Fragments of your Soul (The Mirror Worlds Book 1)

“My goodness, what happened to you?” exclaimed Mona as she sat down at the table next to Arvid, her eyes falling to the thick bandage around her colleague’s hand. She had just come through the door and was still wearing her jacket.

“Oh, I… broke my finger,” Arvid said, looking up from her newspaper, “when I hit my door.”

Mona frowned while unwrapping the scarf from her neck. “Why did you hit your door?”

Arvid shrugged. “I was angry.”

“Quarrel with your mother again?” asked Mona. “You should really move out.”

“Yes, my mother, once again,” sighed Arvid. She avoided Mona’s comment deliberately. Mona couldn’t know that Arvid’s financial situation didn’t allow her to find her own place, and she had little desire to talk about it. Instead, she turned back to her newspaper article.

Mona started talking about a trip with her boyfriend, but Arvid did not listen properly. She tried to concentrate on the text, but with little success. Her thoughts kept wandering off. There were so many things she should take care of. She kept putting them off but couldn’t get them out of her head. There were all the unpaid bills, and she should finally call Daniel and tell him that she didn’t want to go out with him anymore. For nearly two weeks she had been finding excuses not to see him, and with every day she felt more guilty.

Her break was almost over, but fortunately there were hardly any guests in the café. Arvid spent most of her time cleaning the shelves under the counter and putting away the small shot glasses that had ended up in all sorts of drawers over the past weeks. It was no easy task to do this with a broken finger, but fortunately the doctor had fixed it in a way she could still move and use three fingers.

Arvid left the café at three and chose the long way through the park to get some fresh air. It was August, but it had been raining for days, so the temperatures were already autumnally cold. On the narrow gravel paths the puddles shone, and among the leafy trees round, white mushrooms peeked out from the grass.

As Arvid crossed the river over the narrow footbridge, she suddenly caught a movement from the corner of her eye. But when she turned around, she could not see anything out of the ordinary. As soon as she took a few steps further, it happened again.

Confused, she stopped. As she looked over the railing and down on the water, she discovered something. She stepped closer and leaned forward. Beneath her at an angle, about midway between the water surface and the bridge, there was a strange flickering in the air. At first, she thought it was nothing special. It was a heat haze, as she had seen many times before, only this time something made her stop short. Was this fibrillation not usually triggered by very hot air?

Obviously she was mistaken. The flowing air distortion was clearly visible, even though the temperatures had dropped to fourteen degrees this morning. Arvid gave the strange phenomenon one last look and moved along.

Once home, she was happy to find the apartment empty. Her mother had apparently tidied up after Arvid had left her breakfast dishes on the table that morning. The living room looked as flawless as a furniture store display. In the brightly polished kitchen she found a note that let her know that her mother had gone shopping. Arvid poured herself a glass of milk and then retired to her room. In here a different order prevailed—chaos, as her mother would say, but it was precisely this environment in which Arvid could relax in earnest. She rarely sat down in the living room, because the strict, cool atmosphere and all the empty areas made her feel uneasy. In her room she was surrounded by things she loved, even if the shelves, cabinets, her table, and the corners were almost overflowing.

As Arvid closed the door behind her, her eyes fell on the small hole in the thin veneer, a small reminder of the past fight with her mother and the reason her finger was splinted and bandaged. Of all things, it had been about Arvid’s temperament, something she often struggled with.

Her mother sometimes called Arvid her “sleeping beast”, but usually she was anything but an impulsive character. With most people she was very patient; some even described her as quiet and introverted. Arvid did not know exactly what it was, but there seemed to be an invisible boundary inside her that defined what she was willing to tolerate and what not. If this limit was exceeded, she could turn downright furious in an instant.

Arvid sat down at the computer and checked her newsfeed, but with tired eyes and without much interest. Last night she had again stayed up far too late. She had been trying to finish a necklace, something she every now and then earned a little extra money with. After she had nearly dozed off on the pincushion around midnight, she had given up and gone to bed.

By five she heard the sound of the front door, followed by the loud crackling of shopping bags. Barely a minute later she heard her mother’s voice. “Arvid!”

With a weary sigh, she rose and left her room. Her mother was in the kitchen. She was still wearing her jacket and was putting away the groceries.

“You spilled the milk again,” she said when she saw Arvid, and pointed at a white ring next to the stove.

“Oh, I must have missed that,” Arvid said. She fished for a rag and wiped the milk before she began to help with the groceries.

“How was work?” her mother asked, probably more out of habit than out of true interest. Accordingly, Arvid responded with a meaningless shrug.

“Like always,” she said, tucking three packs of pasta in the kitchen cupboard. “Mona’s invited me to a book club, but I won’t go. I’m too tired.”

“You’re always tired,” her mother said reproachfully. “At least you could meet some new people there.”

“Hmm,” Arvid said. She didn’t want to broach this subject again, even though she knew her mother was right. Since they moved here just over a year ago, Arvid was more or less isolated, and her personal contacts were limited to her ever-changing colleagues at work. She had never had a lot of friends. Maintaining her old friendships over the distance had proven to be difficult, but the prospect of work for her mother had simply been more important at the time.

“When’s Daniel coming over again?” her mother asked.

“He won’t come over anymore.”

“Oh?” Her mother looked at her in surprise. “But he was very nice.”

Arvid sighed. “Yes, nice…”

“But?”

“Just… nothing more than that. He was… boring.”

“What do you expect, him doing all kinds of crazy stuff?” Her mother shook her head uncomprehendingly. “I had some really good conversations with him.”

“About the changes in family law, yes,” Arvid said, frowning. “But if legal texts and sayings always are the main topic of conversation, it just gets to be too much at a point.”

“You are quite demanding.”

“That’s not true! But if I feel no desire to meet someone for two whole weeks, then he’s quite obviously the wrong one.”

Her mother paused and looked thoughtful for a moment, then she smiled. “You’re right.” She lovingly touched Arvid’s cheek. “You’ll find the right one someday. I was almost thirty myself when I finally met your father.”

After dinner Arvid went out again. Her mother had forgotten to buy milk, and Arvid remembered that she had left her umbrella in the café.

Already from a distance she could see someone standing on the pedestrian bridge, looking down over the railing. She quickly stepped to the side in order to see to what the man was looking at, but apart from two ducks that floated downriver, she couldn’t see anything unusual. Since she had time, she stopped a few meters away and leaned over the railing, too.

The water was murky and brown due to the rain. Every so often Arvid could see small branches and leaves emerging from it, then getting swept away by the currents. The water level was higher than usual, but other than that there was absolutely nothing exciting to discover.

“You should come over here; you can see it from here.”

Arvid saw that the man had straightened up and looked at her. He was in his mid-forties, had close-cropped blonde hair and wore an impeccably maintained suit and tie. He probably worked in a bank.

“What is it?” said Arvid and walked toward him.

The man pointed down, and as she leaned over the railing again, she saw it: the same strange heat haze again that she had noticed a few hours earlier. It seemed to have grown larger.

“Strange,” Arvid said.

“It’s a mirage,” said the man. “Look, if you tilt your head a little, you can see reflective images.”

Arvid tried it and could actually see something. There appeared to be dark stripes emerging among the wild flickering layers, but then disappearing again. But what kind of reflection could that be? The river’s water was a bright, milky brown color, and the banks were secured with large stone blocks, which appeared pale and gray in the sun.

“I thought something like that only occurred in the desert,” Arvid said, looking fixedly at the strange spectacle.

“No, not really,” replied the man. “You can see mirages in many places with layers of air of different temperatures. But I’ll admit, this is extraordinary… surely the water is cold.”

Arvid nodded. “Probably.”

They silently stared down at the flickering for a while, then the man straightened up and grabbed the briefcase next to him. “I have to go,” he said with a smile in Arvid’s direction. “Have a nice day.”

Arvid said goodbye and then looked back down at the flickering. She started to turn away as her eyes fell on a stone on the bridge’s railing. She flexed forefinger and thumb of her good hand and flicked it into the river. When it fell through the shimmering layer, the bright glint tore apart, and for a brief moment it looked as if a little, jagged hole formed in the air.

Arvid froze. Had she gone completely mad? The hole had immediately disappeared again, but Arvid was sure it was not an illusion—so sure, in fact, that her heart began to beat faster.

She looked around for a new stone but couldn’t find any. After a moment she realized how silly all of this was. It was just a heat haze. Even if it looked strange, there certainly was a physical explanation. Or maybe it was just an optical illusion, but in any case it was not worth agonizing over it.

Her mother wasn’t home when she came back, and she hadn’t left her a message either, which was unusual. Arvid put the milk in the fridge, then she went to her room. She collected the letters with the unpaid invoices from various shelves and drawers, sat down at the computer and began to pay them one by one. The money in her account would not nearly be enough, but she already knew that before she had opened the envelopes at all. Involuntarily she glanced at the basket with the unfinished necklaces. Each of them would be a small earning, if only she could finally bring herself to finish them.

When she put aside the last envelope, which fortunately only contained an old bank statement and no invoice, a little pink note fell on the table. It had probably stuck to the flap. Arvid turned it over. When she realized what it was, it caused her a stab of pain.

It was a note her father wrote the day before he died. Arvid had saved it, and eventually it got stuck to this envelope to be taken back to her desk today.

“I’ll be back at 7—C,” Arvid read. It was just a hastily scribbled line. Her father had often left notes like this one when he spontaneously decided to go out again. Sometimes he had gone jogging, sometimes down to the lake to watch the birds. In winter it had often happened that the only reason he left the house again was because he all of a sudden felt like mulled wine or roasted almonds. Arvid had rarely accompanied him—actually, almost never. Had she known how much she would miss these things, she would perhaps have done so more often.

Although he had died over four years ago, Arvid missed her father often. She loved her mother, although it had always been her father with whom she had this very special, emotional bond. He had been a slob, just like her. He had never complained about the mess in her room, because the one in his office had been even worse.

Many years ago, when Arvid was still a teenager, her father had once come to talk to her. “Mother sent me to bring you to your senses,” he had told her. “But what should I tell you? You’re just like me. We see and appreciate the beauty in the chaos; we don’t drown in it. Your mother feels helpless and lost, but we know exactly where everything is to be found.”

Arvid actually managed to finish one of the necklaces that evening. When she finally fell into bed, it was almost midnight again.

Her alarm went off four hours later. It seemed to her as if she had not slept at all, and the thought of her mother, who could just stay in bed, only worsened her mood.

Her mother had been unemployed for years. After her father’s death Arvid had agreed to continue sharing an apartment with her, so they both could get by, but with each passing year, this situation became more burdensome. In this new place Arvid had not been able to find a job where she could continue working in her learned profession. At first, she had told herself that it just took time. She had taken it easy; after all, she was still young. Now that her thirtieth birthday was less than a year away, she more and more had the oppressive feeling of being stuck in this situation.

As Arvid left the house, it was still cool, but she could feel that it would eventually be a warm day after all the rain. It was only twenty to five. The streets lay before her quiet and empty. The walkway along the river was completely deserted, and Arvid enjoyed the morning peace and the fresh air in her lungs.

She was lost in thought as she walked across the pedestrian bridge, but when she was about halfway, a motion in front of her attracted her attention. She looked up and frowned.

There was the strange flickering again, but it had changed. Yesterday it had still been a stripe in the middle of the bridge and the water surface, but now the phenomenon had spread, beginning in front of the railing and taking up the space of a small room. It looked like a floating mirror with small, tangled waves surfacing in mid-air just in front of the bridge. The flashing black reflections had become clearer and larger. Arvid automatically slowed her steps.

While the appearance had been nothing but interesting yesterday, it now looked disturbing. Arvid could not imagine that this really was nothing more than heat ripples or, like the man in the suit called it, a mirage. It was early in the morning and it was still pretty cool. The sun only just started sending the first rays down onto the town.

Despite all this, the sight was fascinating. Arvid went around the location where the flickering touched the railings, and then paused. It looked as if the small air waves bent the thick metal pipes like rubber and deformed its surface, almost as if it were made of liquid mercury. She could see long, narrow cracks repeatedly forming in the tangled, glittering carpet. It seemed as if you could see through them as if through the gap of a door, which was dark on the other side. Carefully Arvid took one step closer.

“You better not go there,” said someone beside her. Arvid was so frightened that she let out a little scream. Barely three steps away from her was a woman on the bridge. Arvid could have sworn that she had not been there a moment ago. She had dark, curly hair and was only wearing a wafer-thin, blue summer dress, which seemed inappropriate given the cool temperatures.

“What, why?” said Arvid, after she had regained her composure. “Do you know what this strange phenomenon is?”

“You should leave alone things you don’t know,” the woman replied. She smiled, but it seemed strangely cold.

Arvid shrugged and buried her hands in her pockets, then turned back to the phenomenon. The sight was somehow intimidating. Perhaps the woman was right, especially since it looked as if the glittering surface would continue to spread slowly.

It was strange. On the one hand Arvid felt a strong urge to inspect this flickering more. On the other hand there was a little voice in her that whispered that it was true what the woman said; it was probably better to only watch from afar. Arvid just wanted to turn away when her fingers found a small ball of paper in her pocket. Without thinking she pulled it out.

Other books

Shadow on the Sun by Richard Matheson

Cold Light by John Harvey

What Lola Wants (London Dolls Book 1) by Kenrick, JoAnne

Kage by John Donohue

Metroland by Julian Barnes

Bed-Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton

Ice Run by Steve Hamilton

Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord by Louis de Bernières

Moscardino by Enrico Pea

Never Have A Baller's Baby: A Bad Boy Pregnancy Romance by Lena Skye