Glass Picker, a short

It had just rained so the streets are gleaming with the lights of the shop-houses. It was not a good thorough downpour though, so the night air is stuffy and humid. Trudging through the puddles forming in the corridors of the shop-houses – a tall man with really bad posture. He has his hands in his black trousers and slinked like a shadow puppet. Between the pillars, one could see briefly see him flit down the rows. He stops suddenly and an onlooker would be caught surprised if they had been expecting to see the same figure between the next set of pillars.

The bar name is slowly flickering neon pink in the mirror where the signage would have been. The tall man stooped even lower as he pushed the door open and descended down the narrow stairs. The bartender looked up and recognised this tall man.

“Piq, you’re early today. I have yet to finish cleaning all my glass tonight!” The bartender smiled as he put down the last of his glass and the cloth he used to dry it. The tall man stood over at the counter but did not sit down.

“Where’s the delivery man this time?” the man called Piq asked. “In the back, as usual.” The bartender replied. Piq frowned and his narrow eyes almost gleamed with malice, “I don’t like the new guy. Careless. I would not be surprised if he breaks them.”

The bartender shrugged and smiled, “Go around to the back now. The inspection team came just now and they said you’ve been doing a good job. No complains for the month.”

Piq grunted as he pushed the full-length mirror perched on a wall, “Thought you always checked the jobs anyway. We haven’t had a complaint in years now.” The bartender shrugged again.

Piq disappeared from sight into his workroom. “That’s the guy?” asked a pair of legs dangling on the side of an armrest. “That’s the Glass Picker?” the rest of the body sat up and rose into view above the back of the cushioned sofa. The bartender shrugged, “Thought you fell asleep.” The broad lady with enormous presence stood up and smoothed her blouse, then her skirt, “I never sleep on a job. Get a drink ready for me, won’t you?”

She examined the spinning mirror on the wall, found no fingerprints, then pushed to the other side and stepped into a darker room.

“Do you stalk around like that all the time?” Piq looked up and saw a strange lady holding the entrance halfway open, polishing the surface with a spectacle square. “Like what?” “You’re going to get a bad back at this rate.” The lady closed the door and the sliver of outside light slipped out. His workroom was dark once more. Piq turned around from the mirror he was working on to stare at the lady face to face, then feigning casualness, “Job hazards, I guess.” He was annoyed by the constant interruptions to his alone time. The delivery guy had only just left.

In the mirror, her bright turquoise suit gleamed. For now she was keeping her distance. “How heavy is it?” she asked. Piq frowned and did not understand. A twitch in the left eyebrow, “The eons of bad luck you have accumulated, do you have to be hunched in a perpetual state beneath that baggage?”

Carefully casual, he replied, “Enough bad luck for the lifetime I suppose.” “You’re a hard worker with impeccable track record. Headquarters would like to meet you for your hard work. You do not have stay hunched inside here breaking anymore mirrors you know. My name is Beatrice by the way.” The turquoise blob moved in.

Piq swivelled around and interrupted her, “Step out to your left, would you? Stay out of the reflection.” That stopped her in her tracks. He turned back to the mirror before him and rose from his seat. Beside the stand was a sledgehammer and he hoisted it up. “Haha can’t believe what a stroke of luck it is to be recognised by headquarters. It’s a bit too late, at this point, I have broken too many mirrors that a few more years’ worth of it does not make a difference.” Piq said dryly before he took aim and shattered the mirror.

The dark room flashed as shards of the mirror caught the dim light and reflected and bent the surrounds. Beatrice flinched, afraid and in awe, and the filtering distortions convinced her for a moment that she saw something escape from the mirror. A soul! It filled the room with indistinguishable light and sound energy, the last spurts of a human life exhausting itself. This man! She flicked back to the tall crooked figure and found that Piq’s shoulders were stooped a little more as if something hefty had been thrown onto his back. The staggering old horse creaking but not protesting.

“I’m doing my job, aren’t I? I’m going to be doing this job for a long time. You can take that with your report. You cannot find any fault with my job so there is no reason for you to drag another person into this misfortune.” Piq said with a tone that implied it was time for her to leave.

Beatrice was not daunted and she stood a little taller, “I will report what I see, be sure of that. You have saved countless souls by breaking the prism that traps them. But is it not time to take a break?” Piq reached for a dustpan and swept up the shards, “It’s not fair for another person to do this. I can deal with this. Job hazards.”

As Beatrice watched Piq sweep up the workspace in silence, she wonders what made this man agree to the job. This industry was a sinister one. People do not think about how mirrors were disposed of, nor did they know that little fragments of their soul are trapped behind the reflection. They do know, however, that breaking a mirror was 7 years of bad luck. Even for those who were not superstitious and took on the job in the first place, the manifestations of so many years’ worth of misfortunes should dissuade someone a few weeks in. Beatrice had sorted through countless appeals for leave: car accidents, family matters, death. Yet here, this man rejects the offer to leave this industry.

“Are you going to leave. Or not?” Piq watched her darkly as he emptied the clinking waterfall into the central chute. Beatrice made for the exit, “I suppose it does no harm for the Resource Department if you stay on this job.”

“I will do this job for as long as I need. You guys could take it easy with looking for my replacement.”

The mirror turned around, the outside world shone in for a moment, then Beatrice stepped out and everything swiveled back into place again. The door closed on Piq setting another mirror onto its stand.

The bartender looked up to Beatrice exiting. He smiled faintly and pushed a tall glass onto the counter. Contemplative and silent, Beatrice took a seat and stared for a long time at the bartender feigning busyness.

“That man cares about his job. A lot.” Beatrice stared at the bartender meaningfully. He laughed easily, “Don’t accuse me. Our jobs require quite a different set of skills.” Beatrice took a sip from her drink and felt overwhelmed by sadness. On the first day of her job, she harboured an impulse to get drunk.