"What you got?" Amanda asked, slapping him across the head.

"Ain't none of yer goddam business!" Mark shouted.

"I hate you, you worthless sack o' …"

He stared at her, warning her to shut her mouth. She pursed her lips then turned away.

"Bitch," he said, loud enough for her to hear. He sat on a worn lime green chair and opened the parcel. Inside was a silver medallion. Cut into the middle was a series of complex triangles. It was the same shape as the emblem on his Grandmother's gravestone.

"You got go get a job!" Amanda shouted.

He sighed and pocketed the coin. Her voice made him shudder with rage. He stood up, collected his keys and left the apartment. His car managed to crawl to Woodgate Cemetery. He parked under a tree and walked through gravestones and overgrown plots until he reached his grandmother's resting place. He drew the coin from his pocket and placed it in the engraving above her name. He stood back and heard something from behind the stone.

He saw a small opening. Inside was a small parcel of velvet. He opened it and saw a mirror shard the size of his palm. It was dirty and went to clean it with the bottom of his shirt. Instead of touching surface, it passed through it as if it was as air. He looked into it and saw a girl's hand instead of his own. It wore an identification bracelet with an address on it. He wrapped the mirror in the velvet and put it in his pocket with the coin and went back to his car.

It was a grey day; dusky, the type of day where bad things happen and ozone sits fresh in the air like perfume. A slight breeze drove some of the weaker leaves from their branches. He entered the car. The engine belched as he turned the key, and he drove to the address he saw on the bracelet.

Mark arrived at an abandoned house with black windows, slates missing from the roof. He walked to the door. It opened under duress and he went inside. The rooms smelled of urine and he tasted sea salt. When he went into the bathroom, he saw a mirror above a broken sink that looked like it had been smashed with a hammer. There was a piece missing to the left. He saw a girl in the mirror, standing in a field populated with buttercups. Her left hand was missing. He reached into his pocket and drew out the shard, placing it where the mirror was broken. It fit. The girl smiled.

Mark said, "Who are you?"

"Alice," she said.

"What is this place?"

"Home," she replied. "Live with me. I will make you happier." She put out her remaining hand. It came out of the mirror, palm upwards.

Mark took it and allowed her to pull him slowly into the mirror up to his hips. He climbed on the sink so that he could fit his whole body in the mirror. Half way in, a tap caught the velvet which pulled at the coin. Both fell from his pocket. He screamed as his legs tumbled to the floor without a torso, spraying the bathroom crimson. On the other side of the mirror, his arms and torso fell on the grass.

Alice looked at him. "You shouldn't have dropped the coin." She paused and added, "You look like somebody I knew."

He craned his neck and looked at the space where his legs used to be. The grass was black as blood flooded the field. His body tingled, even his missing appendages.

"Do you know Stephen Bottler?" her soft voice asked.

Tears streamed down his face. He knew he would die. Even Amanda was better than death.

"I thought so," said Alice. "You're a mirror image."