Chapter Twelve

A Dog's Story

Memories were fuzzy for the animal. He had no sense of time in his prison of reflections but, even so, he often remembered the time he had been outside, as if it were a misty phantasmagoria.

The first memories he had were of his mother. A huge dog that licked his face and that of his siblings, as small as he was. He had vague memories of running through the long corridors of a manor house, overlooking a huge lush garden where the smells and colors of different types of flowers mingled. Chatter from servants and those who should be the owners of the place.

Memories of a tall man with brown skin, black hair and beard, dressed in rich clothes that denoted a high birth, and of what must have been his wife, a woman of dark skin with long golden hair like wheat.

Then, the little girl.

A somewhat squeaky voice laughed as she petted his head. The kid was no more than a few years old. The same emerald eyes of her father, but with her mother's golden hair. He could remember her playing in the garden with him and his siblings, who ran after her in their innocent games.

It was a well-to-do family, with large estates and servants. But it was a happy place, or at least it was as close to happiness as he had ever known. He remembered some quarrels that occurred when strangers arrived to argue with the man and his wife. But the issues of their intrigues were beyond the understanding of the animal, or the little girl.

And the box.

That day changed everything. The last memory he had of his time outside the mirror.

He didn't know how it arrived to the mansion, but one morning, when he had left the girl's room, where he slept with his brothers, he had come downstairs, and he saw it there in the hall of the mansion.

His curiosity deceived him. He went sniffing the huge structure and when he entered through one of the openings, that were not completely closed, it was the last thing he saw for a long time. The opening closed behind him and the happy days in that house that had seen his birth were behind him.

He cried and scraped the box on his side, as he saw how everything was darkness for him. Hours, days, weeks and months passed. He ignored how he was still alive without food or water in the place. But he was. His hopes of being free again were extinguished when one day the light returned, but instead of being able to get out of his prison, he discovered that he was locked behind the glass of one of the mirrors.

But there was something strange about the scene he saw through the mirror. He couldn't quite explain why, but somehow he felt as if the place he saw through the mirror was a different place than the one he had seen. It wasn't just that the image was changing, there was something different about the world he was looking at.

The box changed configuration and location hundreds of times. Sometimes it was a folding screen where people changed. Other times it was a lady's room. Located on the wall of a shabby looking bar, or in some cabaret in the lost alleys of some seaside town.

Horses gave way to metal animals and the dog watched as pillars rose and spewed smoke into the clear skies at the dawn of the industrial age. Revolutions passed and wars rocked the world. More storefronts, shabby hotel rooms, dance halls, and more storefronts.

All of it had passed before his eyes. And even if he had no way of knowing it, the box had never been separated from its parts more than a few feet away. It was as if, even disassembled, all its parts were still somehow connected by some invisible thread of insane perversity.

Finally one last storefront. An antique store whose owner was so old, that he could easily become part of the list of objects in the place.

Several years passed and it was sold, although it wasn't long before it returned to the same place.

And then came Thursday.

From the moment the red-haired girl with blonde braids had appeared that Thursday on her bicycle, in front of the store window, only to return later to buy the mirror, the dog knew something was about to happen. Not to mention the strange visit from the bizarre man who had touched the mirror's surface with his hand the day before.

He liked his new place of residence. Although the young woman could not notice his presence, the place had a certain warmth, but also a certain loneliness. The dog was unaware of what the young woman was doing and what she was doing with the space of the place, since it changed from time to time. Although he got used to seeing her come and go, even though his residence in the place had been rather short.

Friday he didn't have much to do and, although he found himself distracted by the new space to explore, his exploration was over by midday and finally, without further ado, he threw himself on the bed reflection of who would be his new friend.

The girl arrived when it was already dark, but her presence filled him with a certain happiness, at last there was a human walking in the same space as him. If nothing else, it was the reflection of the person on the other side of the mirror.

His surprise was profound when he saw how the place where he had moved in the morning changed completely in size, becoming bigger, but he was even more terrified when he saw how everything seemed to be filled with water. From his point of view things were different. The safety barrier that Sil Moore had put up was not working inside the mirror and so he escaped from the water and went to lie down again in the reflection of the bed. It was not as if he could drown, but the sensation of seeing how the water begun to rise alarmed him. The animal was completely unaware of the prodigies of the humans, nor of the SDDs they used.

Then came Sil's routine.

The girl's performance had surprised him, he had never seen or heard anything like the music that filled the atmosphere. It was harmonious and relaxing music. But his attitude as a mere observer changed suddenly, when he began to see that the girl's moments were getting stranger and stranger. Alarmed, he turned again to where the crystal was and, from his perspective, simply touched the crystal. There was a dull sound that rippled through the place and Sil stopped. Just a few moments later the place was without water and Sil was looking into the mirror almost as if she could see him. Although he knew that was impossible.

The next moment he did not know how to interpret what he saw. The young woman's head had fallen off and then her body. Was it normal for humans to lose their heads in the literal sense? He didn't know, but what happened the next moment made him wonder if he wasn't also losing his head. A strange shadow took corporeal form and, after taking the girl's head, said some strange words and then simply vanished into thin air, just as the man who touched the mirror with his finger did.

There lay the body of her new friend, motionless.

The dog had been hovering over the reflected body of the young woman all night but it did not move anymore. Saturday had arrived and for a few hours the place was almost completely silent. The dog could do nothing from his side, but stare at the young woman's body. He had lived so long behind the mirror, his barrier, that he had completely forgotten the concept of death.

Perhaps at some point the head would return and the young woman would rise from the floor. Just as he remembered had happened when sometimes everything went black for him and he slept for years before clarity returned. Perhaps humans also went through a similar lethargic period.

When the daylights went out, often the number of humans, which he had seen through the window of the many stores he had passed through over the years, dwindled. Although over the years that had been changing. Increasingly it seemed that humans were staying awake at night as well as during the day.

Be that as it may, there was a chance that the girl would simply wake up at some point. With nothing else to do, he went back to lie down next to the girl.

That changed when in his new nap a horrified scream woke him up, and he saw a woman at the door of the apartment, who disappeared a few seconds later. Only moments later, the siege of the place began, forcing him to hide in an area where people's reflections could not reach him. What the hell were the humans doing and what were all those tiny things buzzing back and forth in the room? The dog knew that a run-in with one of those reflections inside the mirror had a certain solidity to him. The last thing he needed at that moment was to end up under the feet of the humans, and those other human-looking ones, in the room.

Then came the last cherry on the cake.

From the animal's point of view, he knew that everything that happened in front of the mirror had a corresponding reflection on the inside. But he couldn't see his own. So he was surprised when suddenly someone appeared on his side, who was not reflected in the mirror either.

After so many years of solitary confinement, someone appeared on his side, it was a girl who had been moving around the room with another bald human. The dog didn't know who she was, but he had had enough in those days for the rest of the week. He wanted to rest and remained hidden in a dark area with no reflections of any kind. Away from the pointy-eared woman. He liked the idea of someone on his side, but so much had happened in a few days that he couldn't deny he was stressed.

Then the transport, and he watched as the young woman seemed to feel dizzy. He knew the mirror was moving again even though the image of the room hadn't changed. For some time everything was still, as he heard the girl talking to someone he couldn't see. Then everything changed and the animal saw with amazement something he had forgotten long ago.

The box.

The thing that had trapped him so long, at the beginning of it all, was being put together again. The girl trapped with him stood close to the glass and because of that she did not get to see him. The dog realized that he could still hide in the reflections of the farthest mirrors, where the light was diffused. It didn't help much, though.

When the last of the mirrors was put in place, darkness fell once again for a few moments. The animal floated weightless among the reflections when suddenly something felt different. He felt he had brushed against something and heard the screams of the girl. He couldn't blame her and floated, until he hit her face. It was an involuntary lick, he felt like his muzzle had hit something soft and licked it. It was followed by more screams from the frightened girl.

What a noisy creature, the dog thought.

Then everything lit up again. He didn't know how it was possible, but for a moment he felt the full weight of his body and fell on the girl's back. It was completely different from the feeling on the other side. The sensation of gravity felt completely real. And the infernal spinning motion began. The animal was bouncing from side to side, although he didn't mind that too much. In the farthest reflections he thought he had seen images from another time that he remembered all too well. The image did not last more than a few seconds but it brought back a flood of memories. And finally for a few seconds he saw again the end of the one who had been his companion, if only for a couple of days.

The movement ceased and the dog fell back into the mirror in the background. He looked up, to see that above him was the girl, looking at the reflection of the one who had taken the head of his new friend.

It was then that he felt that his paws touching the mirror were undergoing a strange transformation. A kind of intense coldness was creeping up his body and he could feel something inside him changing. He had no idea what it was, but again everything went black. But he felt that the sensation, that something was happening to his body, it did not stop at all. It was rising fast and covering every part of him.

It was something cold as ice, but it wasn't necessarily horrible. New sounds of something breaking and the young girl fell to the bottom of the box, while now it was the dog that was increasing in size. He felt that something had just unlocked. When the green light filled his eyes, he felt very different. His size had changed and he didn't know why, but at that moment he didn't care at all.

Air.

The air he breathed was humid and he could feel the wind blowing in a northerly direction, which was coming through the huge openings in the building. He turned around and saw that there were no more reflections behind him.

He didn't hesitate for a second.

He ran toward one of the openings to finally emerge into the world. A woman wielding some kind of giant sword had tried to block his way. He felt an itch on his body, and as he always did after a nap, he shook it off. Except this time he found that with his movement something shot out of his body in all directions. There was a shout and the humans and pointy-eared humans ran for cover.

And he took advantage of this occasion to finally pass through one of the balconies and go out to freedom.

When he landed, he saw a black floating block just a few meters away from him, floating towards him. The strange object emitted a red light and said [You are trespassing, stop].The dog grabbed the object with his mouth and jumped over the wire fence of the building.

He was under the rain. Running in a world he had longed to reach for so long.

Finally his confinement was over.