Around the Bend: Day 30

[S] A familiar fellow (30,568 / 1,000,000)

I rubbed one of my eyes with a knuckle, and glanced over at her. I wanted to confirm what the sound of her breathing suggested, which was — yep, she was conked out. A late-night nature documentary narrated by a silver-tongued septuagenarian will do that to you. I extricated my arm from underneath her head, and replaced it with a pillow. I slipped out of the sheets, and tip-toed over to the bathroom like a cartoon cat on the hunt. On the other side of the door, I eased it shut, and flipped on the light.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and my reflection squinted back at me suspiciously. Bleary eyed, I grabbed my toothbrush and began my nightly ritual of polishing my pearly whites. There are few times better for introspection, I think, than the few minutes (or seconds if you’re a speedrunner) when we’re brushing our teeth. But tonight, I just gave silent, thoughtless company to my reflection while I scrubbed my exposed face bones.

My reflection wiggled a little, and it startled me for a moment, before I realized — hah, it’s just the mirror vibrating. Wait, why is the mirror vibrating? I grabbed the mirror, which served as the front of a small cabinet, and swung it open.

“What in the dastardly…” a small voice exclaimed.

A tiny man dressed in a fine black tailcoat was sprawled out on the bottom shelf of my medicine cabinet, tangled in the twisting cords of my hair clippers. Toothbrush hanging out of my mouth, I helped him out of his predicament, and set him down on the countertop beside my sink. I closed the mirrored cabinet door, and my reflection swung into view again. I gave the man a few moments to regain his composure.

He pulled the front of his coat down, and smoothed out a few wrinkles. He wasn’t wearing a hat, but he reached up to straighten one anyway; and by the time his hand reached where the brim of a top hat would be — wouldn’t you know it, the hat was there. He reached a hand out to the side and spun his index finger. A hooked cane was there, spinning around it.  He looked up at me, and shot me a mischievous smirk.

“Long time, no see, sport” the man quipped, in a familiar posh British accent.

“-op -at -ood!” I exclaimed around my toothbrush.

The little man made a face, as if he were experiencing second-hand embarrassment. “Sorry, what was that, dear boy?” he asked.

I rinsed my toothbrush and sat it down. I swished some water around in my mouth, spit, and repeated, “Top hat dude!”

“Ah yes, such a refined moniker you have bestowed upon me.” He gave me a wry smile.

“What are you doing here? Wait a minute… are we in a story? Dammit…. Am I not real again?” I asked, familiar existential panic rising in my chest. I glanced at my reflection, I could tell it was judging me. 

 “Tut tut, sonny, enough of that. There’s no point in asking that question,” the 3-inch-tall, formally dressed, magic man reassured me.

“Well, I’m either losing it, or I’m not real. Because in my reality, little people don’t spontaneously appear in medicine cabinets.”

His right eye twitched when I said “little”, and I raised my hands defensively.

“Sorry, I forgot! You’re tall for your people. Wait.. who are your people? Wait… What are you?” I asked, eager to distract myself from the other question.

The man leaned on his cane, which was now at his side, and shook his head like a weary professor.

“I’ll answer your questions in reverse order,” he began. “Who am I? I’m a person. Just like you.” He poked both thumbs into his chest, then pointed his index fingers towards me.

“Who are my people?” His impish grin returned to his face. “I guess the simplest way to put it, in terms that you can understand, is we’re the people from around the bend.” He tilted his head and thumbs to the side, towards my toothbrush.

“Around the — you’re from my toothbrush?” I asked. My reflection tilted its head a fraction of a second before I tilted mine.

 “Not just your toothbrush,” the man said, while he picked his way across my toiletries. He reached my toothbrush, and stepped behind it. Despite being wider than the toothbrush, his form vanished completely behind it. My reflection beat me to another head tilt.

A few inches away from my toothbrush, a tiny black oxford poked out from behind the faucet of my sink, and the rest of the suited man soon followed. His cane twirled around his finger once more, and he wore a self-satisfied smile.

“Around the bend, you see?” he said, and propped himself against the faucet with his free arm.

I leaned over my sink to look behind the faucet, but found nothing. I did notice, however, that the man seemed to move without moving. I was looking at the sink from a different angle, but he appeared to still be facing me. I walked around to the other side of my sink. My perspective of the sink changed, as one would expect — I saw the side of it, then the front, then the other side. However, the little man appeared exactly the same to me, facing me no matter what angle I viewed him from. I gave both eyes a good, knuckly rub.  

When I opened my eyes, he was gone. I let out a deep breath, glad that my foray outside of reality was temporary after all. I felt a light tap on my left shoulder. I glanced down.

“I think you’re starting to understand” the man said, looking up at me with a knowing gleam in his eye. “But, in case you’re still uncertain…” He walked off my shoulder, and out of my field of view.

I kept my eyes peeled, waiting to catch him in some trickery. After a lingering silence, I expelled another deep breath; one that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The little man never reappeared.

“He left me on a goddamn cliffhanger…” I said in disbelief. My reflection shook its head in sympathy.