Twisted Reflections

The figure simply stood at the very far end of the street, not budging. Ava narrowed her eyes in concentration. The shape, the posture-it was her, and yet not quite.

It was as if someone had taken her features and turned them a bit, mingling them with another person's-someone strange, yet uncannily close.

It was her face that stared back, yet softer at the angles than her own, her eyes a deeper brown, sunken, as if weighted down by all the sorrows and despairs she hadn't known yet.

Again, the wind picked up and carried with it faint whispers that brushed against her ears, words on the cusp of comprehension but dissolving before she could grasp them. Words repeated in a voice speaking over and over in a language she'd never heard but felt familiar.

Ava stumbled backward a step. A pulsating beat rammed at the inside of her head. The blood loss, Her knees went weak, the air thickening with shadows around her.

The figure-her distorted reflection-disappeared in the twitch of the streetlight as if it had never existed. The sky above was full, the surrounding planets low-hanging, casting dull, shifting shadows over the streets. The stars felt too far away to offer comfort.

Ava swayed, her breathing shallow. "I have to get back". Her surroundings blurred over.

Dragging herself towards her room, her steps slow and labored, she didn't bother trying to clean up the space. The faint scent of blood still lingered in the air. 

Her boots stayed on as she fell onto the bed, out cold before she could even think to fight it.

It was hours later that she woke into the pale, dead sky framing her window. It felt as if a fog had set over her brain, as if everything that had happened the previous night had just. dissolved into fragments of nothing.

She vaguely remembered what happened, but the memory slipped through her fingers when she tried to hold on tight enough. She decided to give-up as it was easier to forget.

She sat up stiffly, muscles aching, changing her trench coat for a light brown woolen overcoat. 

Ava slipped out silently into the cold morning without rousing the sleeping family of three in the remaining rooms, a door clicking shut behind her.

The streets were empty, shrouded with a thin mist as she walked to Maurice's building. Her feet moved with an automatic gait, falling into the same practiced rhythm in which she must have traversed this route a hundred times before

She arrived at the building and was informed that Maurice was still not in his office. Ava blew a heavy sigh and proceeded down to the restaurant located on the ground floor of the building, sliding into a seat beside the window.

The waitress- without asking- set yoghurt toast, a single slice of cheesecake, and a cup of coffee before her.

The food was flat and far away, as if she were chewing on memories rather than breakfast. This morning, the restaurant was quiet. 

Ava sipped her coffee slowly, the warm bitterness grounding her momentarily. 

Then, she heard a murmur or a whisper emanating from a corner—a subtle crawling sense of wrongness she couldn't place.

Then she saw him.

A tall butler approached her table, his posture perfect, his face expressionless. Something of him nagged at the back of her mind, yet when she tried to focus upon his features, her gaze slipped off of him, as if her mind refused to commit him to memory.

Had she ever seen him before? The thought flashed across her mind but was gone in an instant. A wave of dizziness suddenly washed over her, then was gone, shielding the weakness below with a blank mask.

"Follow me," the butler said; his voice was smooth yet far away.

She didn't say a word, just followed him upstairs. Her boots made no sound as she trailed up after him. The upstairs floor was eerily silent, a floor that normally hummed with the quiet bustle of activity. 

The office area seemed abandoned, devoid of chatter and other office noises that it should have been filled with.

Several maids were standing at the windows, watering flowers. Their heads turned to the butler as he walked by them, then to Ava.

Their gazes were fastened on each other a fraction of a second too long, their faces impassive, but their eyes glinting with something far from pleasant.

She swallowed as unease coiled in her gut. "Why is everyone staring at me like that?"

The silence was finally broken by the low, polite voice of the butler. "This way."

He gestured toward the door to Maurice's office, his hand moving with a deliberate slowness, as if every movement had been rehearsed a thousand times.

Ava turned back again to the maids, still standing at the window, peering out with an unnerving patience. Their eyes watched like never before.

The soft throat clearing by the butler drew her attention back to the doorway. Ava exhaled hard, shaking off the tension in her shoulders as she stepped further inside. 

The door closed quietly behind her.

Maurice sat at his desk, pen in hand, his posture relaxed. The air inside the room felt strange, as if the space existed half a second out of sync with the rest of the world.

"Morning," Ava muttered, her voice sounding rough in the stillness. Maurice looked up; his eyes flickered between her and the door. For just a brief moment, something flickered across his face.

"You're early," he said, laying the pen down. "Didn't expect you so soon."

Ava shrugged, dropping into the chair across from him. "Couldn't sleep." It was a half-truth.

Maurice leaned back, eyeing her with a quiet intensity. "You don't look so good," he remarked.

"Should I have worn some makeup for you??" she replied, lightly enough for a pretense. 

The words were strange to her tongue; she wasn't quite certain that they were her own. —she could feel it—but she couldn't quite grasp what.

Maurice did not press the matter, though his glance lingered a second before he turned to the drawer behind his chair.

He pulled out 3 stacks of cash and started to count them before handing them to Ava for her confirmation.

The weight in the room was getting heavier as Ava received her mission payments from yesterday.

The shadows cast in corners were thicker and a bit darker than they should be, and shifted just so slightly when she wasn't looking directly at them.

Her hand strayed toward the cup of tea Maurice had poured, but just as her fingers grazed the porcelain, something flickered in the glass cabinet across the room.

Her reflection stared back at her. There was a smile, too wide of a smile.

Ava's hand froze; her pulse stuttered wildly in her chest. The reflection blinked, once, and returned to normal.

Maurice's voice cut through the silence. "That settles the payment for your mission, do you wish to take another mission right now?" he asked.

Ava forced a smile, though her fingers gave off a twitch. "Yeah, no" she lied, raising the cup to her lips. "I plan to take a day off today."

But with every sip of the tea, the feeling of being watched nipped at her.

The shadows seemed to inch closer. And the reflection in the glass, though quite still, felt like it waited for something.

Ava didn't wait long as she immediately got up to leave after finishing the tea, 

Maurice didn't stop her as he personally guided her out of the room, as he watched her leave down the stairs.