prompt: Write a story about a character practising a speech in front of the mirror. What are they preparing for?
available at Reedsy
“Okay, again.” He looked in the mirror, took a deep breath and relaxed his posture.
He looked at the script again. It couldn’t really be called a script, though. It was broad strokes, with details sprinkled throughout. A believable performance required that he be totally at ease with the story and the character, while recalling the details as if he had lived it.
“I met him in the coffee shop in the lobby; seen him around a few times. Said his name was Greg? Gary? Pretty sure it was a ‘G’…I suck with names. Saw him on Thursdays, since that’s when I usually have enough time to grab an iced coffee after lunch. Either way, it was around one o’clock in the afternoon last Thursday that I last saw him.”
He glanced at the script to check details. He’d need to get it down without needing notes.
As he continued with the story, he caught himself bunching his shoulders, or shaking his head slightly when affirming something. Another deep breath, he shook himself out and he started again.
After several restarts, and hours spent watching himself in the mirror he took a break. While he prepared his lunch, he carried on an imaginary conversation with a small mirror propped up on the counter. “Oh, yeah, I thought he was weird as shit, but that’s his business, right?”
He took a bite of his sandwich and talked around it. “Yeah, I heard about that, right? I mean you hear about this kind of shit every day almost.”
He nodded as he continued to chew. “Yeah, it’s a little freaky that it happened so close to work, but it was bound to at some point, right? The city’s only so big, and the dealers and pimps have been moving closer for months now. It’s weirder that it was ‘The Weird Coffeeshop Guy’ I kinda know.”
He finished his lunch and brushed his teeth, checking that there was nothing stuck between them. Satisfied, he began recounting the story in the mirror again. Each time he told it, the order he told it in changed, but the details remained the same.
With each retelling, he built the picture in his mind, creating a memory where none was. As long as he believed it, his performance would be perfect.
He’d been called on so rarely to perform, but he borrowed heavily from method acting for those times he was called. Prior to now, his performances were small potatoes: almost all sales pitches with the occasional pick up on a lonely Saturday night.
A good night’s sleep, filled with dreams of the pictures he’d been building in his mind, and he woke refreshed. He was a little surprised that he hadn’t been called on to perform yet but took full advantage of the time to engage in more mock conversations about it.
He had just finished breakfast and was brushing his teeth when the doorbell rang followed by a heavy knock on the door. Opening the door, he saw two police officers.
It was his time to perform. He didn’t resist, but he demanded to know why they were arresting him in the first place. When the word “murder” came up he was suitably shocked and appalled that he would even be implicated.
The ride to the police station gave him all he needed to completely lose himself in the character he’d built up. Every passing minute increased his confusion at being accused of something he’d never even consider doing.
When they left him alone in the interrogation room, he let his confusion overwhelm him. “What’s going on?” he asked the camera.
The interrogating officer entered the room, introduced himself, and asked the man where he had been the previous Friday at six pm.
“I was still in the office,” he said, “working on a deal for a needy customer. If you want details, you’ll need to contact my boss and sign an NDA.”
“Okay, so you were at work. Anyone see you there?” the officer asked.
“After five on a Friday!? You must be kidding. Most of my coworkers would rather lose a client than miss out on happy hour.”
“Is there any way you can corroborate that you were in the office?”
“I think the last email exchange I had with the client was around seven or so. I went home right after that and it was almost eight when I got in.”
“We’ll check that out,” the officer said, “since we already have your personal and work computers.”
“What the hell? You just dig into my personal stuff, for what?”
“Why don’t you just walk me through your entire day last Friday, from the time you woke up, until you went to bed.”
“Do you need to know what I had for breakfast? I don’t remember if I had cereal or a breakfast bar.” When the officer signaled that those sorts of details were unimportant, he described his typical day, finishing with the details about working until seven pm, getting home at eight, and having a beer for dinner.
The interrogating officer leaned forward. “We have an eyewitness that puts you in the alley where Gary was killed, at six pm on Friday. And Gary was wearing your raincoat.”
He let the anger build up inside him at the accusation. “I wasn’t there! I just told you!”
“Why was he wearing your raincoat?”
“I don’t know. I hung it on the hook in the office last week when it was raining, what was that, Tuesday? Anyway, I walked out without it, and realized after I got home that I’d left it in the office.
“When I came in the next day, it was gone. I asked around about it, but no one saw anything. I saw him on Thursdays, usually. I didn’t know he was around the building any time.”
The officer just kept nodding and making notes as the man talked. When he finished, the officer asked, “How well did you know Gary? You said you saw him on Tuesdays?”
“Thursdays. That’s when I have some extra time after lunch, so I go to the lobby and get an iced coffee. Gary is…was…weird. He’d say shit like, ‘The butterfly flaps its wings…beware the storm.’ That’s kind of what he said to me last time I saw him.”
“He said, ‘Beware the storm?’ What do you think he meant by that?”
“I think he was off his meds. Sorry, that’s mean. I don’t know if he was crazy or constantly on drugs or just…creative. He was a nice enough guy, he just didn’t seem to have his head in the same reality as the rest of us, you know.”
The officer conferred with another officer outside the open door of the interrogation room. He returned and removed the cuffs from the man’s hands.
“We’ll check on your alibi and get back to you. In the meantime, don’t leave town. We’ll probably have more questions for you.”
“I’ll stay available. I hope you catch your guy.” The man rubbed his wrists as he walked out of the police station.
He took a ride share to his home and walked in to the small mirror still sitting on the countertop. He leaned in until his face filled the mirror and smiled. “Who should we choose next?” he asked.
