Breaking The Mirror [Edited And Complete]

Clarity

"Sonic it is then," Seaton says, then adds, "Then we'll be going to the apartment. I'll give you part two of the present then, okay?"

"Y-yes...." I nod and then everything is silent again.

I want to tell him how fucking happy I am.

But I can't find the right words.

-

The new apartment is really nice. It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large living room, and a small kitchen. It's really nice. So nice I don't see why he was living in a crap heap like my old apartment building. His old furniture is set in the living room, his television and couch and coffee table.

"Tour?" Seaton offers, and I look up at him slowly before nodding. He leads me down the hallway and taps on a door, "This is my room."

He walks across the hall and a little ways down and opens the door to another room, which I'm guessing is mine.

"Yours," he confirms. Mine. It's my room, only a few feet from Seaton's room. I'm the luckiest person alive... Charlie, Alfred, and bullet wound excluded.

There's a main bathroom that's connected to mine and he's got his own bathroom, both of them are about the same size. They've already got towels and toilet paper in them. He then shows me the last room and sort of pauses by the door, looking at me.

"Now, brat, your..." He pauses again, thinks about what he's going to say and then restarts, "Step two of your present."

The muscles in my chest constrict as he opens the door and when I look inside...

It's beautiful. All of it. They're paintings. So many paintings. Maybe a hundred or so, give or take. There's a picture of things as simple as a sunset, but just wonderful because they were painted by him. I'm pretty sure anyways. Hadn't Seaton once confessed to me 'I paint'? Yes, that was it.

But this was much more than just paint. There was a horse galloping with a man on its back. The man in the picture had fierce eyes and was riding toward me as though he were readying himself to jump over me. It was painted so well, it nearly looked like a picture from a few feet away.

There's another, a large one, of a man and woman dancing on their wedding day. Their entire family, both sides are standing around them. You can tell which family is his and which is hers because he's black and she's white and quite fair. Every family member around them is scowling or at least looking indifferent –there's even a woman in the back turned away. But the man and woman are looking at each other, only each other. And it's amazing, because you can almost feel the way the fictional characters feel about each other.

I didn't think it was possible to translate those feelings onto a picture.

Another, near the wedding canvas, is a portrayal of a beautiful woman looking into a mirror, bright green piercing eyes staring at herself, brownish red hair flowing around her face and shoulders as if she were in water. But in the mirror there is an ugly woman with sunken cheeks and a grotesque frown, dirt, blood and wrinkles on her face. Next to her is child and a mother, laughing together as the little boy steals a lick of her eye cream; his is already finished and thrown in the trash next to him.

The work of art next to it is of a boy, sitting in a hallway, beside a soda machine. He's sitting on the ground with his back against the wall, with his brown head down and...

Wait.

"I... Is that..." I start and look at Seaton and he just raises an eyebrow. I step further into the room and directly up to the picture of the boy, examining what little of his face I can make out in the dark. It can't... It can't be... but it is, "Is that me?"