MirrorWorld

Her smile broadens as she looks down at herself. “I do, don’t I?” She lifts her arms and the sides come up, like Batman’s cape, only neon. It’s a poncho. A bright orange hunter’s poncho.

“They wouldn’t let me in if I wasn’t wearing it. At least it matches the car.” She lowers her arms, revealing Shotgun and Seymour standing behind her, one to a side. She senses their presence and flinches, stepping closer to me. A few eyes around the room glance up, and then turn back down.

“She’s a doctor,” Seymour says, his fingers twitching madly in front of his mouth. “No, a specialist!”

“Ex-girlfriend,” Shotgun says with a smirk and a confident nod.

“An expert!” Seymour says. He’s getting a little too excited.

“Can you give us some privacy?” I ask the pair.

“Ex-girlfriend it is!” Shotgun says, pumping an imaginary shotgun, “Chick, chick,” and firing it into the air. “Boom!”

As the duo retreats back to the couch-throne, the woman turns to me again, looking a little less sure of herself.

“That’s why we call him Shotgun Jones,” I explain.

“Right,” she says, straightening her pumpkin suit. Her smile disappears. The eyebrows descend. “Do you want to be here?”

“I want to smell the new pavement,” I tell her.

A mix of confusion and disappointment contorts her pretty face.

“You know I’m crazy, right?”

“With a capital C,” she says. “I’ve been told. But you’re not crazy.”

“You know my real name?”

“Lowercase c.”

“Oh. Then what am I?”

“I’ll let your doctor explain it to you. Later. Right now, I need a very plain yes or no answer. Do you want to leave this place? Or do you want to spend the rest of your life waiting to see who replaces Drew Carey on the Price Is Right?”

“He’s funny,” I say.

“Bob was better.”

“I don’t really remember Bob.”

“You don’t remember anything past a year ago.” She makes sure I’m looking in her eyes. “All but two days of your remembered life have been in this place. Before that was two days in a jail cell and an hour at a bar. Am I wrong?”

“No.”

My eyes turn to the floor and then back out at the view. “Would I be leaving today?”

I see the motion of her nod in my periphery.

“Yes,” I say. “I want to leave.”

“First,” she says. “I need proof.”

“Of what?”

“Step one. What do you think of me?”

I look her up and down, appraising her. I stop on her eyes. “You’re intelligent. Driven. Brave. You’re also hiding something, but who isn’t?”

“Is that all?”

“I’d also like to sleep with you, but you already knew that.”

“What makes you say that?” she asks.

“Have you looked in a mirror? Who wouldn’t want to sleep with you?”

She looks down at the bright orange poncho. “Most of me is covered.”

“Your face would more than make up for any flaws beneath it, and not everything is hidden.” I glance down at her chest, from which the loose poncho hangs, and am only slightly surprised to find my right hand cupping her left breast. A complete lack of fear means that I sometimes act without thought. Fear acts as a social buffer, giving most people time to contemplate their actions and the ramifications. Not only do I lack that buffer, the potential negative effects of my actions don’t faze me. Only my strong moral code keeps me in check, but on occasions like this, it’s all hindsight.

“Very good,” she says, like I’ve passed a test.

I withdraw my hand and apologize, but she waves the words away like they’re some kind of stink. “Step two.” She reaches up and slides her fingers beneath the collar of my shirt. For a moment, I think she’s going to repay the fondle with one of her own, but she takes hold of something that she shouldn’t know is there. The chain slides out from under my shirt. Having it is technically against the rules, but the few times they’ve tried to take it, I’ve gone actual crazy. I don’t know what it is, where it’s from, or why I cling to it, but I know I can’t live without it. And that I would kill to retrieve it.

The pendant at the end of the chain falls free, hanging on the metal links. It’s a colorful mash-up of melted plastics formed into a crude circle.

“Are you afraid?” she asks.

“I’m resisting the urge to break your hand.”

She turns the pendant around, reading the single word etched into the flat backside. “Evidence.” She frowns for a moment but covers it up quickly. “Do you know what this is?”

It feels like my soul, but I know that’s ridiculous, so I shake my head. “It’s the craziest thing about me, so you better put it back.”

She does, slipping it inside my collar and letting it drop.

“Now, step three.” The vinyl of her poncho makes a shhh sound as her arm rises. Her hand emerges holding a ceramic three-inch blade. “Stab yourself.”

“Why?”

She squints at me. “Are you afraid?”