothing, nothing to be running from. Despite her size and the slope of the hill, she was coming fast.
    “Is someone chasing you?” he said. But she paid no attention and came hurtling up the bridge like she was running from a storm.
    Bill was knocked off his feet.
    Before he realized what happened and before he could react, the midget crashed the front of the carriage into his groin, knocking him on his back. His head hit the pavement and he cried out. The cart stumbled into the railing of the bridge and tottered on its wheels before coming to a rest.
    Bill groped the back of his head and felt blood. The cut was leaking, but didn’t feel deep. “Are you out of your mind?” he yelled, sitting-up, dabbing the back of his head. She looked down at him and finally into his eyes. He could see nothing in them, not even fear—just a blank stare. He noticed the midget’s hands now and felt his gut clench. He hadn’t seen before, but her hands were smothered in blood, like she had tried to peel the skin loose. He got to his feet and the midget spun around with surprising quickness.
    She then threw herself over the railing of the bridge.
    “No!” Bill screamed.
    He stood for a moment in shock, staring at the spot where the midget was a second ago, then ran to the railing and looked over. He could see her tiny body creased between rocks near the stream’s edge. It was at least 30 feet down and too dark to make out more than the general shape of her body. He backed up—clutching his face in his hands—then broke into a run.
    He reached the edge of the bridge and turned onto the grass that led down to the stream, sprinting towards her. When he reached the small hill leading down to the stream’s bank he slid to a stop, staring down at the midget.
    She was lying there, like a doll that had been tossed aside. He could see blood splattered on her face and surrounding rocks. Her head was split on one side, the eye dangling out. The nearby street lamps seemed to cast light only on the mutilated woman, wanting to reveal the gruesome details.
    Bill stood trying to catch his breath. He looked around for any sign of help, but saw nothing. “Lady?’ he said. She didn’t move. He moved closer and could smell urine.
    He could see that her right arm was twisted and almost dislodged from her body. He knelt close to her, holding the collar of his shirt over his nose to block the smell, and tried to hear if she was breathing. She wasn’t.
    She suddenly coughed with a convulsion. Her body flexed as if trying to stretch itself apart and Bill lunged back, lost his balance and sat down on the muddy bank. She heaved with a tough gag and blood sprinkle out of her mouth.
    “God!” Bill muttered.
    She twisted her head in Bill’s direction and her one good eye looked at him. The other eye was dead. Bill fumbled in his pockets for his cell phone.
    “I’m going to get help. Just don’t move, okay.”
    He found his phone, but the sound of the woman’s voice made him jump.
    “Don’t look inside it,” she said. “Don’t go near it.” Her voice was harsh, but audible.
    “Don’t try to talk, just be still.” He flipped open his phone and began to scroll through his contacts.
    “My carriage,” she croaked. “Don’t...it’ll show you everything.”
    Bill looked into her cracked face. Her one good eye glanced over him one last time, and then went dead like its other half.
    Bill fumbled with his phone until he found the number he was searching for.
    He pressed call and waited for his father, Detective Andrew Cooper, to answer.

    The carriage stood alone like a tent abandoned in the middle of a forest. A black half-cover was pulled up and around the bed beneath. The whole thing reminded Bill of a coffin.
    He looked down into it and saw a white sheet sprinkled with blood. There was a pink heart-shaped pillow near the top, also damped with blood. Bill felt as if the whole world had stopped. Silence, except for the wind which he could feel and hear circling him; it sounded like air from a flat tire; soft but there, reminding him that things were still moving. He took a deep breath and moved the sheet aside.
    There was nothing but more blood-soaked sheets. He stared in disgust, beginning to turn away until...something else in the carriage caught his eye.
    A black cylinder was sticking halfway out from underneath the heart-shaped pillow, hidden amongst the bloody linens. He reached in with his fingertips, careful not to touch any blood, and grabbed it.
    It was heavy, like iron, with glass lenses on the top and bottom. Bill thought it looked like a kaleidoscope.
    He jumped, almost dropping the tube, as sirens screamed out around him. He looked out into the fields towards the parking lot and saw police lights flashing.
    Two officers jumped out of a patrol car and ran up the sidewalk towards the bridge. They looked like nothing more than moving shadows in the dark. Bill made his way down the bridge to meet them, stuffing the cylinder in his jacket pocket and trying to calm down.
    “Are you Andrew’s son?” one of the officers asked. Bill nodded. “You called in a suicide?”
    Bill turned around, looking at the stream below the bridge where the lifeless body waited. “She...she just jumped. She didn’t say anything, just jumped off the bridge.”
    The officers took-off into the fields towards the stream. Bill watched them descend the hill and then disappear.
    The tiredness of the night swam over him, and the thought of home was tempting. He made his way over to a bench on the edge of the sidewalk and sat down, waiting for the officers to return with their questions, although he had no idea what had happened.
    He lit another cigarette as a new car pulled into the parking lot now, a brown Cadillac.
    A short man in a grey overcoat stepped out and looked across the field in Bill’s direction. Bill stood up; an embarrassed, guilty feeling crept-up as he waited for his father to approach.
    “Son?” Andrew said as they met. Bill looked down at his father, he was maybe a foot shorter, but his dark eyes showed nothing but arrogance. Bill tossed his cigarette to the ground.
    “Dad, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else too do, this woman, she...” Bill began to loose his thoughts and stutter.
    “Calm down, where’s the body?” Andrew said.
    “She jumped...jumped off the bridge, just jumped.”
    His father looked over at the bridge and the stream beneath. Bill could smell his scent of bourbon and Ralph Lauren cologne. “Are the officers down there?”
    “Yeah,” Bill said, sitting back down on the bench.
    “Just wait here. I’ll be back.”
    Bill gave a slight nod. His father crossed the sidewalk, his boots clicking the pavement with every step until he reached the grass.
    The cylinder bulged from Bill’s pocket. He pulled it out, holding it in his hand. It was defiantly some sort of a kaleidoscope. What had the midget said?
    Don’t look in it.
    It’ll show you everything.
    He placed the lens to his eye, aiming out at the park. It seemed to be some sort of magnify glass. Bill aimed it at a tree and the tree seemed twice as close, enlarged in the viewfinder. He tried to rotate the outside shifts but it wouldn’t budge.
    He brought the kaleidoscope down as he saw his father and the officers walking back from the stream. They made their way up the arching bridge towards the carriage.
    Bill aimed the kaleidoscope at his father. The back of his father’s head magnified, but something was different.
    There was a series of numbers written above his head.
    Bill pulled the kaleidoscope away in confusion. The numbers were gone. He looked through the kaleidoscope again and the numbers were there.
    It was a series of red numbers with blinking colons placed in between certain sets. It read 22: 8030: 192720: 11563200: 693791998.
    Bill counted five sets of numbers; each set larger than the previous, and the very last digit of the last set ticking down, like it was counting off seconds—693791998, 693791997, 693791996, and so on.
    The magnified face of his father turned, looking at him and Bill dropped the kaleidoscope from his eye. The two stared at each other for a moment, and then his father made his way down the bridge.
    He walked over to Bill with a smirk on his face, leaving the officers behind on the bridge. Bill stood up to meet him.
    “When you called, you said there was a baby in the carriage,” his father said.
    “I hadn’t looked inside yet, I thought there was.”
    “The woman’s dead. Back-up’s on the way to investigate the crime scene.”
    “Crime scene? I told you the woman jumped.”
    “I know, its just procedure. I do need to get an official statement from you before you leave though.” His father took a step closer; Bill could almost taste the alcohol on his breath.
    “Fine,” Bill said. “I’ll give it to the officers.”
    Bill began to walk away and his father grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back.
    “She just jumped, huh?” his father said.
    Bill didn’t answer.
    “Just an accident?” His father tightened his grip. “That’s all right, I know about accidents.”
    Bill yanked his arm free.

    He sat in his car outside his father’s apartment, waiting for his return. The statement he had given earlier was embarrassing now that he thought about it—a midget pushing a carriage, with no baby, slammed into him and then jumped over a bridge.
    He was holding the kaleidoscope in his hands, rolling it back and forth. It was a kaleidoscope, Bill was sure. But usually a kaleidoscope could be twisted to show an array of designs reflected by mirrors lining the inside of the tube. This one didn’t seem to twist and it worked more like a magnify glass.
    Its weight was unmistakable. Bill guessed it to be about ten inches long and made of brass. It was solid black with a silver ring around the center, separating it into two halves.
    He was waiting outside his father’s apartment because of what he had seen through the kaleidoscope. Those numbers, they seemed like a chain wrapped around his father’s neck, dragging him down. Bill remembered there were five sets; the first was 22 and the second 8030. The other three were too complex to remember, if there were any to remember. He probably imagined the whole thing, the whole night.
    If the numbers were real, Bill’s first thought was that they were some sort of countdown. He remembered that the last digit of the last series seemed to be counting off seconds, but he wasn’t sure. He tossed the kaleidoscope onto the seat next to him and slouched back.
    There was a stack of books on the seat; some psychology journals and reference books, the novel he was reading—Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman—and a book he was going to give to his patient, Amy, as a gift. It was an old hardcover edition of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass; not quite a first edition, but very old nonetheless.
    During some of their sessions, Amy mentioned that her favorite book was Through the Looking Glass, the famous sequel to Carroll’s, even more famous, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The story followed Alice as she made her way through to the other side of a mirror after pondering what the world would be like over there. Amy had mentioned that she often thought about the book when she was looking in the mirror at her bruises, wondering what it would be like to float through to the other side and disappear.
    It was 2:54 a.m. Bill closed his eyes, realizing how drained he was, and began to doze off. This night had been like a dream, and tomorrow he would wake up to find it really had been.
    The glass elephant statue sat in the middle of the dinner table, his mother’s chewing mouth magnified through its body. Bill was a child again, watching his mother eat through the glass of the elephant. But there was something different this time. Those giant red numbers were blinking above his mother’s head like a ticking time bomb. He looked at his father and the numbers were hovering above him too.
    There were also words written above both his mother and father. Above the first set of numbers was scribbled the word YEARS, the second set was labeled DAYS, the third set HOURS, the fourth set MINUTES, and the last set SECONDS.
    The sets of numbers above his mother’s head were filled with zeros, except for the last two digits of the last set; they seemed to be ticking down the seconds—0: 0: 0: 0: 32. The 32 counted down 31, 30, 29, 28, and so on.
    The glass elephant flapped its ears and winked at Bill. Suddenly, it jumped off the table, using its ears to fly. Bill leapt up, laughing and chasing it. His mother and father sat eating in silence, not noticing the flying elephant at all. Bill shouted at his mother as he cheered for the elephant, telling her to look at it. But she only sat there, lifting potatoes to her mouth.
    The elephant floated down towards Bill, smiling. As it got closer, Bill could see its eyes turning red. It jerked away and darted across the table. Bill jumped on the table, chasing after it like he had so many times. He saw the red seconds above his mother’s head tick down to zero, and the glass elephant slammed into her face, shattering. His father burst into laughter as his mother’s face flooded with blood and then plopped down into her potatoes.
    Bill screamed and screamed, but his father’s crackling laugh was louder. Suddenly, his mother raised her head and stared at Bill. She began to laugh, her face dripping with blood and mashed potatoes, teeth falling out. His father stood up and walked over. He shoving her face back down into the food.
    Bill screamed, and kept screaming until he was awoken by a tapping. He was back in his car, the sturdiness of reality taking place. There was another tap, like a bottle braking over his head, and he jumped.
    He heard laughing and looked over to see his father standing outside the car window.
    “Didn’t mean to startle you” Andrew said.
    Bill rolled down the window. His father’s scent drifted in, the alcohol smell covered with heavy dampness, like the smell of cut grass.
    “You didn’t, it’s all right,” Bill said, rubbing the sleep from his face, the light of dawn settling into his eyes.
    His father rested his elbows on the ledge of the car door. “What are you doing here?”
    “Nothing, I just...I was waiting for you to come home. I wanted to know if everything was alright.”
    “Everything’s fine. It’s going to be documented as a suicide. She had ID on her; her name was Agnes de Selby. Her family will be notified and called to identify the body. We only have your statement, but it’ll be enough.”
    His father stood up. “Go home, Bill; get some sleep. I’ll call you later.” He walked across the street to his apartment building. Bill felt that embarrassment creep-up again.
    He turned the ignition key and began to reverse the car when he remembered why he had come—the kaleidoscope. He grabbed it off the seat next to him and put the car back in park. The dream he just had raced through his mind and he remembered the numbers above his parent’s heads; the labeling above the numbers.
    His father was standing in the parking lot, pulling bags out of his car’s trunk. Bill aimed the kaleidoscope at him and peered through the opposite looking-glass end.
     His father was magnified. The red numbers were blazing above his head, they read 22: 8030: 192715: 11562900: 693773997. The 7 in the last set was ticking down—7, 6, 5, 4, and so on.
    This was the countdown of his father’s life, Bill knew it; the countdown to the end, to his death. Instead of showing shapes and colors, this kaleidoscope was showing Bill his father’s life, so to speak. Bill didn’t know why or how, but he couldn’t deny what he was seeing.
    From his dream he knew that the first set showed the years, the second set showed the days, then the hours, the minutes, and finally the seconds. Bill looked at the first set, which read 22. His father would live for 22 more years—
    His father turned around, and Bill dropped the kaleidoscope from his eye. He looked at his father, wondering what all this meant, wondering what truths this strange kaleidoscope had. His father turned around and began walking towards his building.
    Bill aimed the kaleidoscope at him as he walked up the steps. He peered again though the looking-glass. Now he tried to twist the outside tube. This time it slowly rotated until it clicked.
    It felt like someone slammed a pole through his head. A flash of white light streamed into his eye and the kaleidoscope began to tunnel into his head, digging into his mind as it peeled and stretched the skin of his face, spinning deeper into his eye with spirals of white light.
    Bill screamed out in pain.
    Then he was back in his childhood dinning room, sitting at the dinner table. There were no blinking red numbers this time. His mother sat across from him, the glass elephant in between them on top of the table. Bill’s father sat at the head of the table. Bill could see his mother through the glass of the elephant. She glanced up at him as she ate, and winked. Bill smiled.
    This felt so familiar; he was a young boy again, his mother alive and in front of him. He could smell her—her scent of perfume and laundry. Unlike the dreams, where he was merely watching himself from outside, he felt like he was inside himself, separated but attached at the same time; like he was the conscious of his childhood self, watching and feeling everything from the back of his own mind while the child version of his self acted out.
    “Billy, don’t scratch your fork on the plate,” his mother said.
    Bill looked at her, shocked by the clarity of her voice. His child self smiled at her again. “Sorry,” he heard himself say.
    “Mom, I forgot to tell you! Today we found a dog at recess. We got to play with him before the teacher took him. He was black, we called him Buck.”
    Bill had no control over the words that came out of his childhood self’s mouth, or the movements that were made. He found that he could merely watch and listen from inside his own mind, chained against the wall of long-ago memories, unable to change anything. But even though this felt familiar, Bill could barely remember it, like there was some barrier over this part of his life that was now being bulldozed down.
    “That sounds like fun. What did you do with him?” his mother asked.
    “He followed us around and chased after balls. Mom, can we get a dog? I want a black one and I want to call him Buck.”
    “You’re mother seems to think she already has a dog to keep on a leash,” Bill’s father said. “She doesn’t need another one.”
    From the back of his childhood mind, Bill could sense the coldness rushing out of his father. The fact that his father was in the room suddenly became very evident. Bill’s childhood self cast his eyes down at the chicken on his plate.
    “Well sometimes a dog that can’t control his own slobber needs a chain around its neck,” his mother said. Bill’s child self was still staring down at his plate, but the adult Bill could sense his confusion at this statement. His child self glanced up at his parents with his head close down to his plate, as if they might forget he was still at the table.
    His parents were staring at each other, his mother with a look of defiance and fear on her face.
    “What did you say?” his father whispered. His mother just stared, not answering. After a moment, his father picked up his fork and began eating again. “Son, if you want a dog, we can get one. But you’ll have to take care of it. You’ll have to feed it and take it to the bathroom. Do you think you could do that?”
    Bill nodded his head, staring at the hard image of his father.
    “I think it would be hard to get you up in the morning to take the dog outside. I have trouble getting you up to go to school.”
    The next statement his mother made only made sense to Bill now, as an adult in the back of his child mind. But his child self was completely lost. The statement was so subtle and so direct. And what happened next was nothing but a blur.
    Under her breath his mother said, “That’s not the only thing you’ve been having trouble getting-up lately.”
    With his eyes, adult and child, Bill watched as his father yanked the glass elephant off the table. He then brought it down with both hands into the middle of his mother’s face with the sound of a hammer knocking out bricks from a wall.
    Glass shattered in a puff of glitter around his mother’s head and then fell around the dinner table with the sound of raindrops on a roof. His mother sat staring into Bill’s eyes, her face cracked and mashed, blood spilling and staining her blue dress. Then her head fell forward, smacking into her plate like a chopped tree crashing.
    Bill’s lips, adult and child, uttered the word, “Mom?”
    And then the blackness was consuming.
    The kaleidoscope tour out of his face with such sharpness that Bill felt his eye loosen from his head. He screamed, letting the kaleidoscope fall to the floor. He clutched at his face, feeling if it was still intact. He felt dampness and attempted to open his eyes, but it was like trying to pry a locked safe, they felt clipped shut.
    He finally managed to open them and could see blood on his fingers. His face was ringing with a sting that was spreading into his mind. The kaleidoscope had shown him everything, just like the midget had said. It had shown him the truth that had always been one step away, dancing in his dreams but blocked from his memories.
    As Bill raced through what he had just witnessed, his face bruised with the proof of the kaleidoscope’s truth, one emotion began to boom out of him. It wasn’t confusion or hesitation. It wasn’t the deep insecurity he always felt. It was hate; hate for the man who had done this, the man who had taken away his mother, the man who was and is everything a father should never be.
    Bill jerked out of his car, grabbing the kaleidoscope, and rushed towards his father’s home. At first he merely walked, but as the hate raged he began to run. He ran until he was sprinting, almost ready to fly.
    His father’s loft was twelve floors up, with a view of the Ohio River in the distance. Bill hammered on the door until he heard a ruffle on the other side and a click as the door opened.
    “You killed her,” Bill said as he charged past his father into the apartment.
    “Excuse me?”
    “You killed her, and I remember everything now.” Bill met his father’s eyes and for the first time didn’t divert. He wanted to look into his thoughts. His father stood there with a towel wrapped around his waist, his belly jutting over it. His hair and skin were wet.
    His father closed the door. “What are you rambling about? Killed who?”
    Bill stepped towards him, refusing to back down. “You know what I’m talking about. You killed mom and you’re not going to get away with it any more.”
    His father stared at him, a crossed look on his face, that look of indifference. “Is this what you’re banging on my door for? I was in the shower.” He ran his hand through his wet hair and brushed past Bill.
    Bill grabbed him, his adrenaline racing. “Don’t walk away from me.”
    His father slapped his hand, rage in his face now, “Get out!” he screamed. “Go home. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “I do know what I’m talking about and I’m not going anywhere!”
    They stared at each other and then Bill’s father turned, walking across the living room.
    “Dad,” Bill said.
    His father stopped in the entrance to the hall, his back towards Bill. “Just wait here,” he said. “Let me put some clothes on. Then we’ll talk.”
    Bill stared at his father, the sound of his own breath clouding his thoughts. His father disappeared down the hallway.
    There was a large mirror hanging on the wall next to the kitchen entrance. Bill walked over and stared at himself, lost in his reflection, his eye still red from the kaleidoscope. The version of him self in the opposite side of the glass looked distant and blurry, like a solid turning to mist.
    He touched his finger tips to the glass, watching his hand inside the mirror do the same. He felt as if he could almost reach through, float through the looking-glass to the other side and forget everything. Become like mist, the way Alice did in Through the Looking Glass.
    He reached inside his pocket and felt the kaleidoscope. A thought occurred to him, a thought he hadn’t had before; the thought of himself dancing in the kaleidoscope.
    It was almost like clockwork as he placed the kaleidoscope against his eye and aimed it at his reflection in the mirror, like it was always suppose to happen that way; like he was supposed to know beforehand.
    The image of him self looked inverted and lopsided in the kaleidoscope, like portions of his body were growing while others were shrinking. It was strange staring into his own eyes while his magnified reflection stared back. He looked at the red numbers floating above his head and dropped the kaleidoscope from his eye in confusion.
    He stood for a moment, his mind racing. He put the kaleidoscope back to his eye and looked again. The number read: 0: 0: 0: 0: 27, the last digit counting down 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, and so on. Bill stood frozen, watching the seconds click down, his heart pounding. The numbers reached 9, then 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and then , 0.
    There was a loud bang and Bill felt something cold erupt in the middle of his back as the kaleidoscope crashed to the floor. There was another bang and Bill felt the same cold gush-out in his stomach. He looked down at his torso and saw red seeping out of his shirt, dripping onto the hardwood floors. There were footsteps behind him and he glanced up in the mirror to see his father walking towards him with a rifle in hand.
    Bill fell to his knees.
    He collapsed onto his back, his breath so cold it was stinging his throat. He clasped his stomach and chest, trying and soften the pain as his body began to convulse involuntarily.
    The footsteps grew louder and louder until they were right outside his eardrums, knocking on the door to his mind. But they also sounded far away, as if they were stomping through a thick haze.
    As the room became blurry like his reflection in the mirror, Bill caught a glimpse of his father’s face staring down at him. A smile was spread across it, a smile of conquest.
    But the smile began to sag and smudge as Bill found him self floating through the haze, floating through the looking-glass to the other side to join the mist.



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