Reflections for Sale: The Collector of Forgotten Mirrors

The oldest mirror in the world is a piece of polished obsidian from six thousand B.C. Last week, Admin, we talked about a shop where unchosen memories waited on the shelves. This is also a story about what we choose to keep. Elias didn't collect mirrors. He collected what they held. He could peel a reflection from a surface like a sliver of light. A damp film of silver, cool to the touch. He’d find one shimmering in a rain puddle... or trapped behind the glass of a picture frame. His workshop smelled of ozone and dust.

Hundreds of reflections were pinned to black velvet boards, categorized and labeled. The confident smile of a banker, caught in the brass of an elevator door. The curious eyes of a tourist, skimmed from the surface of a polished monument. Elias was building something. Or rather, someONE. On the far wall was a life-sized silhouette, a mosaic of these stolen moments. He was assembling a better version of himself. He saw his own reflection as a series of flaws. A project to be corrected.

His own smile was crooked. So he stole a perfect one. His own gaze was uncertain. So he took the steady look of a ship's captain from a painted portrait. He worked for years. The figure on the wall grew more and more complete. More handsome. More assured. More… whole. But there were still gaps. Tiny empty spaces in the patchwork man. He needed one final piece. Something he’d never found. A reflection of pure, unburdened joy. He found it on a Tuesday. In the chrome hubcap of a parked car. A little girl was laughing.

Just… laughing at the sky. Her face, reflected in the polished metal, was pure light. He waited for her to run past. His fingers were quick. The reflection came away in his hand, warm and vibrating with laughter. He raced back to the workshop, his heart a drum against his ribs. This was it. The final piece. He unpinned it, the girl’s captured joy still bright. He pressed it into the last empty space on the mosaic’s face. It clicked into place. The light flared. The figure was complete. Elias stepped back, breathless, ready to see his perfected self.

But the face staring back at him wasn't his. It wasn't his eyes. It wasn't his smile. It was the banker. The tourist. The captain. The little girl. A thousand strangers, all stitched together into one beautiful, impossible person. He stumbled back, turning to a simple, dusty mirror he kept by the door. He stared at his own face. Pale. Thin. Unfamiliar. He had spent so long looking at pieces of other people… he’d forgotten what he looked like. The man in the mirror was a ghost. A blank space where a person used to be.

The only thing a thief can't see in a mirror... is himself.