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Through the Mirror, Lightly

By Dan McCarthy

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It’s not often that I sit up, drowsy, from the floor of a jail cell. So when and if it does happen, you can’t help but wonder where it all went wrong.

I don’t claim to be an expert on prisons, but this particular one is different. It's an oval room, with the center area raised up and mirroring the shape of the room itself. The cells are normal and have a tight feel to them, all lacking windows. Twelve cells around, my cell and the one directly across seem to be poles marking the equatorial line separating the two hemispheres of the circular room. With some cells open, my brethren and I are allowed freedom to wander inside the confines of this red-walled hoosegow.

I’ve just blown my first line of cocaine, and find words to be coming easily despite my awful surroundings. The cell is dark - the only light emanating from track lighting set in the ceiling outside my personal suite. Across the way, I notice a few others stirring in their cells as well. A larger man notices me from across the center, and beckons me to advance. I rip a couple more bumps while recalling the theory about the importance of forging alliances on your first day in prison, so I make my way over.

As I cross the center-island, I notice a new female inmate being placed into a cell not too far from mine. Her face is familiar, but I’m focusing more on her nervous attitude. A bit hunched over and wide eyed, she’s slightly frantic, skittish, and altogether odd. She’s even still wearing her street clothes. Must be a one-nighter, I suppose. For that matter, I am wearing my normal clothes as well, so perhaps this is a short stay for me, too.

The cinderblock walls have been painted red and are sandwiched by an all white ceiling and a sinister black floor. The center oval is all white as well, giving the entire jail an postmodern nu-deco look. I smile at the man as I approach him, doing my best to make a good impression on someone who could be my only friend in a potentially hostile environment. I make sure to keep the issue of the blow to myself, in case he’s an aggressive type. He doesn’t say much - not that it would matter considering I can’t seem to hear all that well - and just gives me some painting supplies and a long sheet of oak tag; the kind that used to be issued out readily in elementary school for ubiquitous school projects, but at the moment seems immensely out of place. I accept the craft-time materials gratefully and turn to leave. Strangely, the common area doesn’t seem to be guarded by anyone, and a path to the hallway leading away from the oval room is sealed tight by a more traditional, institutional-looking door. Again I take notice of some of the other cells being open, both in terms of accessibility and vacancy. I shrug it off as the coke drips lovingly down the back of my throat. A surge of energy is felt.

I sit back in my cell and place the painting supplies on the ground next to the sink. I rip another line. Funny, I think, how all this is going down without any kind of patriarchal supervision. No armed guards or even video cameras. I must be outside the city. I cast it off and go to work. Instead of pausing and deciding what to create, I instantly become inclined to paint a sort of flowing, abstract image of Janet Jackson, naked, to hang upside down outside the door of the house I grew up in. I will attempt it with skin tones, I think, while rubbing some coke on my gums.

Considering my normally less-than-adequate painting skills, I’m surprised to find the form and brushstrokes are well-adjusted to my hand. The images come rapidly, and the linear display of colors representing her hair, and the colors found there during the past Super Bowl, are bold and vibrant. I assume this skill must be the result of fatigue (which I felt when I woke up here tonight) the cocaine (a small dose of unused dormant skill), and general madness. I step back to inspect my work. Coming along nicely. Perhaps I’ll celebrate with more coke. I do, and hear the familiar woman calling me from across the way. Her voice is muffled and distorted, but by this point so am I.

Again, I walk freely from my dark cell and wander across towards her. She is still skittish and is now hunched over, but I notice that she’s dressed in business casual attire and her hair is strangely matted and frayed. She asks me to move a typewriter for her; one of those gorgeous old-fashioned jobs painted deep-space black yawning raised keys and all-metal frame, suggesting that some man named Bob or Dave, or even Giuseppe would possess the know-how to fix it should the matter ever arise. She tells me that she needs to have it moved to the center of the common area, to sit in the middle of the room, to be faced by all the different cells while she works. I mention to her that she has no paper, so the writing part might prove a little difficult, but she’s too busy twitching and looking about nervously to hear me.

I leave her hunched and spazzing around while I migrate back over to my plot of land. Janet has been neglected, so I get back to work. While my eyes water, I can’t imagine why I’m so inclined to abuse this cocaine with such a degree of passivity in light of my anti-history with this fantastic stuff. Janet needs some more purple in her hair, I think. I add it, and notice a guard saunter past my cell. For a moment I’m panic stricken, and feel my heart through my chest as if I had just run the Boston Marathon and was about to shower my lower half with my own feces. But, just as instantly as he appears, the guard and the fear both pass. I stick half a head out my cell and nervously glance around. He seems to be gone.

The large man beckons me again and I feel a familiar orgasm-surge of energy as the powder goes to work on my brain. I motion to him that it will be a moment. “I have to finish with Janet’s feet. They’re important to the whole piece.” He seems confused by this, but nevertheless waits. The overhead track lighting casts an ominous shadow on his features; his immense, protruding brow cantilevering his nose and casting his eyes and parts of his lower face into shadow. I do notice that he’s impeccably dressed, and comment on his style to myself as I pack up the finished homage to Ms. Jackson. I’ve worked the oak tag into a sort of watery, curved example of her form by way of scissors found in the mini Swiss army knife I had in my pocket. I was using it for bumps of coke and thought it would be a useful tool for my arts and crafts project. I question why the hacks wouldn’t think to confiscate it, as they clearly did my shoes and socks before taking me in here, but suggest to myself that this is an unorthodox house of reform and I must remain grateful for what I’ve got in spite of my surroundings.

It is at this point that the surroundings change a bit. The air is suddenly cold and damp, morning’s moisture still accumulating on the windows as it does in anticipation of a hot mid-summer day. Standing on the deck of the house I grew up in, I look to the backyard to see the pool still covered from the winter. Quite a shame, I think, considering it’s the very season to have the pool up and running. Normally it would be in full service at this point, but I shake it off and begin to put Janet in her place.

I mount her above the side door that leads to the kitchen. She is curvaceous, skin toned, complete with flowing aquatic hair and a caricatured face. Not questioning how she’s staying in place devoid of some adhesive or thumbtack, I step back on the deck to inspect my work. A fine display, worthy of the back pages of Entertainment Weekly. I find time for more cocaine as well. I hop over the railing and land on some grass as it grows with other underbrush in the backyard. For reasons growing more and more evident, I laugh as the bag of cocaine seems to be on top of the garage now, at the end of an old tattered rope hanging down the hill to where I am standing. No point in wasting time, as this will all soon be over for sure. My feet are still bare and beginning to get a chill.

With confidence, I spit on my palms and grab the rope. I have no reasoning for the spittle, but remember it to be useful for heroes and adventurers. While I have at the rope, I notice the plants at my feet changing shape into what appear to be massive poison ivy plants. I have a massive, debilitating reaction when I come into contact with this plant. Unlike some people, who get the required skin bumps and patches of an itchy rash that is a trifle bother to them, my skin swells and cracks and spreads the disease all over my body until doctor-issued steroids are brought in to hold back my inflammation and prevent me from premature death. I look down at the plants and become nervous, but oddly enough, don’t really react to their presence. The rope is all that matters, and getting to the top contains a prize so worthy that braving these demonic hydrangeas is worth the price I may pay.

I belay up the rope, casting dirt off the surface of its fiber as I climb. Nothing could stop me. Hand over hand I pull my body to the heavens, imagining placing my face in that bag of powder and breathing heartily once I reached the summit. About halfway up everything changes, and the full extent of where I am and what I am doing is evident as the world I was just a part of becomes altered and non-linear - the telltale suggestions that this ride is about to finish. The rope is still present, but now I am inside the garage, scaling its filthy inner walls. The wall grows in size, until I am scaling the broad side of an infrastructure that would make Trump quake in his boots. Then I begin noticing that the garage hasn’t actually shifted size, but I have. Now the size of an ant, I am crawling up a rope on the side of some juggernaut more terrible and intimidating than I had ever been privy to before. When the giant face of Robert Plant sticks his head inside the garage window and sends a piercing stare my way, I know that something very different is about to happen.

He looks at me with his eyes bulging. I hang there for a moment, and considered whether or not I should tell him I really like the BBC sessions version of “Girl with Black Wavy Hair.” He doesn’t seem to be in the mood. A lock of his hair falls from behind his ear and I leap from the rope to grab hold of it and possibly work my way up to ask for a lift to the cocaine that is now on the other side of the wall, on top of the garage. Surely he’ll understand my need for the stuff right now, I think. Not realizing the lubricating nature your own sweat has when trying to grasp a 30-foot strand of golden-god follicle, I slip off his massive mane and tumble downward. Thankfully, he hasn’t abandoned his jewelry-wearing days of the band’s heyday, and a long silver chain hangs from his neck, boasting some kind of transcendental talisman with a Turkish blue gem in the center. I grab it as I fall, and work my way down to the base where the chain meets the talisman. I want to talk to him, but speech doesn’t seem to be an option for the ogre. His massive, wrinkled face just gleams around and surveys the area with no real attention being given to me. Like some iconoclastic theme-ride, he just swivels his head from left to right and looks around with a mimicking motion like that of the most grotesque lighthouse in the history of Maine.

No point in staying here, as he’s sure to just get all edgy soon and start flailing about. I’ll be injured for sure. With that in mind, I leap back to the rope, which now has me hanging in the middle of blackness - above and below. The rope doesn’t appear to be attached to any fixed object from my point of view. Just a single line suspended in nothingness; my lone figure the only animate object in sight. Robert Plant is gone, as is the garage. And goddammit, so is the cocaine. I needed to quit anyway.

I get as comfortable as I can and decide to stay put. My arms aren’t all that tired, and I hope that Mr. Plant will soon return. This lasts for about a minute, until I decide to just slide down and see where it leads me; assuming of course that I am right-side up, and down is the down I was thinking of. No way of telling in this void. I let go to see what will happen.

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Dan McCarthy is an independent filmmaker and writer who currently lives somewhere between Italy, Southern New Hampshire and New York City. He can be reached at [email protected].

© 2004 Me Three