FICTION
Double
A short story
“I don’t chat.”
The girl’s tone is combative, but she is small and spare. Her limbs are long, spidery extensions of a short torso, framed in the shadowy space where the mirror clouds. The trees on either side of us are heavy with the morning’s rain, ready to shower upon us at the slightest hint of a breeze.
“It’s a simple question,” I counter with a slow blink. She hasn’t moved when my eyes open wide again, with those arms threatening to stretch even thinner, to bleed into the dark cracks between the intact silver coating.
Her skin is pebbled along her cheeks, drawing attention to the bones beneath them, her gaze luminous in the sunrise. The day is new, fresh and clean as our relationship is not, and the sun’s sleepy blend of light surrounds this narrowing space.
I have come this far, not without her, and she knows it. But why do I return, again and again? There is no need for this farce between us, and yet here I am, playing it out as she shimmers from within the dulling glass.
Our words echo, beating into the distance with a shriek carried aloft by the wind, and rainwater soars over us, a transparent canopy that blurs our faces as we watch each other through the spray.
