An overcast evening sky eventually collapsed. A hazy twilight was beginning to entomb the dusty town, like a pale shroud. The glow of the occasional street light was lost in between a fuzzy scintillation, the place intolerably deserted.

Alongside the path, stood silent silhouettes of houses, with windows scarcely lit, resembling sentinels standing guard over an ominous aisle. Black trees and black grass grew beside black flowers in black lawns. A cold whistling breeze was blowing, rustling the leaves uncomfortably against the dire tranquility. The disconcerting humidity in the air was thick all around him.

The shutter of the only department store on the street was drawn halfway, as if uncertain whether to surrender to the overbearing bleakness. He saw through the foggy veil surrounding the slits in the shutter, an unclear face over the counter which must have been lost in contemplation, an emotion such an evening is sure to inspire. A line of dimly colored and unrecognizable products were kept behind him, the mistiness twisting the ambiance to resemble a quivering leviathan, writhing in trauma.

Passing by the store, led to a reminder that a regular ritual had imprinted on his mind. It was here that he knew home was almost within a few hundred steps now. It was time to weave together his frayed chaos before his home arrived. He mustered the remainder of his mental potency, and attempted to intertwine his disarrayed thoughts. It wasn’t something that practice made easier. He couldn’t let the evidence left behind by yet another recurrent rehearsal of the dance of his demons, be seen at home.

There wasn’t another soul in sight as far as the eye could see, and this desolation was oddly congenial and compliant with his cerebral configuration.

“The dusk to another turbulent day has come, eventually”, he sighed to himself, as he saw his modest house approaching.

A pair of lights symmetrically distant on either side of the walkway, glowed upon his porch like beckoning torches, as he followed the walkway to his mahogany door. He didn’t need the haze to disappear to know that the dark grass gracing his porch was well-groomed and well-watered. An involuntary hand rose up to ring the doorbell, when he saw the lock on the door.

“Where could they be again at his hour?”, he wondered dryly. A cold key unlocked the door, and he stepped into a blackened hallway, adorned by an array of artworks of cityscapes, landscapes and seascapes.

“I’m home”, he mumbled distractedly out of routine and stillness greeted him, his eyes adjusting to the unillumination.

Taking off his shoes beside the door, he loosened the knot in his tie, apparently untying another one in his throat simultaneously. He turned to hang his keys behind the door, where a message in familiar long strokes of handwriting was weakly stuck.

“Lily needed to go out, we’ll be home soon. Dinner’s in the refrigerator”, the note read, not unlike a lot of similar notes that were almost routinely being left behind for him.

In socks mildly damp with sweat and dirt, he lazily shuffled to his room. He liked keeping his socks on unusually, a substitute for a warmth he missed.

An unsettling rumble in his stomach was arguing against the possibility of having dinner. He advanced towards his bedroom, a good sleep could be the best thing to happen in sometime. More out of cognitive exhaustion than physical, he was reluctant for a change of clothes.

His luxurious twin bed was delicately set, a white sheet clean as a dove, a neatly folded blanket lay at the foot, and the pillows were arranged with clinical precision.

A huge photograph stared from above the head of the bed, sitting in its heavily embroidered golden frame. Six years, yet no dust could ever grow on the frame that captured a precious moment, their first photograph together.

On the opposite wall, stood a long elegant looking glass bordered with glossy ebony, and covering almost the entire height of the wall. It had seen him flaunt a plethora of tasteful apparel, meant not to clothe his frame but his dying esteem and ego.

Just ahead of the mirror, lay the only thing out of order in the room. Lily’s little Pikachu plushy rested on its head.

He switched on the soft golden light above the mirror. Oblivious, he crossed his legs and sat facing the mirror, beside the fallen toy, and held it up in his lap like it was Lily. With his left hand, he gently massaged his sore left foot over the damp sock.

His position in the mirror coincidentally overlapped with his place in the large photo frame behind him. In the obscene clarity of the light, he saw in a patient perception.

“Who is this man?”, he said, revulsion dripping from his voice.

The paralysis was embedded deep within the dismal pair of eyes. Networks of visibly red blood vessels stretched from the corners over the white of the eyes like the boughs of a dying tree. The hazel of the eyes unnaturally dim and doleful like the haze outside. The harbingers of revolting wrinkles visible on the forehead. Stiff lips that seemed incapable of twisting into a smile. Long eyelashes that drooped down as if the eyes had stopped looking skyward. Occasional strands of silver in the beard and the hair. Stern eyebrows that arched in misunderstood hostility.

He still rubbed his foot absent-mindedly, clutching his little daughter’s Pikachu in his lap. The nostalgic image of his beloved looked over his right shoulder, with those dark profound eyes, and a beaming smile that had always been his candle in the dark, beautiful as ever.

He sat there uncertain about this undeserving man he saw in the mirror, that time had profanely accursed. The man looked a lot more aged and distressed than a twenty six year old, like an ancient doppelganger peeping through the mirror. The golden light shone on the bitter truth of what he had become.

The scene in the mirror appeared to be a sadistic painting in itself, his little daughter’s toy in his lap, and a wistful photograph of the woman who was his salvation, looking over his shoulder, while he sat there on the ground defeated and consumed by the corollaries of time. He mused if he had been grateful enough for all that he was blessed with.

He closed his eyes with his sweaty palms, and cried, as if he had tapped into a deeply rooted hot spring. The heartache of a failed husband, a failed father. Soon, it grew into writhing wails, and the empty walls covered in excellent wallpaper reverberated with the lamentations.

A pair of tender little hands came on from behind him, and nudged his hands away from his eyes, barely able to move them. Only a little larger than his eye, they still tried to wipe his tears away. When the teardrops gave way to sight, there stood little Lily, terrified and sobbing herself.

“Were you crying because I was not here, papa?”, she said innocently, “I went with mommy to bring something for you”.

“Why, what, when…”, he was astounded.

“Just wait here”, she ran to the entrance of the room where she had evidently dropped a small deep brown package, she picked it up tenderly and brought it back.

“Happy birthday, papa, I brought you your favorite chocolate”, she spoke, sweet as honey.

He held her close to his heart, and a liberating sense of affection crawled beneath his skin, as he broke into tears again.

“You’ll get tears on my Pikachu”, she giggled adorably, and the stiff lips curved into a teary-eyed chuckle.

“Where’s mommy?”, he asked.

“She left for grandma’s, I asked her to see you, but she didn’t want to.”

A hunch told him, that he wasn’t the man he saw in the mirror, but someone superior. He had been blinded by reflections and mirages, chasing ambitions and luxuries. An unpayable debt had been imperceptively accumulated against the one who dispersed his demons for him. It was irrational to think of making sufficient amends to make up for his transgressions, but he was still going to try.

“We’re going there right now..”