UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

Snowblind


I detest mirrors. For mirrors mirror only solitude. Be it a compact or floor length makes no odds. Gaze into somebody else's eyes and see the homunculus you reflected in them staring right back into yours staring back... Peer into a mirror and such endless reflectivity is shattered. Standing there in three dimensions, but your imago is betrayed by its sightless eyes. Only you can determine to break off contact. So I do all in my power to avoid mirrors.

It's true my face abuts a looking glass when shaving. But the i's never consort, for the pair of us accord no mutual acknowledgement. I incline my gaze downwards, navigating only by the razor's plough trails through the white lather. The alluvial contour lines of my face gradually disinterred from beneath a deep drift of snow. Occasionally the snow stains red. Unsure footing where I can trace neither blackheaded gradients nor pitted crevasses recasting the hidden lie of my unscaled face.

But eventually I clamber back down from the summit. Another descent to smoother climbs negotiated. Snowblind.

A woman friend says she can't imagine what it is to shave for the rest of one's life. "Neither can I" I tell her.

The Mutable Image

I've never been a beauty so the mirror held no interest for me other than as a means of ensuring I don't go out in the streets and frighten the horses. Hair combed, clothes adjusted and that'll do. That's why it took me so long to notice that my image was subtly altering. I only noticed this in the hall mirror - the ornate, gilt-framed looking-glass I'd inherited from my mother's side of the family. The bathroom and bedroom mirrors and the big one over the mantelpiece showed my usual aspect; the face I'd been looking at for years.

The old mirror showed me features which subtly altered over a matter of weeks to the extent that I avoided glancing in there as I left the house or returned home. This face became twisted, scarred and mutilated horribly. It was frightening. I was glad to have the other mirrors to show me the truth. At last I could bear the ghastly image no longer. In temper I hurled my scent bottle at the awful visage. The glass fragmented, blowing out of the frame and lacerating my face. Now the other mirrors show me the scarred face too.

A life in the mirror

That scar on my lip? That was learning to walk in the 1960s. Bashing my face against what we used to call a leather pouffe. In the days before political correctness.

The lump on my forehead was from a stone thrown by a neighbour’s child when I was three. I ran screaming to my Mum, my face covered in blood.

My nose is crooked. That was a game of rugby circa 1980 and an ill-advised tackle with a prop forward’s knee.

I have my genes to thank for my bald head. Generations of miners and farmers scratching a living in the good earth. And I have Jason Statham and Bruce Willis to thank for making my haircut at least slightly cool.

The lines around my eyes came from my divorce in the 1990s from the she-bitch ice-maiden. Not that I am bitter, you understand.
The surplus of chin is a lifetime’s love affair with beer, pie and chips.

The glasses are the reward for an addiction to books. Not to mention television, movies, video games and sunsets.

And that smile is because you’re awake now.

Good morning.

Recovery

Come on. It's only an other mouthful.
One more bite
You can rest later. Come on
Just one more bite.

I look, I see, I can't understand,
my face, so different.
It was the same yesterday and the day before.
Nothing has changed but my face is different.

The smell of the porridge hits my nose again
Come on, Just another spoonful.
I talk myself into eating another spoonful.
It tastes the same as yesterday.
The same as it's tasted for the past 2 weeks.

The spoon falls, the bowl follows, both hit the ground.
Takes a moment to realise I'm no longer holding the spoon.
Seconds pass as my mind tries to understand what happened.
My mouth tries to say “I dropped my food”
But something is lost when it leaves my mouth.

The accident took it's toll,
Body and brain not talking to each other.
A nurse comes into the room to clear the mess.
“Don't worry Bill, you are getting better every day”
“See you are eating a lot more today”

I move my head to look at the stranger.
Through the bandages it takes an age to realise,
the stranger has my face in the mirror.

I Spy

Here’s a neat trick. Place two chairs in a darkened room, facing each other one metre apart. Prop up a large mirror on one and sit in the other. Stare into the mirror for ten minutes or more.

In time you may notice your reflection’s eyes shining, its mouth opening or its nose swelling. Then the whole face changes. Some see ancient versions of themselves, some see animals, goblins or Bloody Mary. Welcome to the Caputo Effect.

Gibson tried it, but his reflection didn’t co-operate. To be fair, it was working from a bland starting-point. Nature had fished Gibson’s face out of the middle reaches of the gene pool, and nurture hadn’t challenged it with such jolts and scrapes as might have etched interesting contour lines into it. Those eyes hadn’t become crowfooted from squinting into the desert sun or the salt spray of a petulant ocean. Those lips had never curled into a condescending smirk as he revealed a winning hand or rebuffed a beautiful woman. Gibson’s was a face so unrelentingly ordinary that no mere optical illusion could grotesquify it.

Mind you, the one that materialised over his left shoulder at the twelve-minute mark was a different matter altogether

No Mourning After

He staggered to the bathroom; sighed with relief as his bursting bladder emptied. He lurched to the sink, fumbled for the plug, ran cold water then plunged his head into the full sink. Water slopping over the sides spread across the filthy floor forming a sticky pool around his feet.
He straightened, shook water from his hair, belched and scratched. Despite the bile in his throat and the throbbing head, he smiled as he recalled last night’s debauched pleasures.
He leaned towards the mirror, rubbing his eyes and blinking as he tried to focus.
He gasped, jumped back, slipped on the wet floor and crashed onto the loo breaking the plastic seat.
He’d never looked upon Death, but there was no mistaking that face. Whimpering, he forced himself to look again. Death slowly raised a newspaper. A fleshless finger pointed to the date – exactly one year ahead. The finger indicated a paragraph at the foot of the page. His name leapt out together with the words:
“dead man lay undiscovered for months”.
The finger left the page to point straight at him.
He stared Death in the face.
Then he laughed, “Yeah – but at least I’ve lived!”

Poll is open!

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Crikey those two weeks passed by fast, and I've failed to enter for once. Never mind, I have voted :~)

So have I :)

I have voted :)

I missed entering so I can't come last. I've voted though.

Rats, Simon. How very ungallant of you. Someone else will have to do it now. I have broad shoulders - all that digging! ;)

Voted. :)

wow, lots of mental disorder abounding in these tales!

C'mon people.

Get your votes in.

Terrific selection!
Voted.

So, who wrote Snowblind and A Life in the Mirror? As joint firsts I think they should both get a £5 Amazon voucher.

They will if they PM me their email addresses!

Marc Nash wrote Snowblind and Will Once wrote A Life in the Mirror.

Well done Guys!

all done guys!! can't remember if I voted for my own story our not . lol

Damn - if only I'd had the nous to vote for myself I could have been sharing in the glory. Well done the worthy winners.
Who wrote 'I Spy'? I was tempted to write about the Caputo Effect as it's something I've played with that works disturbingly well.

An extra pat on the back for Will Once - he has put his £5 back into the kitty so the contest will go on a little longer!

B J wrote: "Damn - if only I'd had the nous to vote for myself I could have been sharing in the glory. Well done the worthy winners.
Who wrote 'I Spy'? I was tempted to write about the Caputo Effect as it's so..."

Ditto, as 'I Spy' was mine. We were eating in a pub the other week, me facing the dark window. Each time I stared at my ghostly reflection for more than 15 seconds, it disappeared completely and all that remained was the brightly lit bar behind me, including the bit that should have been obscured by my head. Only when I focused on this bit of the reflection did my face reappear. Evidently I don't merit a Bloody Mary.

I've tried what I think is the recommended technique i.e. I've sat on a chair looking into a mirror a few feet away in a darkened room, the only source of light being a very low wattage bulb placed directly behind me. After a few minutes staring at my reflection strange things happen. It's like those stereograms (I think that's what they're called) that were popular a few years ago where if you stare at a point in an image the image you are seeing suddenly changes.

Well done the winners. The Mutable Image had my vote.

Will the next theme be a collaborative effort?

Oooh, Ta David. Mutable Image was mine!

I think the winners will have to toss a coin - or agree a subject?

either's fine by me

Congratulations Marc and Will!

Another Mutable Image voter here, well done Kath!

Just a suggestion for the next theme, depending on Will's thoughts on the matter -

Conflict Resolution

BTW this is what I bought with my prize, looking forward to it immensely

The Bone Clocks

That sounds like a good subject. Happy to go with that.

I have really enjoyed David Mitchell's other books but haven't read that one yet.

Rosemary (The Nosemanny) wrote: "I have really enjoyed David Mitchell's other books but haven't read that one yet."

I like him, but thought "Cloud Atlas" wasn't as great as most seemed to say it was. The Thousand Suns Of Jacob de Groot was fantastic, especially as I don't tend to like Historical Fiction.

I liked Black Swan Green very much

Black Swan Green was the one for me, too. I found Cloud Atlas too clever by three quarters but people didn't want to be the one to point out how underdressed the Emperor was.

I thought his earlier novel, can't remember now if it was Number Nine dream or the other one, did very similar things to Cloud Atlas and did them better.