American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,122

into the room.

Though her eyes are shut, Mona is sure she can feel things change. It is the same as in Weringer’s house: though she cannot say why, she is positive that, though this room may appear to be connected to the rest of Coburn via that long, cracked hallway, she is now somewhere else. She is no longer on the mesa, she feels: she is no longer in New Mexico, no longer in America. Perhaps she is no longer on Earth.

She opens her eyes.

The room looks the same. And when she looks behind, she can still see the long, cracked hallway with the quaking lights. And yet she is sure this room is separate from everything, floating freely in… what? Nothing? Is it floating in nothing, like a space capsule?

She looks at the mirror. It seems far larger now that she is near it. She slowly walks around to get a better look. The arm is bent so the mirror’s face is pointed slightly upward, facing the ceiling, which Mona finds a bit curious for a mirror to be doing. But it is a beautiful thing, really. There is something about the way the light glances off its surface, as if when the spotlights’ rays touch it they turn to silver liquid and go skating around it in a shimmering orbit before sliding off the side.

She walks until she can see herself in the bottom half of the mirror. It does not distort her at all, but reflects her as any mirror would do. What was this thing meant for, she wonders? Is it really a mirror, or is its reflective surface just a byproduct of whatever alloy the plate is coated in? She leans in until her nose is almost touching its surface.

She stares into her eyes. For some reason she is suddenly sure that the woman in the mirror is staring back at her, not as a reflection but as a thing with its own agency. She keeps staring at herself, wondering if perhaps she is seeing a Mona that never was…

And then things click.

It happens purely in her head. And, just as when she first entered this room, she feels things change, almost imperceptibly. She looks around, but she sees no visible shift. The hallway is still outside, the lights are still fluttering, and the mirror…

She gasps and jumps back. Her own reflection does the same, of course. But for a moment, Mona was sure that her reflection was not there. What she saw was not the ceiling of this lead room, or any little spotlights, but a wide, endless black sky with many red and white stars.

And the woman standing in front of the mirror was not Mona. But she recognized her. Mona’s seen her only once before, projected onto an old white wall in fuzzy ochre tones, laughing as everyone at her party clapped for her.

Then she hears the footsteps again.

Mona looks out at the hallway. Unlike the last time, she can see movement at the end. She quietly steps to the side, hiding behind the huge door, and takes out the Glock.

The footsteps come closer, heading directly for the room. They slow a little bit, and she hears the walker stop just at the threshold of the door.

“Hello?” says a man’s voice. But it is a very curious voice, Mona thinks. Not only is it not very threatening, it is also faint and crackly, like it is coming out of an old radio catching a signal from a broadcast far, far away.

The person walks forward, toward the mirror. And when he clears the door, Mona sees it is not a man at all.

It looks like a man, just a little, but it is like a black-and-white image of a man from an old, broken television, one overlaid with fuzzy lines and bursts of static, and in some places he is even transparent. He is wearing a ragged tweed coat and a stained pair of slacks, and his shoes are scuffed and beaten and his collar is torn. His salt-and-pepper hair is curly and thick. Though she can see him only from behind, he looks very much like an absentminded professor who has been lost in the wilderness for a long, long time.

He looks around, staring at the room. Finally he glances over his shoulder and sees Mona standing behind the door with a gun pointed at his head. “Oh, my goodness,” he says in that odd, crackly voice. “Laura? My God, Laura, is