"Through the Looking Glass" by Suzannah Carrick

Through the Looking Glass

I was feeling rather bored, my brain was irritating me with reasonable thoughts, and I wanted change.  I kicked the cheapo keyboard aside and tied my mouse’s wire tail into knots.  I jerked the irritating speakers from their sockets, robbing my computer of its only voice.  I knocked over my desk chair and stood eye-to-eye with the monitor, slavering for a fight.  It had asked for it.  It deserved it.  I balled my hand into a fist and glowered impressively.

            But, as ever, it remained the diplomat.  I looked away – then quickly back – hoping to catch it sticking its finger up at me or muttering a swear word.  It did nothing, and I felt guilty.  I looked at its gleaming screen and nonchalantly poked it, making a rainbow of ripples coast across.  I admired the effect, and sat myself down upon the desk, swivelling around so that my nose was mere inches from the screen – then I pressed both hands against it.  Ripples spread for an infinitesimal second, then the computer’s willpower failed it, and my hands shot through into the space behind.

            Never having experienced the phenomena before, I let them remain, and got gingerly to my knees to see if they were sticking out the other side.  They were not.  I hesitated for a moment; the scene was incredulous – perhaps the computer had eaten my hands?  But I could feel no pain; indeed, I could still feel my fingers.  I flexed them to prove it, and rubbed my thumbs and forefingers together.

            The position – crouched upon my desk, my arms thrust forward into my computer screen – was ungainly, uncomfortable.  Nobody could expect me to stay like this.  But if I removed my hands would they ever slip back through the screen again?  There was nothing for it, I shoved my head against the screen, closed my eyes, and felt the matt plastic screen slip away.  I opened my eyes.

            I was looking down a long corridor with tapers flaring from its black-painted walls, and plastic signs sticking out of the floor and pointing in random directions –upwards to the ceiling that never quite ended or downwards to the floor or horizontally to the walls.  I rubbed my eyes, decided that the place looked intriguing, and gingerly wriggled my entire body through the screen’s plastic mount.  I fell, with a metallic clunk, to the floor – but felt nothing.  Looking back, I saw the screen like a painting, hanging in a guilt frame, showing the mess that was my tiny office and the mouse trying to get the knots out of its tail.  Stupid chunk of plastic.

            I picked myself up and read the nearest sign, instead of words, it had ‘C//:’ embossed upon it, and its wonky arrow pointed to the wall.  I considered this a moment – the computer was trying to fool me.  It wanted revenge for the way I’d woken it during the early hours to rap its keyboard.  It wanted revenge for the rubbishy, downloaded screensavers I forced it to play.  But mainly, it wanted revenge for my recent lashing out; it wanted its mouse un-knotted, and its keyboard plugged back in, its speakers replaced.  But I wasn’t going to let it disillusion me!

            Holding the screen-effect firmly in mind, I pushed one leg through the wall, and pulled my whole body after it.  Whatever the wall was– probably economy plastic – it was thin.  And on the other side was a room; a box so precise that it made my eyes water, with walls whitewashed the purest shade of white, and fourteen bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, glaring.  A white table and a pair of chairs where stuck to a wall, as though gravity had reversed itself and, to prove this point, a stack of papers was piled upon it.

            It was only then that I realised the floor was not floor, but the top layer of an enormous stack of paper, neat Times New Roman dotting every sheet with painful regularity.  I sat down upon it, and felt the paper sink a little under my weight.  Just as I was getting comfortable, I heard a strange and rather unnerving rustling, which crackled through the documents beneath me.  A bizarre creature reared up through the papers.  It had an enormous, stubbly forehead, and an extremely weak chin with a fluff of yellow beard.  Its eyes boasted the marbled rainbow-effect of oil spilled on the road, and it had a bronze hook protruding from its back – like the kind you find on a door.  Aside from this, it had the usual four limbs, as well as a spare pair of eyes hung round its neck on a chain.  A telescope dangled from its belt and it wore a modest-green waistcoat, loose, over its mottled skin.

            It looked at me shrewdly, pulling at one ear, and gave what I supposed to be a smile, “Hey, so you like my room?  Cool innit?  I did the table myself but I got Mavis to help me with the chairs – tricky buggers.”

One of the eyes round his neck winked, and he polished it with the hairless palm of his hand.  I considered him a moment in silence – but the thing was impatient and clearly more talkative than it looked, “You like the colour?  I said to Mavis, I said – that’s a neat ole colour that is.  And the lights – do you think I’ve enough?  I was thinking on the red kind, but that wouldn’t really go with the walls you see.”

“No they wouldn’t…” I agreed.

“That’s what Mavis said!  You’d like Mavis, proper ole girl she is, got taste has our Mavis.  I’m Clive by the way, Clive Irent.” He held out a hand as though he wished me to shake it, but clicked his fingers instead.