The Mirror

she starts the day with a big pot of turmeric and aniseed tea, some half-assed apology to the liver after the whiskey has kicked the shit out of it all night. it steams up the cracked window while the rain does its usual piss-down outside.

she keeps thinking about the mirror in the local newspaper.

ten quid.

round mahogany, old gold trim, heavy as guilt. the guy selling it—Franklyn—used to be a doctor. she knew him. his surgery sat right in the middle of Greenock like a bad tooth, and she’d ride the bus there through streets that stank of wet dog and cheap plonk, everybody on board looking like they’d lost a bet with life.

he wore a deerstalker sometimes, the pretentious bastard. his waiting room had this painting hanging over the fireplace—seventy years of damp eating the canvas, green mould blooming across some toff with a shotgun and a handful of dead pheasants. looked like the birds were still trying to fly out of the frame and couldn’t.

that mirror had watched a lot of faces come and go, her old man’s included. and that’s the problem. she pictured it hanging it in the hallway and there he’d be, staring out at her every time she staggered past with puke on her coat and the shakes rattling the bones. same bloodshot eyes, same disappointment, same dead-man grin.

forever.

Franklyn was the one who signed the old bastard out when the time came, wrote “liver failure” like it was a surprise. now he’d do the same for her one day, nod and prescribe something that doesn’t work, pocket the fee.

so she never rang about the mirror. let it sit in some other drunk’s house, doing its quiet judging. she has enough ghosts breathing down her neck without paying ten quid for another one.

she waits for the call,
the liver donor program,
the back of the queue.