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swish against metal. The bars were fitted tightly together and I strained to see through the slivers of space between them. My eye bulged with effort, searching for a glimmer of light, a moving shadow. But everything was black. Pain fireworked behind my eyes, from staring at nothing.
    Rushed my head out into the light. For a moment the room was tulle-ed in a vertiginous blur. I shook my head and slithered the rest of me out from under.
    I crawled to the closet. It was deep and large, made all the more so by its emptiness. The hanger twisted right and then left, over and over, almost imperceptibly, as though creating a rhythm to make up for the motionless clock. I crawled inside, ran the blade of one hand up and down the right angle of a corner. Turned and sat, hanger an overhead beacon. I thought of my red dress.

    The gilt angels ’round the mirror stared at me with looks of dumb love and unhelpful innocence. Purity can be a real bitch.

    INT. VELVET’S HELL—MIRROR—VELVET’S BATHROOM—TIMELESS
    The woman with the psychotic bob hangs in her bathroom, fashionable Death channelling itself through a vintage lizard skin belt. Life drains in a series of colours in her face, nearing the exit with an ashy pale. She sways, graceful and grotesque. The Shadowman enters, wearing a tuxedo. He grasps the hanging woman around her waist and clasps one of her hands.
    SHADOWMAN
    (smiling)
    Velvet, my darling girl.
    He begins to ballroom dance with her on the spot, singing “I Could Have Danced All Night” from
My Fair Lady
.

    The sound of the glass shattering, and the blood on my hands: these were the things that my senses remembered, not the intricacies of each moment’s memory. Screams pealed at the walls: they must have been my own, unless the Devil has my voice. On my knees on the carpet, bloody hands and burning tears, and a buzzing fog that obscured the far-off flashing lights. I touched the blood to my lips, tasted the metal. My insides were easily swallowed, their taste evoking some forgotten hunger.
    Face to the carpet and fingers in ears, my dress twisted and bunched ’round my torso. When my eyes opened, they remained naïve for several moments to the rough expanse before them. The room swelled and shifted like a mirage in the desert sun as I sat up, haloed with glitter. My dress was splotched with wrung bloodstains, a horror movie tie-dyed affair. The dyeing instruments, though, were much restored: the cuts on my hands had healed to mere hairline fractures. I wiped my mouth and took a big, slow breath, trying to fashion the unreality of the room and the unreality of my memories into a wearable idea, a plausible truth, if not a pound of real flesh, then a paper doll. There was no glass on the carpet. The mirror hung whole and perfect on the wall.

    INT. VELVET’S HELL—MIRROR—TIMELESS
    The man in the mirror is slight, with sloping shoulders. His eyes are green, encircled in blue. He stands very still, a look of struck wonder captive on his features. A soft, small, tentative smile urges his lips. He raises a hand, his motion halting yet smooth, as though moving undersea. The hand reaches out, palm flat, seeking touch.

    I reached out my hand, resting the palm against the man’s in the glass. His eyes were liquid with wonder. He was a stranger to me, and yet as familiar as my own shadow.

    Dear Velvet,
    Was it you I saw? Did you see me? A beautiful woman appeared in my mirror and placed her palm to mine. You? Very black eyes (bluish borders) and brown, sort of curly hair, cut kind of like Clara Bow’s, if you know who I mean. She looked so familiar to me, even though I didn’t recognize her, like someone I knew so long ago that I remember only the feeling of knowing them, not the actual person. And then she disappeared and I was left with my own reflection, which I hate. I cried to see it, and not the woman, standing before me. She must be you, Velvet. I am sure of it. Please come back to me.
    My own