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i hate mirrors. always have. you can't trust them.

somehow, whenever i pass by one, i have to shake off the feeling that there are THINGS in that reflection that just zip out of sight as soon as i turn to look at it straight on. and really, what's the guarantee that they're going to zip out of sight? what if, one day, i turn and there's a crazy old lady with bad teeth reaching out for me over the bathroom sink?

so i kind of avoid mirrors in general. and i NEVER look into a dark one. that just seems like inviting trouble.

but this apartment... this apartment is the only halfway livable place i've seen in two days of searching. i have to take it! and really, what's a few mirrors? there's a fine line between being imaginative and being a basket case, and i think refusing to rent a perfectly good apartment because the bedroom walls are lined with mirrors kind of falls on the nutty side.

so i'm taking it. i can always hang blankets on the walls if it gets too wierd, right?

holeeeee shit.

i was walking to the grocery store today, and i saw a man with tiny red scales all over his hands. not like skin-rash scales. literally hard, shiny, sort of pearly-looking scales. they started at his fingertips and spread up the backs of his hands. i don't know what the palms of his hands looked like, because the light changed and he drove off. he was in a beat-up, cream colored, old ford pickup.

i crossed the street in a daze. i don't know if he saw me looking or not. you know, you'd think i would be asking myself if i'm going crazy right about now, but that's not what you do in real life. if you see something, you see it. imagining feels different.

besides, if i were crazy, i would have gone to the grocery store and bought my shit, pretending things were normal.

what actually happened was that i crossed the street, sat down on some stranger's front stoop, and cried.

a lady stopped. she had on these beige orthopedic shoes that matched her pantyhose. the pantyhose bagged around her ankles. i looked at her feet while she said, "oh, honey, it can't be that bad. you're young, you're pretty. smile."

i looked up at her face. i wanted to explain that i wasn't crying because i was sad. i was crying because...

heh, i can't even explain it to myself.

i guess i've always known that there is more in the world than we can normally account for with science and CNN. but i am very comfortable in my well-lit corner of Normal. i don't want fairies or ghosts. i want to balance my checkbook and eat lean cuisine.

i didn't question that the red-scaled man was there. but if he was there, where did that put me?

it's been a week since i saw the red-scaled man. a week since i moved into my mirrored apartment.

and nothing's happened! i keep waiting for the punchline... i keep waiting for demons to jump out of the mirrors and eat me, or for some guy in a leather coat to tell me "this is your destiny, Julie"

or SOMETHING.

i mean, whenever shit like this happens in stories, the main character sees something wierd and then BLAMMO, they're off to save the queen of the fairies or whatever. it's strange, but it's tidy.

my life is not tidy. apparently, it's just strange.

i work in a shoe store. talk about strange. and not-tidy. you wouldn't think it, but most people who come into a shoe store are sad. it's a sad job.

this woman came in one time and bought 37 pairs of blue satin pumps. at once. bought every pair of that damn shoe in the store. i thought maybe she was buying them for a bunch of bridesmaids, or a show choir, or something, but she started crying at the register. she was standing there, surrounded by boxes and boxes of shoes, and she said,

"i don't know what i'm gonna do with these."

"i'm sorry?" i said.

"i don't know what i'm gonna do with these."

then she started laughing. "you want some shoes?" she asked me. she grabbed a pair of the pumps and shoved them across the counter to me.

then she snatched up five bags of blue satin pumps and sort of stumble-skipped out into the street. she began grabbing people and talking animatedly, fumbling shoeboxes into their hands. she was like one of those perfume girls in the mall, only instead of chasing you down with scents, she was pressing shoes on people.

some people jumped away from her, like maybe she would bite, or maybe craziness was contagious. a couple of women tried to give her money for the shoes, but it looked like she wouldn't take it. finally a cop came by and i watched through the big display window as he got out a pad and wrote her a ticket.

i've always wondered what he wrote that ticket for. disturbing the peace? being disturbing? giving away blue shoes?

it happened again today.

i was sitting on the subway and the woman across from me disappeared. nobody else seemed to notice. one minute she was there, knitting, and the next minute the seat was empty except for a wad of gray chewing gum on the edge.

it seriously creeped me out. could i be next? what if someone was running around zapping people off of subway cars into some freak dimension? i found myself white-knuckling the seat, as if by hanging on to the navy blue plastic i could stave off teleportation.

then the woman blinked back on, like a lightbulb. as if nothing had happened, she sat there, knit two, purl two. i stared at her, fascinated. you know how you can tell if somebody's staring at you? eventually, you feel a sort of tingling on your face and you look up? well, she looked up at me, and right as our eyes met, she blinked off again.

her eyes had looked surprised, startled... maybe frightened? maybe she was just creeped out by having a random chick in black combat boots staring at her on the subway. did she know what was happening to her? maybe she was trapped. maybe i could see her because i could help her. that's how it happens in stories, right? i suddenly felt a fierce desire to help her, to be chosen to help her, to have all this freakyness mean something.

so i watched, taking deep, deliberate breaths, waiting for her to blink back into existence. when she did, i was ready. i scooted into the seat beside her and said "hi, my name's julie james. can i help you?"
"whatever you're selling, i don't want any!" she said in a high, old-lady-quavery voice.

i felt myself blushing. this was definitely not what i had planned. she was staring at me indignantly. her blue eyes were bloodshot and watery.

we blinked off.

i let go of her arm, then realized that i probably needed it to get back to the subway. i grabbed it so hard she went "ouch!" and tried to pull away from me. although really, it was more like she was trying to shake off a pinched nerve or something. she didn't even look at me.

we were sitting in a kitchen, at a table with a blue vase on it. or she was sitting. i was kind of... floating? hovering? it was hard to see my feet-- it was hard to see me, period. it was like i wasn't really there. she was, though.

she looked younger. she was still knitting, knit two, purl two, but this time it was something pink and soft. it reminded me of a baby blanket. she looked content.

a woman in her late twenties came into the kitchen from a side room. she shut the door carefully and smiled. "i think she's asleep," she whispered. "thank you so much for doing this, mom. jack and i should be home around midnight. you're the best!"

we blinked back on. the subway noises assaulted me like a thunderstorm after that whispering quiet. i didn't realize that the kitchen had smelled like baby powder until the body-odor/metallic scent of the subway rushed in on me.

i looked at the old woman. she was pushing at my hand. her knitting needles scratched lightly on my wrist and the heavy gray yarn tickled my skin.

"i'm sorry" i said, and got off at the next stop.

i walked fast up the stairs and down the crowded street, AWAY. i wanted to put as much distance between myself and that subway station, that old woman, as possible.

as i walked, people brushed by me. i felt gore-tex, wool, courduroy, denim sliding roughly past my bare arms. i don't get cold. don't know why, but even in the middle of january, when the city is beige with dirty snow, i never need anything more than a t-shirt to feel comfortable.

i didn't feel comfortable today, though. i felt dizzy and nauseated at my immense violation of that woman. and i felt sickly curious. was her daughter dead? did they not talk anymore? was her daughter just fine and the old woman was on the way to visit her? what could have fueled a memory that strong?

and did everyone do it? did everybody disappear into their own memories at random, private moments? or was she special? WHY COULD I SEE HER DO THAT? obviously i wasn't special. i hadn't saved the world, or even helped her. i shouldn't have intruded. i shouldn't have been ABLE to intrude.

i began to feel angry. what was the point? why was i given these little glimpses of bizarreness when there was nothing i could do about them? it would be different if i had some superpower, like flying or reading people's minds or something. i could make things happen then. i could FIX things. but all i do is notice things. noticing things is not a superpower. it's probably the first step to the nuthouse.

i've always noticed things. not wierd supernatural things til now, granted, but things people normally overlook. and it's always sucked. if i could turn it off, i would. but you can't really help it, i don't think.

growing up, we had this neighbor, mr. kirkenbaum. he lived with his mom, who was really old and deaf and smelled like pee. nobody really talked to either of them much, but we used to take them cookies around christmastime. everybody would say things like, "isn't he a sweet man to take care of his mother like that?"

for some reason, i never thought he was a sweet man. every time he answered the door for those christmas cookies, i practically threw them at him and ran for it. the wait between ringing that doorbell and handing him the foil-wrapped plate was like the wind-up in a horror movie. in my mind, the theme from jaws or halloween would start rolling the second my finger started moving towards that bell. even with the cheesy soundtrack going, my hearing would be superacute. i could hear the tv going in the back of the house. i could hear the swish of chair cushions as he got up. the creak, creak of his feet on the wooden floor. the shadow of his bulky body would darken the frosted glass window in his front door, and it was all i could do not to make a break for it. the door would open with unbearable slowness.

and there he would be. no butcher knife, no maniacal grin. just a balding, overweight short guy with glasses and an alligator shirt. i'd hand him the cookies, mumble "merrymnsalfdfh" and scoot back down the walk, and that would be it for another year.

this went on for years and years, til i was about sixteen or so. then one day, in the middle of august, right before we all had to go back to school, the police came and took mr. kirkenbaum away. there were cop cars and unmarked detectives' sedans around the house for a month afterwards. mrs. kirkenbaum went away, to an old folks' home, i guess. turns out mr. kirkenbaum was strangling hitchhikers and storing them in the basement. neighborhood legend says that they were piled around the basement like stacks of firewood. neighborhood legend says that he was caught in august because someone complained about the smell.

i used to wonder about mrs. kirkenbaum. did she know what was going on? probably she didn't know while it was happening... i mean, she was pretty out of it. but when he got arrested, did they explain it to her? what did she think? was she surprised? i wasn't. everybody said the usual, "he seemed like such a nice man...."

i knew he wasn't, of course. had known it for years. and really, i probably knew something shady was going on from the start. i mean, single white guy living with dear old mum is kind of the oldest slasher story in the book. i saw "psycho" when i was like, 12. it's not like i shouldn't have seen it coming.

but even realizing that he was creepy, even noticing the Look in his watery eyes didn't do any good. i'm not the one who called the police. i didn't sneak in and rescue any hitchhikers. i didn't do any good at all. noticing things like that is really kind of a drag.

so. this has become my new year's resolution: i will Do Good and Not Go Crazy because of my freakish hyper-noticing. for days now, i've been on the lookout for something odd. this time, when i notice it, i will act-- not in a fumbling, intrusive way like i did with that poor lady on the bus, but in an authoritative, decisive way, like i should have done with my crazy serial-killer neighbor all those years ago.

i refuse to think about exactly how i'm going to change a lifetime of inactivity into bond-like cool when the moment comes. i figure if i just have faith, it'll work out. somehow.
wackjob. i must be a total wackjob.

most people go to blockbuster or the AMC megaplex when they want to see a movie. apparently, all i have to do is wake up in the middle of the night.

i kid you not. the apartment, the mirrors? the not-looking-into-dark-mirrors thing? i so should have listened to my gut instinct.

i woke up two nights ago because my foot was itching like crazy. i kicked up the covers and flopped over to scratch my toe when a shadowy movement caught my eye. i froze, crouched down behind a fluffy blanket-bunker, watching a bizarre scene unfold in my mirrors.

we're not talking oo-scary-shadows-and-mind-tricks. we're talking quality cinematography. lights, camera, action. only it wasn't a movie. it was that old lady, the one from the subway. she was sitting there, in the baby-powder kitchen, knitting the soft pink whatever. then the image strobed for a minute, and a huge, red, tearing thing filled the mirror. the soft pink image of the woman kept alternating spastically with this red maw. you would think that i might scream, or turn on a light, or run barefoot from the apartment, but all i could do was hunker down and watch, hoping that nothing happened in 3-D.

then, suddenly, the image of the woman with the knitting filled the mirror, completely static. frozen. only the wierd thing-- wierder thing-- was that now, when there was no movement, i became aware of the click, click, click of knitting needles. the sound didn't start... it felt like it must have been going on for a while. maybe that's even what really woke me. click, click.

then the mirror blipped back to normal. cold, dark tones of shadow punctuated by the white of the blanket and the black wideness of my eyes.

that's when i flipped smooth the fuck out. i jumped up, diving for the lights and the door in no particular order. i wanted out of that room, but i wanted just as badly to extinguish that darkness around the mirror. i flooded the room with light and paced out into the kitchen. i stomped back and forth, the flapping thud of my footfalls erasing the clicking of knitting needles from my spine.

"ok" i said out loud. "a: never, never, you are NEVER sleeping in that room again. hello, couch, hello big lock on the fucking door. YIKES. b: that was clearly some kind of call to action. i don't know what's up with Knitting Lady, but she's shown up kind of dramatically in your life twice now. you MUST be connected somehow. c: what the FUCK? what the flying FUCK? that was the wierdest, scariest thing ever in my life yuck uckka yuck YUK!!!!!!!"

then i went out to a safe, sane, brightly lit Denny's for the rest of the night.