Louis Edwards

“Malcolm is dead,” Eddie kept hearing as he raced to the shop. As he got closer, he saw the flashing lights, and the siren that had been only an eerie, barely audible musical accompaniment to his thoughts began to register as belonging to an ambulance and not as being a regular plant alarm. He knew that he would not cry no matter how awful it was; he never cried. That was one thing he never had to worry about. If one of them had to be killed here, it was better that it was Malcolm—because if Eddie had been killed, Malcolm would have cried like a baby.

One Sunday in June, they were a family strolling on the beach. The sun was blazing, making the sand feel like hot coals beneath their feet, but also brilliantly splashing light on the ripples in the lake. And the hypnotic, undulating motion of the waves called to them to come and wade in the coolness. He and Betty hesitated—as always—neither knowing how to swim. Always drowning on the mind. Always drowning.

A chill flew through Eddie, who refused to believe his own eyes, for, staring back at him, smiling his inimitable smile, was Malcolm—dead for almost six years. Yes, he was dead. Eddie had seen the body with his own eyes. He had seen the blood. And yet here he was now, Malcolm, smiling to him across the smoke-filled room. A scream was caught in Eddie’s throat. Water instantly flooded his eyes, blurring his vision. He blinked to clear his eyes, and when he opened them he no longer saw Malcolm at the back of the room. All that he could see, as far as he could see, was a wall made of mirrors. And in the mirrors, he saw faces, fronts, a line of opposite profiles, and finally, not Malcolm, but a reflection of himself…