HALF-DROWNED HOUND 
Mirror, Mirror
It’s a blustery October morning when everything Adam Michelakis knows about the universe all come undone.
At first, the day is almost banal, normal to a cartoonish degree. The Starbucks cup in his hand— the usual: half-caf latte, skinny, no whip— is a liquid-filled radiator fighting back the all-encompassing Minnesota autumn chill, and he’s wrapped up in the same scarf as always, the marvelously soft black one he inherited from his grandmother. He’s got his 80s bops playlist thumping through his headphones, one of the only 3 playlists he ever really listens to.
The static familiarity is broken, though, when Adam reaches the door to the choir room and finds that it’s already unlocked. It’s no big deal in terms of practicality, really, given that the doors to the outside get locked every day at 6 and there’s nothing worth stealing in the first place, but it does strike him as odd. After a second spent pondering the grungy metal door handle, he shrugs it off—the school-issued keys are skeleton keys, so it could’ve been anyone; maybe the orchestra or band teacher had decided to do him a favor.
Careful not to drip coffee onto the plush jet-blackness of his scarf, Adam sips his latte as he makes his way past the three dozen chairs and into his minuscule office. He’s only got one choir to deal with, unlike the bigger schools closer to the cities, but it’s still tough work figuring out all everything he’ll have his students sing next semester, searching for songs in mental and internet libraries alike and mixing them together in however many sequences like pieces in a flowing musical puzzle. He unlocks his office door, hangs his coat and scarf on the back of his chair, boots up his computer, and gets to work.
There’s a pause in the music after a 30-second sample clip of an upbeat choral jaunt, and, as Adam stares at the screen and ponders, he becomes softly aware of a song coming from the piano room a few doors down. After a few seconds, he recognizes it as Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, a favorite of his. The corners of his lips turn up in a smile, and, though he knows he should keep working lest he lose his motivation, he stands up and exits the office, determined to find whoever’s tapping away at the keys and say hi, perhaps compliment their skills.
“Nyello?” Adam calls into the slender hallway, scooting around a rack sparsely populated with dark green robes. He approaches the piano room, raps on the door with two knuckles, and asks, “Would that be Miss Mandy? Have we got our most beloved orchestra teacher in here?”
The music pauses for a second, then continues again, and Adam raises an eyebrow. He probably shouldn’t interrupt whoever it is more than he already has, some part of him figures, but curiosity is nagging him, and he’s planning on resurrecting the cat.
The music pauses, longer this time, and he’s not quite sure what to make of it. Are they waiting for a response? Adam clears his throat and goes to knock on the door again, but instead finds himself opening it with an ominous creak. A wave of dread fills him, though he’s unsure why, and he shuts his eyes tight and begs his heart to slow again— there’s nothing going on here. Someone’s literally just playing the piano, for God’s sake.
Except.... except.
Except that someone is him.
When he opens his eyes, Adam’s heartbeat doesn’t just slow—it stops. Woozy with disbelief, he grips the doorframe, knees going wobbly. With eyes he can no longer trust, he stares at the man at the piano, a perfect replica of what he sees in the mirror every morning. There’s the same stubble, the same straight nose, the same fluffy black hair; the same red and black flannel, white shirt, blue jeans. Every detail is the same, down to the faded scar on the back of his hand from an incident with hot oil at his old McDonald’s job. His mind wipes blank, a vague nothingness liquifying his brain so the only thing he can think is What? What? What? What?
As Adam clutches the doorframe, knuckles white and breath ragged with hyperventilation, the— the— clone? Replicant? Parallel self? Whatever it is, it stares back at him, eyes blank, emotionless. It’s reminiscent of a robot, Adam notes as his mind slowly crawls back into his body— a robot with one duty, carried out with a cutting one-mindedness. That’s the look in its eyes: cold with self-assured determination— but determination to do what?
Adam shrinks away and withdraws into himself against the doorframe as the other Adam stands up without a word, fingers slipping away from the ivory-white keys. It stalks toward him, and he realizes with a chill that crawls down his cowering spine that there’s something in its pocket. As he watches, silent aside from an involuntary whimper that’s pried itself from his throat, the other Adam pulls from his pocket the Swiss army knife his mother had given him when he became an Eagle Scout, the one engraved with his name. He even had the knife. Had it been in his house? Was it the same house at all?
“Wh- why- I- do you want money?” Adam half-manages to say, stumbling back into the hall. He trips over a stray music folder and hits the whitewashed wall, knocking a breath out of his lungs as a shocked wheeze.
“I don’t want money,” the other Adam says, voice flat and dry, like a shell of Adam’s own. “I want you.”
As the other Adam takes another step forward, Adam darts to the right, narrowly avoiding another rack of robes, and nearly slams against the door to the orchestra room as he rushes to unlock it. His heart pounds in his ears like a frenetic drum, and he almost shakes too hard to get the key in the lock, but after a few harrowing seconds, he slides it in and unlocks it with a click. He slips in, then locks the door behind him; the other Adam’s key had been on the same blue lanyard he himself was wearing, but it would at least slow it down a bit.
As Adam’s mind clears just the slightest bit, he realizes with a plummeting stomach that there’s nowhere to hide. Unlike the choir students, the orchestra students’ robes were stored in a separate room; the instruments took up too much of the actual orchestra room. He can’t flee to the foyer or the hall; there’ll be students out there, and the one thing he still knows about this world, all his preconceived notions, is that he refuses to put them in danger.
Adam bites down the inside of his cheek until he can’t handle the pain any longer. He never expected this to be the way it all ends; he thought maybe it’d be the colon cancer that runs in the family, or maybe a car accident, not a... what, a mirror dimension’s copy of himself?
He half-resigns himself to his fate, but just as the mirror’s key begins its nauseating slide into the lock, he remembers the one singular place to hide: the gap between the wall and the cabinet that houses all the instruments. It’s always bugged him, so much so that the orchestra teacher jokes that he’s got OCD, but now it’s his only hope. Body throbbing with adrenaline, he jolts over to the corner and throws himself into the crevice just as the door swings open.
Adam’s chest tightens like someone’s taken a clamp to it as he focuses on not breathing, or at least not hyperventilating or panting from exertion. He clenches his eyes shut tight, and tears brim along the closed lids, threatening to spill. Myriad questions spiral through his mind: What if he dies here? Will his students be safe? What in the world is going on here?
And then something occurs to him: there are no footsteps. Maybe the pounding of his heart in his ears is covering it up? He attunes his ears as best he can, taking quiet but deep breaths now to soothe his heart, but he still can’t hear anything. The stretch of silence continues for a few more moments; then, to Adam’s shock and disbelief, the door falls shut with an echoing thunk.
New questions begin to skip on his synapses. Is it still out there? Why didn’t it come after him? Is it a trick? A bluff? Is it right around the corner, holding its breath, waiting for him to sneak out of his hiding place?
Adam huddles there for who knows how long—a few minutes? An hour?—but slowly, he lets his guard down, tense shoulders relaxing, breath evening out to a normal rhythm. He squeezes his eyes shut, steels himself just in case the mirror is still there, then shakily rises to his feet and looks around the orchestra room. Nothing. Not a soul to be seen.
Adam gulps, the corner of his lip twitching. It’s too good to be true, but he can’t stay standing there in awe for too long—he’s gotta scram. What if it comes back? What if it was just a vanguard, the head of an army of mirror selves? His stomach drops at the thought, making him lightheaded for a moment, but he closes his eyes and breathes in, then out. Okay. Okay. He’s okay. Right here, right now, he’s okay.
Without his mirror self on his trail, Adam exits into the foyer, the key in his shaking hand adding scratches to the door’s already white-streaked handle. Just as he expected, there are a few students lingering out there, early for clubs or perhaps stuck there because of their parents’ schedules. The familiarity, the return of a modicum of normalcy, washes relief over him in a wave that threatens to make his knees weak.
As the door falls shut behind him, one of the students turns to look, and he recognizes her as one of his students, an alto named Marina. “Hi, Marina,” he says, a tremor in his voice, and waves.
With a raised eyebrow, Marina waves back. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Mr. M,” she says, cocking her head to the side.
Softly, too quiet for Marina to hear, Adam mumbles, “I don’t think that was a ghost.”