Огледалото на Дявола (in English)

The Mirror of the Sprite

You’re a junkie, man! Freakin’ food junkies.

It wasn’t the first time Kyle heard such a line, and since he had reached and passed two hundred kilos, he had long ago stopped caring about it. Stopped caring about anything, actually. He looked on as the shaved head left the bus, pretending he didn’t hear a thing. Freakin’ neonazis, he said to himself, and opened the bottle of Sprite. He had heard before of the company’s advertising strategy. Cola was for the cool, Fanta for the cheerful, and Sprite – he looked longingly at the moisture condensed on the green bottle – Sprite was for the different. And who is more different than him, even in a country where difference has a degree of comparison. His layers of flesh dressed in black, his deformed feet packed into platform steel-toe boots, and his eyes even though only barely showing between the cushions of his forehead and cheeks, hidden behind pitch-black sunglasses, his ears clogged with earphones, the sound of which polluted the air in a several meter radius. The only jewelry he wore was a stainless steel badge on top of his upper left chest fat lump that read ‘Heartless’. Little did he suspect that it was his vanity, alienation and overweight that were if not capable of saving then at least of prolonging his humanity.

Clang.

As if an enormously giant glass had just broken several kilometers up into the air and the sharp pieces were now falling trough the air, making a whistling noise. He would have heard it, if it weren’t for the earphones. As would half of America. The other half, however, did hear and a terrorist warning was shown on all channels’ breaking news, spreading nothing but fear across the globe, making the sprite who created the mirror and shattered its evil worldwide laugh contentedly. As the voluntarily audibly challenged thought it was just snowing, the sharp pieces were penetrating trough their molecules, making their eyeballs bleed as they tucked deeper and deeper in, changing their perception of the world, penetrating through the skin and slowly reaching to make their hearts into cold lumps.

Kyle remained untouched. The sprite’s mischief was imperfect, as he hadn’t kept in mind the food processing industry and made the pieces too dull to pierce through ten centimeters of fat. Was half of America invincible? No, only the sunglasses-wearing ones. Our protagonist was surprised to see (he was unable to hear, remember?) strangers in the bus shouting at each other and tearing each other’s hair. Freakin’ crazy people, he said to himself as he got off at the next stop fearing for his life and hoping that it was only one bus, not the whole world that was coming to an end. He was to be deeply disappointed.

As he went on with his daily routine of a store clerk he found out that the surprising and unexplainable madness had somehow conquered the known world, except for some sunglasses loving fat ladies. Unable to literately express his confusion he went on exclaiming, or rather concluding. Freakin’ customers. Freakin’ colleagues. Freakin’ teenagers. Freakin’ alcoholics. Freakin’ regular perplexed fat women. And as his busy day of work was finally over, he went on the bus again, feebly murmuring something about the freakin’ old people. The evil of the world was starting to piss him off and he was slowly beginning to fight back at every blow, kicking people in the shin while following his inherited instinct to merge with the crowd. Had he read any books, he would have discovered the illness spreading among his fellow humans and himself, and he would have described it as something as dangerous and contagious as the plague. Creeping Death!!!! - roared the heavy metal band in his ears, deafening every thought that might have had the courage to emerge between them.

Clang!

Mirror again? Nope, this time it was the Christmas bells that went on automatically every hour. It was beginning to snow. Quietly, peacefully, unnoticeable to the shopping crowds fighting over discount presents, and to the homeless junkies.

Freakin’ junkies, Kyle said. Somehow the piece of glass had pierced his heart.