The March Editor's Pick Story is by Bruce Memblatt
Please feel free to email Bruce at:
bmemblatt@aol.com
JULIE NEWMAN IN THE MIRROR
by Bruce Memblatt
In the bridal suite of the Hotel Pierre there were six towels, four chairs, eight Louis Vuitton luggage bags, two bottles of Perrier Jouet champagne and one Julie Newman.
Steve had gone down the hall for some ice, and Julie sat in front of the mirror, contemplating her future and brushing her hair. They had planned to sleep together for the first time. Now she had second thoughts, because she had a bad feeling.
Perhaps it’s just nerves, Julie told herself as she ran the brush through her hair. She stared into the center of the mirror and pursed her lips; maybe she could use another dab of red lipstick.
In the corner of the mirror, Steve’s refection began to appear. Funny, she hadn’t heard him come back. She didn’t see the door swing open in the mirror, or hear his voice call her when he entered the room.
Julie turned away from the mirror, but the room was empty. He wasn’t back from getting the ice. She quickly swung her head again to the mirror and Steve’s reflection was still there. And then she knew: she was being shown her future.
There was danger in her future—that’s what that old woman psychic from next door told her when she was twelve. Julie had spent a lot of time with her neighbor, and was taught how to tap into her own psychic abilities.
And now as Julie watched the mirror, Steve’s reflection moved to the center and another image appeared in the glass. A woman was standing next to Steve and she was beautiful: black hair, blue eyes, perfect body. They wrapped their arms around each other in a passionate embrace.
By this point, Julie was more angry than frightened. Thoughts about psychics and unlucky stars ran from her head.
Seething, Julie watched them make their way to the bed in the mirror, their arms all over each other, their lips locked together as one. They looked like they were in this very hotel room. She wondered: if she turned around, would she see them on the actual bed?
She turned around. The room was still empty. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t happening right now, because Steve would be soon making love to someone else. Her fury and her pain were real. Some other woman’s head was on Julie’s pillow in the near future.
In the mirror, Steve began to remove his shirt, while the woman, this whorish reflection, had her hand firmly placed on Steve’s crotch. It was too much to bear.
Julie sprang from the dresser and firmly placed her hands around the neck of one of the bottles of Perrier Jouet that were resting on the table by the window. She held the champagne bottle in the air, about to smash it into the mirror, when the door swung open and Steve walked into the room.
Without thinking, Julie cracked the bottle over Steve’s head. He fell to the floor near the bed and blood ran from his skull, covering his face. The red liquid pooled over the white shag rug of the bridal suite at the Hotel Pierre.
The bottle fell from Julie’s hands. She frantically leaned over Steve, slapping his face, crying, “Steve! I’m so sorry, Steve, you have to wake up!”
But he didn’t move; his eyes were frozen at half mast, his gaze unseeing. Blood covered her hands and Julie realized she had landed right in the epicenter of the nightmare that psychic had predicted all those years ago.
She looked in the mirror and for an instant she saw the reflection of the other woman winking at her and grinning before she vanished into the glass.
Julie turned back to Steve’s bloody face, then she looked across the room at the second bottle of Perrier Jouet that was on the table by the window. She gazed at the bottle a few minutes before she picked herself off the floor, brushed past Steve’s body, grabbed the champagne and popped it open.
She sat on the rug. She had some serious thinking to do, right after she downed a few glasses of the wine.
She wondered, Why did I see Steve with another woman if the real future meant I would murder him?
The questions reverberated over and over in her mind as the champagne bubbled through her system. She felt woozy and a bit more relaxed then she had intended. Julie stared at Steve’s body on the floor by the bed, and wondered what to do.
And then she came to a decision. There was only one thing for her to do. She had to dispose of Steve’s body. It made perfect sense. After all, who would believe she accidently killed Steve because he walked into the room at the precise moment she was about to smash that bottle of Pierrer Jouet into the mirror…where his and some tramp’s reflections were screwing around on the very night she decided to finally sleep with him herself? Ultimately she had no choice. It was just a matter of finding the best means of disposal.
It was then that the eight Louis Vuitton luggage bags on the floor near the table caught Julie’s eye.
It was too simple. She’d just carve up poor old Steve into eight pieces, one for each bag. Then she’d have the valet carry the luggage down to the Bentley they rented, and all Julie would have to do is drive the car to a pier and dump the bags into the East River.
They hadn’t signed into the hotel using their real names. Julie had insisted they remain anonymous, and now she wondered if that had been her inner psychic ability warning her.
She stared at the Louis Vuitton bags again, and Julie began to bawl. Her future, her and Steve’s, trashed in one criminally insane instant. This sad twist of narcissism and fate was almost too much for her to bear. Tears fell past her cheeks as she tightened her robe around her waist and got up from the floor.
She stepped towards the luggage and said out loud, “I’ve got to weigh the suitcases down so they sink to the bottom of the East River.”
Then she heard a voice. “You watch too many movies. You won’t get away with this.”
It was Steve’s voice but that wasn’t possible because Steve was lying dead on the floor near the bed across the room. Her eyes ran over his blood, still wet, glistening on his scalp, and then her gaze flew to the mirror.
Steve’s reflection stood in the center of the mirror and smirked. Julie was horrified, because her psychic ability was not supposed to work like this. It was supposed to show her things in the future, not be interactive with the present.
She pointed at the mirror, and her hands flailed as she screamed, “You are not in the mirror! This is just a manifestation of my guilt.”
“Julie, you better save all that for the years of therapy you’re going to need when this is all over. In the meanwhile, time is wasting and we have to find a way to dispose of my body before you get caught.”
“Wait a second; you’re going to help me dispose of your body?”
“Your first instinct was correct. You’re gonna have to chop me up into eight sections and hide them in those Louis Vuitton’s,” Steve’s reflection told her as he stepped closer to the foreground of the mirror, looked over and peered at his body.
“Are you showing me my future?” Julie asked.
“We’ll talk about that later. Now, back to the issue at hand—my disposal. You’ll have to drag me into the bathroom, so you chop me up in the tub. You’ll need something to cover the rug, and then you’ll place each section in a hefty bag.”
“I need to drag you to the tub?”
“Yeah, to drain the blood and waste liquids out of my body.”
Julie’s nose curled. “Drain? Waste liquids?”
“Yup, you’ll also need some bleach because it’s going to stink something awful. You don’t want the essence of corpse to escape this room. Don’t worry, I’ll guide you through it all.”
“So you are a manifestation of my future.”
Steve sighed and sat down on the image of the bed in the mirror, clasped his hands and said, “You’re going to have to stop thinking so much, Julie. Stop analyzing. We need to make a list.”
“I’ll try, Steve, it’s just that—”
“Julie.”
“I’ll try,” Julie repeated and then she walked over to the dresser just below the mirror. The sound of traffic in the street spiraled through the room as the drapes danced to a nighttime breeze. Just twenty flights below was everything Julie needed to accomplish her task, and free her from this mess, she thought as she pulled a small Hotel Pierre pad and pen off the top of the bureau.
While she sat down on the chair in front of the dresser, Steve said, stepping close to the foreground, “First off, you need to go to the store. You’ll need hefty bags and bleach, better get a lot of both. And, of course, you’ll need some kind of carving knife, get a bunch of paper towels, rubber gloves, and maybe some ammonia too.” His eyes lurched towards his remains across the room. “You know, you really did a number on my head with that Pierrer Jouet bottle.”
“Um, Steve, the list,” Julie said, holding the pen and pad in her lap, her legs crossed like she was a receptionist at Allstate. “Okay, let’s see…hefty bags, bleach, a carving knife, ammonia, rubber gloves, paper towels…anything else?”
“Maybe a couple bottles of air freshener, like I said, it’s going to stink something awful.”
“Gotcha.” Julie said. She stood from the chair, walked over to the bed, and began dialing the phone on the night table.
“What are you doing, Julie?”
“I’m having the stuff delivered, Steve; what do you think I’m doing?”
“Are you crazy? Why don’t you just sign a confession? Julie, you will have to go down and get these items yourself.
“But it’s late.”
“This is New York City. There must be an all-night Gristedes a few blocks away. You need to walk, though…no cabs.”
******
It was sometime later when Julie returned with all the items on Steve’s list. She was surprised that Gristedes had such a wonderful set of carving knifes just sitting in an aisle at one in the morning. But her psychic abilities were never wrong.
She looked at Steve’s image, still in the glass, and said, “Let’s get started.”
“Damn right. It’s not easy looking at my bloodied body across the room, or thinking about how it got that way.”
“And how do you think I felt when I saw you with that slut?”
“Men are weak, Julie.”
“Men aren’t weak, you’re weak,” Julie said. “I bought a drop cloth too. To cover the rug just in case I couldn’t get your body into the tub. You didn’t have it on the list.”
“Good thinking.”
Julie tugged on Steve’s remains. She could see plenty of blood staining the rug. Julie envisioned another trip to the store for more cleaner when she heard Steve’s reflection say, “No, you’re fine. I’ll see you in the bathroom mirror.”
*****
It took a lot of pushing and pulling, sliding, grimacing, and fidgeting, but within an hour Julie had Steve’s remains safely ensconced in the bathtub of the bridal suite of the Hotel Pierre.
Julie sat on the floor tiles, nearly out of breath. She was next to the tub and she looked at Steve’s head, slumped against the porcelain. She hadn’t realized how hard she’d hit him until she saw the gash on his forehead up close; blood still trickled down his face from the wound. Bruises appeared that Julie figured were caused by the fall to the floor. Realizing she’d have to remove Steve’s clothing, she began unbuttoning his shirt, pulling off his jacket, sliding his socks off his feet, and unzipping his fly.
“So at last you have me right where you want me huh?”
Julie’s eyes darted to the bathroom mirror, “Very funny, Steve.”
“The really hard part is coming up so you may as well enjoy this.”
She didn’t know if it was a sexual jab or not. Julie sighed while she struggled, pulling his pants down and off his legs, thinking she should have removed his clothing before she lugged him into that tub.
Then she caught a glimpse of Steve’s image in the mirror above the sink and the nervous laughter she had been trying to hold in poured from her throat. “God, this is just so bizarre I can’t stand it. I hope you don’t fog up.”
“Just don’t take a shower.”
Julie’s laughter continued until she began to seriously conceptualize what she was about to do, then her hands feverishly shook. She was about to drain the blood from the body of her “almost-lover” and chop up his remains on the night that they should have consummated their relationship.
His naked, bloody frame appeared almost as a monster. She lunged from the bathroom, hearing Steve’s voice behind her. “Don’t be afraid! Come back, Julie! You can do this!”
“I can’t,” she said, standing in the center of hotel room and gazing into the mirror where Steve’s reflection again appeared.
“Julie, you need to come back to the bathroom before rigor mortis starts to set in.”
She saw the logic in that. She ran to the table, grabbed the carving knife out of the bag, and returned to the bathroom.
“We’ll need the bleach now too, Julie.”
Breathing heavy, she threw the knife to the floor ran to the table, grabbed all the bags and carried their contents into the bathroom.
Steve spoke from the bathroom mirror. “First thing you’ll need to do is to plug the drain.”
“Okay, next?”
“Let me explain what we’re going to do so you understand the procedure. First off, you’re going to take that knife and make perforations all along my body, and this is important: deep cuts in the front of my thighs, deep diagonal cuts. That will slit the femoral arteries. Once that’s done, you’re going to start pumping on my chest like you’re performing CPR. This will get the fluids and blood out of me easy and fast. The springback of my ribcage as you push on it will cause just the right amount of suction. Try not to pump too hard, and be ready to pour the bleach into the tub when those fluids start pouring out of me. Soon as we’re done with that, then we can start chopping me up.”
“Okay, Steve, I have the knife in my hand and I’m about ready to start, so please try and be quiet while I do this. I’m so nervous, I’m about to jump out of my skin.”
“Just do it.”
She took a deep breath and made her first cut into Steve’s skin on his upper chest. She watched his blood trickle down to his stomach. It felt so strange. Everything about it was just strange and horrific and cold. She hated it. Hated being there, hated holding that blade between her fingers.
Julie took another deep breath and prepared to make her second cut into Steve’s skin. Suddenly, she threw the knife to the bottom of the tub and leaped out of the bathroom.
She could hear Steve’s calls but she wasn’t going back in there. She ran to the mirror above the dresser by the bed, hoping to see something, maybe a way out, maybe an answer, when the tramp Steve was screwing assembled in the glass.
Her knees buckled.
A woman’s image glared at Julie and she smirked, “I’m not surprised to see you back here; I don’t think you have the guts for this. Don’t you recognize me yet?”
Rage exploded in Julie and she spat into the mirror. She made her way back to the bathroom where she began to cut into Steve’s flesh with the precision of a laser.
“What’s wrong Julie?” Steve said.
“Steve, please shut up while I cut your femoral arteries,” Julie said and she took the knife and dug it deeply and diagonally into Steve’s thighs. Then she pumped on Steve’s chest. Blood sprayed all over the tiles up past the showerhead.
“I told you not to pump so hard, Julie.”
“I can’t help it; it’s just my nature to overdo things.” Julie said, pressing and pumping even harder on Steve’s chest, causing blood to hit the ceiling of the shower.
“See something in the mirror in the other room, Julie?”
“Yeah, I saw your whore! Damn you Steve!”
“You still didn’t recognize her?”
Julie stopped pumping and stared into the bathroom mirror, “She said the same thing. What are you two talking about?”
“The woman in the mirror…it’s you, Julie.”
“What?” Julie said, stunned, and the knife fell from her hands and clanked across the tiles.
“You were seeing your future, Julie, as you are able to do. You were seeing us, Julie, you and me…what we could have been if we consummated this night. Then you changed it, your rage changed it. Damn it, Julie in a self-fulfilling fit of blind jealousy, you killed me and you made that old woman’s prediction come true!”
“No, Steve! You’re lying; the other woman didn’t look anything like me!”
“You’re eyes deceive you. Look again, Julie, it was you!” Steve’s image in the mirror glared.
She stood up from the tub. Her hands shook as she ran out of the bathroom, back to the mirror in the other room, and gazed at the reflection. Finally, she saw herself and it revealed her future. It was dangerous, just like the psychic old lady had told her when she was twelve.
At once she let out a scream and fainted to the floor.
The drapes billowed in a sudden gust of wind. Then Steve’s voice echoed through the room, “Like I said, you watch too many movies. You won’t get away with this. There’s your future now: Julie Newman in the mirror; writhing in an electric chair.”
Bruce Memblatt is a native New Yorker and a member of the Horror Writers Association. He has also studied Business Administration at Pace University. In addition to writing, he runs a website devoted to theater composer Stephen Sondheim, which he’s lovingly maintained since 1996.
His stories have been featured in such publications as Aphelion, Post Mortem Press, Dark Moon Books, Short Story Me!, Bewildering Stories, The Dark Fiction Spotlight, Bending Spoons, Strange Weird and Wonderful Magazine, Static Movement, Danse Macabre, SNM Horror Magazine, The Piker Press, Pill Hill Publishing, Eastown Fiction, 69 Flavors of Paranoia, Necrology Shorts, Suspense Magazine, Gypsy Shadow Publishing, Black Lantern Publishing, Death Head Grin, The Cynic Online The Feathertale Review, Yellow Mama and many more as well as in numerous anthology books.
His collection of previously published short stories titled The Dark Jar is currently available HERE.
Bruce Memblatt is the Kindle Coordinator for The Horror Zine.
