Mirror, mirror..

 

The queens arrived like a hallucination in sequins.

One moment the room was silent except for the low electrical hum of the refrigerator and the ancient ticking clock on the wall. Then suddenly the air ruptured with colour, noise, perfume, laughter. They spilled into the room as though they had stepped directly from a forgotten theatre stage abandoned sometime around 1964. Satin gowns dragged across the floorboards. Rhinestones caught the dim light. Their faces were immaculate beneath powders and paints that concealed every decade they had survived.

Tiny Fair remained stretched across the pale grey velvet sofa, unmoving, staring upward at a water stain spreading across the ceiling like an inkblot. Goddam. Fucking houses.

“Oh my god, look at you,” one of them laughed, cigarette burning between lacquered fingers. “Do something with yourself bitch. What is wrong with you?”

Beneath the couch her hand searched absently until it discovered a tall bottle of nail polish hidden in the dust and darkness. Pink. Ancient pink. Elizabeth Arden Blazer Pink. The glass bottle looked as though it had survived wars, divorces, overdoses, house fires and nervous breakdowns. The lid was cracked. The liquid inside had thickened with age but still clung to life stubbornly.

Like her.

She unscrewed it carefully and began painting her toenails.

The chemical smell filled her lungs instantly, transporting her backwards through decades she no longer trusted herself to remember correctly. Dance halls. Cheap perfume. Silver heels. Men with polished shoes and predatory smiles. Women smoking elegantly while dying internally.

An era that didn't belong to her.

The pink darkened slowly as air touched it.

Pink to crimson.

Youth to ruin.

“So dramatic,” another queen smirked, pouring herself gin before midday. “Hurry before it turns to blood entirely.”

Tiny Fair continued painting in silence.

Then fingers next.

The oldest queen watched her closely from an armchair near the window. She was clearly the one in charge. Her gown was emerald green velvet, her white hair sculpted perfectly into place as though even death itself would not dare disturb it.

“Tiny Fair,” she asked softly, “where did you go?”

The room quietened.

Even the laughter retreated into corners.

“Do you remember the lights?” the queen asked. “The music?”

Tiny did remember. With a memory that was not hers.

God, she remembered.

The lights had once felt heavenly. Golden spotlights pouring onto her skin while music swelled around her like ocean tides. There had been applause once. Desire. Names spoken lovingly. Entire rooms turning to look at her when she entered.

But memory was dangerous now.

To remember too deeply was to drown.

“That was another age,” she murmured eventually. “Things are different now.”

The queens exchanged glances filled with the kind of sadness only ageing survivors possess.

One wandered toward the kitchen.

“You have two coffee machines?”

Tiny nodded slowly.

“Which machine do you want coffee from right now?”

“The big one.”

It was absurd how seriously this question mattered.

The large machine hissed and groaned to life like some exhausted mechanical animal while Tiny examined the women around her. Their gowns remained pristine. Hair immaculate. Jewels glittering beneath soft yellow lamp light.

Meanwhile she felt as though she had been dragged beneath reality itself.

Frayed.

Worn thin.

“I don’t know how long this charade can continue,” she admitted quietly.

Nobody interrupted her.

“I feel like I was put through the machine…” she whispered. “And somehow emerged physically intact.”

Her fingers trembled slightly as she stared at the drying polish.

“But inside…”

She looked toward the mirror opposite the sofa.

Cracked.

Long ago shattered violently from corner to corner.

“My thoughts,” she continued, “my innermost feelings… they’re like that mirror. Too broken to repair.”

The queens remained motionless now.

Listening.

“But you remain visible in every shard.”

Outside, rain began tapping softly against the windows facing the sea.

Tiny Fair closed her eyes.

A lifetime spent searching for truths. For answers. For identity. Digging endlessly through memories like a grave robber clawing through wet earth hoping to uncover something still alive beneath it all.

And sometimes she had found herself briefly.

A glimpse.

A face.

A certainty.

Only for it to vanish once again beneath dark crashing waves before she could hold onto it.

The oldest queen finally approached her quietly with the coffee cup held between both hands.

“You survived,” she said simply.

Tiny Fair stared into the black surface of the coffee.

Did she?

Or had some essential part of her drowned years ago while the body continued wandering elegantly through rooms pretending to still be alive?

The queens resumed laughing eventually.

Music returned softly from an old radio somewhere deep in the apartment.

But Tiny Fair remained motionless upon the pale grey velvet sofa while the red polish dried like fresh wounds beneath the dim and failing light.