strange ravens

"Newton believed that bodies attract each other with a force proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them."

The room is narrow and long with a high ceiling, furnished only with an old mahogany sleigh bed and ten foot gilded mirrors on opposite walls, their silver spotted and stained with age. The mirrors reflect light from the window, reflect each other, and then a parallel universe that backs up into infinity. In one corner, the outside corner closest to the porch, gray wallpaper peels away in ragged strips. He sits on the bed leaning back, his legs stretched out in front of him. In his right hand he’s holding a bag of rubber bands—different sizes, some short and fat, some long and skinny, all flesh colored, at least the color of his flesh. With his left hand he reaches into the bag without looking. Taking the first band his fingers touch, he draws it out, slipping his thumb and forefinger inside the rubber, stretching it out to form an ellipsis in one smooth motion. Sometimes he closes his eyes as he points and pulls the trigger, flexing his thumb as the band shoots away into the space of the room. When he opens his eyes he can see his multiple selves reflected in the two mirrors.

In one mirror he can see the reflection of the woman standing at the door. In his bag there are no rubber bands the color of her flesh, whatever that color might be. Café au Lait? Caramel? Cinnamon? Burnt almonds? All edible quantities, like her skin. He watches her in the mirror as she watches him on the bed, their separate positions creating a triangulation of sorts that anchors him in space, as she’s always anchored him. He can see that her belly has grown a little larger since the last time. He begins to aim the few remaining rubber bands at her reflection, one after the other.

If she meets my eyes in the mirror before the bag is empty, then she’s really there. Not one of my changelings. But if I reach in and shoot the last rubber band and she continues to look at me on the bed, not meeting my eyes in the mirror, if she doesn’t meet my eyes…

The dark woman stands in the doorway watching the man play his game of predestination. The floor is littered with limp rubber bands surrounding the bed like small pale penises. She knows, by the almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes that he is willing her to look in the mirror, to look away from his real self on the bed and look at his reflection. She isn’t afraid—or is she? If she does his bidding and bends her will to his own, actually looks away from the flesh and blood man on the bed—looks instead at the man in the mirror—will she see his reflection? But what if she looks in the mirror and the bed is empty?