In the Mirror, Darkly

The first time, he explained it away saying he made faces while shaving because it was the only way to reach stubble under his nose and around his jawline. Yet Maureen could have sworn he’d been horrified by his own reflection. Maybe he’d just discovered another gray hair.

“Hon?” She leaned against the bathroom doorframe and watched him scrape his face with the razor, shoveling the foam like snow from the driveway of their western Michigan split-level.

“Yeah?” Dave paused, looking at her mirror image.

“You’d tell me if you were having a midlife crisis, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t have to.” He winked and resumed shaving.

The next time, Dave had shut the bathroom door like he usually did while making a lengthy deposit. Before he flushed, she could have sworn she heard him carrying on a conversation in there. If the laundry basket on her hip wasn’t so heavy, she might have put her ear to the door. But she knew one thing after ten years of marriage: good fences make good neighbors, and good boundaries make good spouses.

My short story "In the Mirror, Darkly" is up at Acidic Fiction. It was published a couple months ago, but I've had other good stuff to share lately, so it sat on the back burner, patiently waiting its turn. That's the cool thing about online publishing: stories live forever. Well, I guess they do as long as the websites are functioning. By all appearances, Acidic Fiction plans to be around for a good long while. The editor recently recapped the site stats since their inception back in August. They're a paying market looking for contemporary speculative fiction.

After surviving 15 rejections, "In the Mirror, Darkly" was due to find a good home. And at long last, it finally did.

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas this week! May God bless us, every one.
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