"What the hell are you doing in here?"
"I live here," he said.
"No you don't—" I began but my error was readily apparent. I'd forgotten to account for the blasted corridor having morphed into a fourteen cell residence. Panicking, I pushed against the steel door but it didn't budge for so had I slammed it shut in effort to keep out Yidoni and Desiree.
"They shan't disturb us," said the Professor. "You may relax."
Easy for him to say, I thought. But truth be told, of all the inmates (higher functioning inmates, that is) he was the most docile. Or at least, the one who hadn't directly sought to harm me in any way. Even now, despite my sudden entry, despite having me locked in his private domain, he didn't flinch from his position on the bed. He sat straight-backed on its edge, staring into a long wall mirror. Did everyone have personal accoutrement, besides me? Perhaps it was a benefit of tenure.
"Please have a seat." The Professor gestured towards the chair but I declined the offer politely. "I'll stand, thank you."
A silence fell. The kind in which a ticking clock grows ever louder—providing, of course, that such a timepiece is to hand, and that one's heartbeat is not as a thunder drum in one's ear. Quite ironically, however, it was by staring at the Professor's placidity (for his gaze remained entirely fixated upon his mirror) that my pulse rate eventually slowed.
"How many cells are in this ward?" I asked.
"Fascinating question," he said, his eyes for the first time shifting in the mirror. "How many cells do you think there are?"
His curious tone further upset my twisting stomach, and I recalled Doctor Wheeler's bygone warning to not engage with the inmates. But I was surely too far down the rabbit hole now. I told the Professor there had been seven cells when I'd been admitted—trapped—on this ward, and now there were fourteen.
"And this disconcerts you?" he asked.
"I should bloody well think so," I said. "Does it not you?"
"Not in the least. Natural phenomena are taken in stride."
You'll appreciate that I took issue with this. Natural phenomena? I put it to him that hallways did not readily expand their dormitorial capacity—even if just out of sheer decency. But the professor held on to his belligerence, arguing that most cells were prone to multiplication. Biological cells readily underwent mitosis. Political or so-called terrorist cells often branched out as their causes became more nuanced. Cellular phones were each year produced by the billion, and the need to replace battery-power cells was as common as the angry outbursts of television remote holders. "In short," he said, "it's difficult to think of a cell which doesn't multiply."
I did not respond to that, and for some minutes did this inane absence of sound seem to chill the air between us. Yet there was a strange burning smell, something far more fiery than his tobacco laced musk…
The Professor began to talk about mirrors. He said the Romans believed mirrors had the ability to trap the soul. They also believed that it took seven years for the soul to regenerate itself—thus giving birth to the superstition that breaking a mirror results in seven years' bad luck. Other peoples and religions were likewise afraid of what lurked in the so-called Mirror Realm—something I could certainly sympathise with for I'd always found mirrors to garner some disquiet, none more so than the large antique mirror my father hung on the second-floor landing, which had given me particular unrest as child when on one occasion I'd been startled to find my reflection missing an eye. Vanessa had chalked it up to a smudge on the glass, but nightmares yet plagued my pillow.
"Personally, I like to sit in front of them," said the professor. "Apart from the sterling company, I find they give me a clarity far beyond the normal insight." He encouraged me to try it but quite frankly I was content with my soul being trapped in just one evil place.
"Are you that desperate to leave?" he asked, alluding to those untold masses for whom a roof over their heads and two square meals a day would be a utopia.
"But we're trapped!" I said.
"And if we weren't? Would confinement by your own volition make you want to leave any less?"
"No."
"Then being trapped isn't the issue, is it?"
I regret to say I did not have the proper counter argument to hand, nor quite the understanding of why his reasoning made sense to me.
"You're not Eisoptrophobic, are you?" asked the professor.
I told him I wasn't, though of course I had no idea what the hell it meant, only the common sense to not give him any ammunition.
"Ah, I'm glad," he said, confessing that he was rather obsessed with mirrors and should very much like to show me something curious. I felt I hadn't much choice, nor good reason to risk finding one, and so the professor set about a rather lengthy mental calculation. Upon reaching the answer, he told me to remain exactly where I was while he proceeded to position and re-position the mirror until finally he had it in such a way that its polished surface—despite being turned to me—reflected his image.
"But that's impossible," I said.
'No, just extremely delicate, he said, evincing me of the fact with a millimetre movement of the mirror, this way and then that, which caused the reflected image to oscillate between the professor and me. "You see?" he said. "It's all a matter of precision. Of angles. Of presentation."
I stared at the shifting image—his face, my face, his face again.
"Careful now," he chuckled. "Wouldn't want to lose track."
I didn't answer him. My eyes were hurting and giving me a terrible headache. How long would it be before the guards came to find me?
The Professor rose and adjusted his collar as though preparing for a lecture—or a cross-examination. "In law, as in mirrors, the truth is not what is, but what can be made to appear. A pity you dismissed Winston Lane. But perhaps… that was fate."
"How do you know about Lane?" I asked.
He turned, now fully facing me. In the mirror, we stood side by side—twin silhouettes in matching blue asylum garb. "I shall represent you at the trial."
"You?" I croaked.
"Of course. Who better to argue your sanity?" He proceeded to argue his case but by this time my head was splitting so badly that I couldn't hear a single word. His voice stretched into a long sonorous blare and the light bounced strobe-like off the mirror, disorientating me completely until I felt my back sliding against the cell wall—down, down down.