Phil didn’t mean to become a murderer. Not at first.
It all happened because he read on social media that humans, on average, live about 4500 weeks.
Being a number geek, Phil calculated that the first 900 weeks are spent learning how to walk, talk, pass exams, and unclip bra straps. The last 1500 comprise an increasingly strident existential shriek translating into “How the fuck did that happen?”
Of the remainder, about 100 is spent in utter confusion, comatose, or madness, leaving 2000 weeks, or more to the point, weekends, of life to live as you want.
In short, life comes down to eleven years of weekend fun sandwiched between unremitting drudgery. For most people, anyway.
For Phil, it was different because he had The Mirror.
He found it in an antiques shop wedged between a money-laundering vape shop and a morally ambiguous taxidermist.
The mirror whispered: “Beer on tap” and “Unlimited fun.” Naturally, he bought it, and consequently, he discovered Mirror-World.
Mirror-World was a paradise: endless barbecues, physics-defying lingerie, and self-refilling ale. Best of all: no responsibilities. Phil, at forty-nine and with an enlarged prostate, felt twenty-two again, boasting the bladder of a camel and the abs of a Greek statue.
But there was a catch. Because, of course, there was. For every day Phil spent in Mirror-World, one of his friends in the real world lost two days of their life. And weekends could last years.
He ran the numbers. A couple of years in Mirror-World and he would end up friendless.
To ease his guilt, Phil got creative by visiting hospice patients. Those facing mortality. He brought jigsaws and Sudoku books, asked about their grandkids, listened attentively… and took notes. Then he jotted their names on Post-its and stuck them to the mirror like parking permits.
It worked for a while. Terminally-ill time-donors sponsored his trips, and he went through the palliative care population like a temporal plague. But guilt, like varicose veins and nineties earworms, has a way of catching up with you.
It was Doris who did it.
Doris was ninety-three, riddled with cancer, and partial to Werther’s Originals. She should’ve been the perfect candidate, but on his fifth visit, she took Phil’s hand and with wet eyes whispered, “You make life worthwhile, dear. You’re the only one who listens.”
Phil returned home, stared at her name on the mirror, and sobbed.
The next morning, he peeled off every Post-it, kissed the mirror goodbye, and decided to go cold turkey.
That lasted until mid-week.
On Wednesday, it rained, and Phil found a slug in his cereal. Mirror-World whispered again, and he folded like damp cardboard.
But instead of raiding another hospice, Phil did the unthinkable by deciding he could no longer harm anyone else. And chose himself.
That Sunday, he emerged from the mirror looking like a forgotten Christmas walnut in a cardigan.
But he smiled.
He’d found redemption. And arthritis. But mostly redemption.
The mirror smiled too, and started looking for its next victim.
