Broken glass: fragile, innocent shards shattered by adversity, crushed by hands oozing with guilt and anger. Inevitable unless molten together by fire and perfect hands, broken glass remains lost memories of the past, memories that cannot be shaped or shifted to become anew. Only perfect hands can restore what was lost and shattered, can shape the shards into better memories – longer lasting, everlasting. What was lost shall be found and reformed . . .

ῧ ⟣ Ж ⟣ ῧ

Everyone calls it Downstairs.

I do not know for sure how the civilization got its name, but the name has stuck ever since someone mentioned it. Even in the small amount of time that it has existed, the developments and living standards would put other high-quality cities in this world to shame. The future and its technology are the heart of the life that thrives in judgment and the knowledge. Men, women, and children gain wisdom and talents that are shared amongst each other. Anything that was good would become the finest and the greatest.

But no one knows what could be happening outside the wall surrounding the city, and neither do they care; they don't have the time to think what phenomenon and exploration could be lurking outside their safe civilization. They love believing that they are a superior race and the only ones who lived in an advanced society such as theirs. In fact, the only thing they actually cares about is themselves. Day and night, every individual would perfect a fault and strive to become better than those around them.

And how do people see their flaws?

Mirrors.

Every individual was given a hand mirror the minute they were born. In Downstairs, mirrors reflect what other people think and see of someone, whether good or bad. Reflections mattered to them more than any other thing that is precious. Whatever they see in their reflections was what they looked like. No one has ever seen their true reflection because the mirrors that had the ability to reveal those types of things were crushed centuries ago. True Reflection mirrors are very rare to find, but if an individual were to find even the smallest fragment of this glass, their true reflection would be revealed.

Attempted perfection and complexion have nothing to do with me, though; I am nothing and have nothing to do with this society. It wasn't my choice – I was cast away by my parents years ago. I don't know who they are and never asked anyone if they knew them – they probably wouldn't talk to me anyway. No one has taken me in as their own because ... actually, I honestly do not know why no one pays attention to me. It is like I am invisible to everyone, a shroud of mist amongst the vast atmosphere.

Then I look into my mirror.

Everyone in Downstairs receives a mirror, even if you are alone and isolated from social life. They carry them as if it is their prized possession, something that continuously reminds them of what their purpose was in Downstairs. I have had my mirror for this long because it was given to me since my beginning. I don't know who gave it to me, but I like to believe that my parents gave it to me at birth. A silver frame hugging glass stained with dirt, I stare into the surface and see a picture rippling into view.

What I see is a dirty rag doll, broken, and homeless. No wonder I am an outcast – a street devil, abandoned by my parents. Was it because they saw me like this?

No one bothered to take my mirror I had my entire life away and I don't know why. Could it be because they thought that I deserved to have my faulty looks forever inscribed in my polluted mind, so that whenever I looked into the mirror I would always see myself as I was: a monster?

I look down at my hands gripping the mirror. I sigh in despair at the sight of my right hand clinging lifelessly to the silver handle. Deformed would better describe it. I have had a deformed hand for as long as I can remember. I have always wondered if this was the reason why my parents abandoned me. Did they not like my hand? It would seem reasonable; it only had four fingers present, but they were badly shaped and angled, much smaller than the ones on my left. Because of my hand, I have always had a hard time holding onto things or grasping food from the floor. The displacement of my thumb makes it the more difficult as well.

My emotions shifted somberly as I stared at my reflection. Nothing could describe the horrifying replica of what is me in the glass staring back at me: a monster with an inked heart, a street devil turned putrescent.

"Who am I?" I asked myself out loud to nobody; "Is this who I truly am?"

With my good hand, I placed the mirror into my beaten leather bag and shuffled out of the dark alleyway that I had slept in the night before into the street spilled with sunlight. It is midday, the time to search for food. There was a good amount of people scattered about; children played ball while adults constantly checked their mirrors and talked about analytics and technology. As I pass them, not a single pair of eyes missed me; I was guiltily red among the blunt yellow. Hands move toward mouths as hidden conversations are shared and endless staring is directed at me and my hand. I keep my head raised and fist my hands, trying not to notice the familiar looks on the peoples' faces and feel the knot in my stomach as I move by them and into the square at the end of the street.

The square was the gathering place for the people, the "gossiping square" as people called it. Many festivals and community activities are held in the large circle that joined all the streets together in Downstairs. Guarding like soldiers, rocks stood in single formation as it swept in a large square surrounding the tree standing in the center. With a touch of perfect green grass, the twenty-foot perfect tree stood proud and tall with no misaligned branches and rotten color, a symbol of perfection and an unprecedented society. The tree is a huge symbol of Downstairs – the people who look at it feel like they have a purpose in life, that when they stare at the perfect resemblance of their society's motto they also feel perfect and strive to become better than the best, out stride the fittest.

A small crowd was gathered at the tree, gossiping with each other and glancing at their mirrors. I did not want to join in with their conversations, knowing what they would say when they saw me, and changed my direction to a small candy store on the side of the curb of one of the street, while the whole time not glancing toward the tree and the crowd underneath it. I opened the door and found no one was behind the counter that was littered with candy and sweets. Tempted, I seized a small bag of caramel sticks and lemon drops and strode to the door in the back that led to the alleyway behind the store.

The cold greeted me with whispering conversations on my skin. I trembled as it captured my skin. The dark alleyway is one of my passageways of refuge; the other alleys behind the other stores and buildings are all interconnected like a maze. Only those who traveled it the most and know the way like the back of their hand wouldn't get lost. Lucky for me, I practically lived in it.

I stepped in between the paths behind the stores, a mental grid of the maze dead spreading to the edges of my mind, constantly trembling, and reached a ladder that one of the stores provided after a couple twists and turns past stores and shops. I carefully climbed up the racks and pulled myself onto the top of a roof of one of the stores. I walked to the edge of the roof, comfortably crisscrossed my legs, and pulled out the candy from my bag, the savoring taste satisfying my senses and my vision as it enriched my eyes and the view I was trying to digest and embrace.

If one were to truly look at Downstairs from a side angle, they would spy oblique towers and buildings hopping sunlight back and forth between their windows, cascading dozens of individual rays of pure light; the tall tree from the square standing in the core of Downstairs proud and powerful, dominating all the other buildings and streets that bowed their metal foundations to the ground in the direction of the powering tree; the river flowing lazily in an endless ring around the city carrying eternal water, sacred to many who saw it. Legend says that a powerful being called The Man Upstairs created Downstairs with His perfect hands, and shaped the river to loop the wall, protecting the citizens inside, blessing it with eternal water that never ran out nor overflowed. Very few believe this legend, others thinking of it as a "children's fantasy" and "false doctrine." 

I, however, believe in everything.

As I stared mystically at the view, a shuffle of feet from behind me caught my attention. I swung my head to find a young boy standing just a few feet away from me. He looked poor and dirty, his clothes stained from anonymous hosts and evident that it was not washed for days. His brown hair was oily and cascaded in curls at his ears and the nape of his neck. The purple irises of his eyes were intense and carried a melancholy burden deep within them.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Who are you?" the boy shot back. "You are on my turf."

"I am terribly sorry. I always come here, and I didn't realize I was intruding on your territory."

"Well, you should be," the boy huffed.

"I sincerely apologize for my inconvenience. As a peace offering, would you like some of my candy?" With my left hand, I held out a few lemon drops and caramel sticks.

The boy's attitude shifted to eager longing. He reached out and snatched the candy from my hand, cramming it into his mouth with amazing speed. "Thank you," he said, his mouth full of sweets.

"You are welcome," I said, not surprised at his zest for food.

He sat down next to me. "What is your name?"

I took a moment to ponder on his question and frowned. "I don't have one."

"Surely you must have one."

I shrugged. "I was never given one. What is yours?"

"Freyor."

"A pleasure to meet you, Freyor."

"You, too. You may not have a name, but I will call you . . . Dove. Is that okay, Dove?"

Dove . . . What a pretty name. "I accept it."

"Very well, then. Where are you from, Dove?"

"I don't have an origin. I don't remember my parents or my past. I am an orphan . . . an outcast."

"Really? Me, too."

I stared bewilderedly at him. "There are other orphans in Downstairs besides me?"

"Of course. Tichon lives on the east side of the center behind the shoe shop, and Janae is in the west on the roof of the Royal Spa."

"Do you visit them a lot?"

"I try to when I'm not busy hunting for food. They can be really helpful if you need advice. Speaking of food, how did you get the candy?"

"I, um . . ." I gulped, guilt sinking in my gut. "I stole it."

His expression told me he already knew. "It is no crime for an orphan to steal. This is a place where everything seems to be perfect, yet it is not. I think it is insane how the people of Downstairs think that they have to perfect every little flaw they see in their reflections just because someone else saw it."

He turned to look at me. "Do you have your mirror?"

I pulled it out of my bag, the familiar cold silver sketching in the handle calming my sweating hands. "Always. Do you?"

"Interesting," he replied, not seeming to have heard my question I had asked him. "Why do you keep it?"

I stared at my mirror, unsure how to answer the question. "I don't know," I finally said. "I just do." Why did I keep the very thing that displayed my inner monster? Why didn't I throw it away when I had the chance? I had plenty, so why didn't I?

To my surprise, as my reflection stared back at me, instead of a monster I was usually seeing, it shifted to an image of a young woman of beauty and virtue. My clean face shone, white hair tamed in curling locks that brushed my cheeks. My eyes were the brightest shade of green I had ever seen. I had to refrain my hands from reaching up and touching my face. I did not believe it.

Is this how Freyor sees me?

I looked at him, who was eyeing me with kindness and modest curiosity in his intense purple eyes. Shivers ran down my spine. "Why do you not think of me as a monster? I am dirty and imperfect and filthy and . . ."

He shushed me. "I don't judge people by how they look, Dove – I judge by who they are on the inside."

I blinked.

He hurried to explain. "It doesn't matter how you look or how perfect your talents are, whatever they may be. What matters is the integrity and purity of your heart. Your core and spirit are what makes you who you are. We all have destinies that seal our fates – we just have to gain that potential and strive to become who we are to be."

I stared baffled at him. He flashed a crooked grin. "Hey – I might not be good looking, but I know for certain that what comes from the heart is purer than physical appearance."

"Yes," I said softly. "Yes, it is."

We continued to talk about our lives and Downstairs for many hours until the sun fell sleepily behind the wall at the edge of twilight, leaving behind a stained lazy indigo and coral sky.

Freyor stood up and stretched. "Well, time to crash." He reached down and helped me stand up.

"Thank you for talking to me," I said.

"Anytime, Dove."

Freyor looked down and stared at my deformed hand he was holding. "Oh, Dove. What happened?"

Oh, no. Why didn't I hide my hand behind my back? I sighed. "I have always had a deformed right hand. I might have had it at birth, but I don't remember when it became like this. I can barely use it to grab and hold onto things. It is dead to me. There are no nerve cells active in it so I can't feel anything. There are no nerves, no feeling – just plain deadness. I think that is one of the reasons why I am called a monster."

Freyor lifted his gaze toward my eyes. "It doesn't look deformed to me."

"Oh, please – you are just saying that."

"No, I'm not," he said, his voice stern but gentle. "I like it. Your hand is perfect just the way it is." He bowed, keeping my eyes on mine and raised my deformed hand to his lips. The sensation of his mouth on my hand sent waves and tingles throughout my body and caused tears to swell in my eyes. Oh, Freyor.

We stared at each other in comfortable silence, the wind whistling gently around us, our heartbeats pumping in synchronized rhythm. "Freyor?" I asked.

"Yeah?"

"Will you be my friend?"

He pulled me into an embrace that was warmer than anything I had ever felt before. "Of course, I will. Now come back, you hear?"

I smiled. "Of course."

I did not break my promise. Every day at midday, when the sun spilled beams of sunlight onto the buildings, the tree at the center of the square stood majestically over Downstairs, and the river flowed mysteriously, I would promptly walk through the streets, past the center, travel through the maze of alleyways, climb up the ladder, and find Freyor sitting at the edge of the roof with a treat in his hands and a subject to talk about.

For the first time in my life, I did not feel alone and helpless. I had made a friend who had the same living standards like me and the same beliefs I have. Whenever I was with him, I felt like I could continue to walk forever. He and his words were always with me inside my heart and mind, keeping me going. He was part of the reason I was still living in Downstairs. He proved that I was not the only one – there was him, and he was always there for me.

Our conversations were always on constant random shuffle: food, the river, mirrors, animals, people, the wall, technology, and the unknown behind the wall. Whether random or not, I enjoyed our conversations. My connection with him grew stronger every day, our bond growing tighter, as did my growing sense of belonging to the world that I had grown up in. I could sense Freyor having the same feeling too, which made most of our conversations require deep thought and pure joy. And as our conversations grew longer, there would be a small physical contact between us, like a brush of hands and forehead to forehead. Even those small contacts made my heart melt in wonder as I realized that my feelings toward Freyor were more than just a friend.

Two weeks after my first encounter with him, I traveled the familiar route to Freyor's turf. This time, he did not have a treat; however, he did have an interesting topic to talk about.

"Have you ever heard of The Man Upstairs?" he asked when I sat down next to him in our usual spot on the roof. Without hesitation, he gently took my bad hand in his and traced the veins on my wrist and the lines on my palm.

I tried to keep a content sigh from slipping from my mouth as I answered, "The legendary All Powerful One who created Downstairs with His perfect hands and the river with endless water supply?"

"The very one."

"Why are you asking?"

"If you are interested, there is a very good chance that you could meet Him."

I gaped, my voice barely a whisper. "Meet Him?"

He laughed at my expression, still holding my hand. "Yes, meet Him."

I cried. "Oh, my sweet goodness – meeting the Omnipotent One who created the rivers of eternal water? Who created Downstairs with His perfect hands? I have longed to see Him with my own eyes!"

"You can, and you will, but there is a price."

I raised an eyebrow. "A price?"

"Yes, one that takes great strength."

"I am not strong – I can't even lift a carrier box."

He chuckled. "Not physically – emotionally and mentally."

I shifted my position so I faced him and took both of his hands in mine. "Tell me everything."

A/N: * Hey everyone! How are ya'll doin?

(sorry - "ya'll" can be quite catchy lol)

This has GOT to be one of my (possibly THE) favorite short story I have ever created. What the funny thing is I got this idea from a dear friend who was telling me about this horror book called The Man Upstairs 

(dear readers please note that I did not copy any of the plot from that book because it is a horror book and I solemnly swear that this is not a horror short story and has nothing to do with a man who tortures youth in a box with no windows or doors. WHOOPS!! Spoiler! lol ;))

I swear I think I finished this in like a couple of days. No joke - the ideas just kept comin' to me (bragging rights here lol) and I just BIZ BANG WOW I finished. Tada, voila, open da curtain. 

I love weaving in little bits of romance into my stories so read closely as to how near the end Dove and Freyor have an "ultimate ending" as some may call it ;)

ENJOY!!! Please comment and make suggestions!

Karsen