With mere seconds
remaining, Brandy rushed to catch the 2 o’clock bus that would take her to a
law firm downtown, where she was scheduled to interview for her dream job. She
didn’t dare hope to get it. But if she did, she just knew, her luck would
finally change. It would mean more money, and the luxury of sick days and
health insurance. She would finally be able to go to the doctor when she got
sick.
She took an aisle
seat about mid way back in the bus, daydreaming about a better life. She rummaged
through her purse, retrieved a small mirror, and checked her appearance once
more as she neared her destination.
The bus rolled to
a stop. A young man rushed down the aisle, bumping her arm and knocking the
mirror from her hand, shattering it into seven nearly even sized shards on the
floor. Brandy stared at her broken reflection briefly, barely recognizing the
gaze looking back at her. Her eyes had a darkness she had never noticed.
“You know, child,”
startled, she turned to the elderly woman in the seat across from her, “That’s
your soul looking back at you. It takes seven years for your soul to synchronize
back with your body. Bad luck will be waiting for you around every corner.”
“Great! Just what
I needed, today of all days, seven more years of bad luck,” she said as she
rolled her eyes.
“Perhaps,” the
elderly woman said in her feeble voice, “there is one thing you can do to
reduce the bad luck. But you must follow my instructions precisely. Beneath the
light of the moon, you must bury one of the shards of broken mirror, and then stand,
turn your body clockwise, and repeat this chant.” She scribbled it on the legal
pad Brandy was holding.
“Do this every
night for the next seven nights, one night for each year of bad luck. And
maybe, just maybe, it’ll reduce the curse to only seven days.” Gold specks
sparkled in the woman’s eyes as she spoke. “But be warned, dear. Your soul
won’t want you to do this. By breaking the mirror, you released it. Freed it.
Once that happened, it became everything you’re not. Your total opposite. It’s free to do evil and immoral things,
acting as you, until the curse has run its course. So, for the next seven days,
be very careful. It will stop at nothing to destroy you. Your soul… is now your
enemy.”
Brandy gathered the
shards, shoved them in her purse, and hurried off the bus. The old woman’s warning
cluttered her mind during the interview. Yet, she managed to answer every
question with ease and confidence. The senior partner stood and extended his
hand to her. “Welcome aboard, you start tomorrow.”
Her insides quivered,
but her handshake stayed firm. “Thank you. I’m looking forward to becoming part
of the team here at Billings Law Firm.” This was her big break, her foot in the
door. In five years time, they would be begging her to become partner.
She retrieved her
purse from the floor and headed for the door.
It wasn’t until she was out of the building and around the corner, that she
let out a sigh of relief and allowed a huge smile to creep across her face. “My
dream job, finally!”
Her thoughts quickly returned to the woman on
the bus. “What if that crazy old woman is right? My future, destroyed over a
stupid, broken mirror.” She recalled the streams of bad luck she’d had over the
past few years. Dread quickly replaced her excitement. Acid rose in her
stomach, burning as it made its way to her mouth. She ducked in to a nearby
alley just as her fear released itself on to the ground, causing her stomach to
spasm painfully in her core. In what should have been the happiest day of her
life, a day to celebrate, trepidation had won. The scratchy brick building that
she leaned against pierced her skin as the burning tears she’d held back all
day dribbled down her cheeks, becoming puddles of defeat on the ground.
Left hollow, she
reached inside her purse for a tissue. Instantly, she felt the sting of pain as
something penetrated her finger. Thick strands of blood dripped down one of the
mirror shards as she lifted it from the confines of her purse.
Exhausted and beaten, but safely
back at home, she retrieved the broken mirror; symbolically representing her
life the past seven years as she’d struggled to put herself through law school.
One broken shard for each of the seven unlucky years she’d had. She picked up a
piece of the shattered mirror. The old woman’s words haunted her, “bad luck
will be waiting for you around every corner” “your soul is now your enemy.” The
thought of seven more years of bad luck was more than she could handle.
Brandy grabbed her
gardening trowel from the garage, trudged out to the huge willow tree in her
backyard, and began to dig. She tossed the broken glass in the hole and covered
it with a scoop of dirt. She stood and turned clockwise, as the feeble old
woman had instructed and recited the chant, hoping to speed up the curse.
Hands of time and hands of fate.
Seven years I cannot wait.
Reduce one year into one day
Transporting the bad luck away.
Soul and body merge as one
Force the curse to come undone.
The phone rang just as she was
about to leave for work the next morning.
“No! How can that
be?” she cried. “She’s only 30 years old.” Tears stung her cheeks as her mother’s
word rang out in her ear. Her sister had cancer; a rare, but fatal melanoma.
Her first day at
her new job was almost as fatal. Everything she did; everything she touched
went wrong. The day began, with her knocking coffee over on important case papers,
and ended with her dropping a stack of folders and the contents scattering on
the floor, mixing together. Now, she had to stay late to put them back in order.
Her boss looked at her throughout the day like he had made a horrible mistake
hiring her.
By the time she
left work nearly everyone had already gone for the day. The desertedness of the building— the empty
cubicles, the silence of the phones, the dark corners— sent chills across her flesh.
As she walked to the bus stop, she sensed she was being followed. But she saw
no one.
That evening,
Brandy repeated the previous night’s ritual.
As she turned to go back inside, a dark shadow lurking in the distance
caught her attention.
After a long hot
shower to wash away the worst first day imaginable, her mood lifted. She even
allowed herself to get excited about her new job. As she rummaged through her
closet of thrift store suits and Goodwill finds, she fantasized about the designer
labels she would soon be able to buy with the money she’d be making. Later, she
drifted to sleep, determined not to let the broken mirror control her fate.
But the following
day was as bad as the day before, as was the next. Day after day bad luck and bad
news waited for her, exactly as the old woman had predicted. Her landlady
raised her rent; her best friend was missing; her purse was stolen containing
what little money she had left until she got her first pay check; and her own health
was deteriorating. Her fair skin was becoming
nearly translucent. Every day it got a little lighter, everyday she got a
little weaker. By weeks end, she barely had the strength to get out of bed. The
job she had longed for and couldn’t wait to get, became a job she couldn’t wait
to end each day. Every night after she repeated the burying ritual she’d look
out in the distance. The dark shadow seemed to get closer.
Rain pounded as
she made a dash for the bus on the seventh morning. Water flowed in mini rivers
down the street. Her feet, soaked and slippery, slid out from under her on the
sidewalk, twisting her ankle behind her. Her head hit the ground. The sounds of
voices buzzed above. “Don’t move,” someone said. Sirens echoed as they loaded
her in the ambulance. Then, darkness.
Brandy woke to the
confines of a hospital bed; offensive beeping, aggressive voices, strenuous
moaning all competing to be heard. The events of the week replayed like a mixed-up
movie in her subconscious mind; recalling bits of this, and bits of that, but
nothing connecting, nothing making any real sense. But she knew she had to get
out of the hospital: she had to get back to the burying ground. She feared for
her life. Still dazed and confused, she willed her body out of the bed and crept
down the hallway until she found an exit. Her ankle, swollen to double its size, filled
her with excruciating pain by the time she arrived home.
Crawling, leg
dragging behind her, she pulled herself over the dirt and rocks, toward the
ceremonial tree, pain coursing through her body with every movement. She
gripped the last shard of glass tightly in her hand. As she approached the tree, a shadow engulfed
her body. She looked up in the darkness, into eyes of pure evil. The same eyes
that had stared back at her from the shattered glass on the bus floor. Face to face, she looked into the eyes of her
very soul.
She began frantically
digging, grabbing clumps of dirt with her hands, ignoring the blood from her
fingertips dripping on the ground.
“Go on, bury it!
You stupid girl. You’ve always thought you were so smart. Do the right thing. Study
hard. Follow the rules. Where did it get you?” Her soul shouted. “I do
appreciate it though, you’ve made it so easy for me to step right in and take
over your life.”
The soul’s
sinister laugh perforated Brandy’s spirit.
Her fingers ached from the compressed dirt beneath her nails as she dug
them through the ground, not looking at the evil standing before her. “Never!
You will never get my life!” she yelled. She threw the last shard of glass in
the ground and forced dirt over the hole, burying it deep.
Then she looked up.
Brandy watched as
her soul came fully into focus… not noticing, that her own body had completely disappeared.
Her soul reached
into its pocket and pulled out a mirror, looked at its reflection. A fleck of
gold flickered on the glass. Then, it snapped the mirror shut, leaving Brandy
screaming behind the mirrored glass.
***
