Shattered Soul

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.

***