Neil Randall is
delighted to announce that his new short story Mirror, Mirror has just
been published by God’s Cruel Joke literary magazine.
A self-confessed technophobe and long-time
loather of the impertinent invasiveness associated with the telephone – from
the ‘ring, ring, ring’ of the old-style landline device to the even more
irritating ‘bleep, bleep, bleep’ of instant messages and texts – Randall plans
to start a campaign to eradicate the scourge of the mobile phone from modern
life altogether.
Starting with his latest short story
release.
On bus, train, tram, walking in the street,
sitting in a kafana, either smoking the local hashish or devouring a litre or
two of premium-strength rakija before breakfast, the barely feted author became
increasingly repulsed by the ugly constipated way phone users gawped at their
screens, scrunched up their faces or pouted trout-like when taking the
ubiquitous and truly reprehensible selfie. The oceans of wasted time scrolling
themselves to a slow, meaningless death.
Mirror, Mirror is more than a reactionary
rant from an incredibly bitter man in short fiction form, it is a chilling warning
from history. Read a book. Run a marathon. Make love. Just please put your
phones down.
Here are the opening
pages of the story:
“Please, calm down,
Casandra,” said Dr Kazmi. “And explain things to me one more time.”
“Yesterday, I got the new ePhone 3.5 XL
Genius Photo Matic Duo Enhanced handset. It’s the most modern, up-to-date phone
on the market.”
“Yes, yes, I understood that part
perfectly well. It’s the issues that you’ve been experiencing with the camera
function that’s left me a little confused.”
“That makes two of us. It’s been an
absolute nightmare. Whenever I take a selfie, the results are utterly horrible.
I look completely deformed.”
“But that’s probably no more than a
techincal matter, due to the angle or lighting, or whether you were striking a
particularly good pose or not. I don’t think it’s anything to get upset about.”
“But I’ve taken literally hundreds of
selfies, and all of them have made me look like a creature from the deep. Take
a look if you don’t believe me.” She took the phone out of her Dolce and
Gabbana handbag and handed it to Kazmi. “You just need to swipe right.”
While in his late fifties and a
self-confessed technophobe, Kazmi had two grown-up daughters and knew how to
scroll through photographs on a mobile device. What he wasn’t prepared for was
the truly bizarre nature of the pictures themselves. The distortion of
Casandra’s facial features, the way her eyes appeared squinty, misaligned,
almost demonic, her skin discoloured, her lips twisted into an ugly grimace,
made it look as if the photographs had been tampered with, as if someone had
edited them to play a cruel practical joke on her.
He looked up from the phone. “How odd. It
must be some kind of malfunction with the device itself. Have you contacted
customer support?”
“Of course. I took the phone straight
back to the store. They ran some checks. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with
it. I made such a fuss, though, they gave me a replacement handset. But the
results are exactly the same.”
“I – I see. Well, I don’t really know what
to say. Maybe it’s a case of trial and error. And you’ll just have to get used
to the new camera function.”
Kazmi saw three other clients before the
end of the day – a recovering sex addict, an unrepentant bulimic, and an
octogenarian kleptomaniac with a mild personality disorder – and although each
session was productive, he felt distant and preoccupied throughout. He couldn’t
seem to get the images captured on Casandra Gossett-Maxwell’s phone out of his
mind.
On the train home that evening, he took a
seat in a busy carriage and began to discreetly people-watch. Observation had
always been key to his methodology as a therapist. He paid close attention to a
client’s body language and mannerisms, regardless of whether it was that
all-important first session, or twenty or more sessions down the line, and it
always provided certain indicators – not always red flags or causes for concern
– but specific nuances nonetheless, which gave him a better insight into how
their minds worked more than any in-depth questioning or standard psychological
probing.
Almost immediately, he was drawn to an
animated conversation between a young couple sitting directly opposite him.
“Let me see,” said the woman, trying to
wrest a mobile phone from, presumably, her boyfriend’s hand.
“No, no, they’re terrible. Believe me. We
look hideous.”
“What? They can’t be that bad. Let me
see.”
He reluctantly gave in and handed her the
phone.
“Oh-my-God!” She chuckled as she scrolled
through the images. “You weren’t kidding. How on earth did the pictures come
out like this? My eyes look evil. I’ve got loads of lines and wrinkles on my
face. And – and your skin is green.”
“Beats me.” The boyfriend shrugged. “Must
be the light or something. Or maybe the camera don’t work so good if you jerk
it around.”
“No, no, it can’t be that. This is the new
3.5 XL. It’s supposed to have the most advanced camera feature ever. The
sensors should compensate for any sudden movements. This looks more like a
photoshop job. Like the pictures have been put through some app or filter to
make us look as battered up as possible.”
This struck Kazmi as almost suspiciously
coincidental. Not just because two people were questioning the quality and
integrity of photos taken with the same model of phone as Casandra
Gossett-Maxwell, but that they’d come to the same conclusion he had in his
office earlier.
Kazmi tried to dismiss the coincidence
from his mind. But as he looked around the carriage, he couldn’t help but
notice that each and every commuter was staring into their phones, all furtive
and fidgety, with a vacant, gormless expression on their faces – eyes wide,
tongues poking out of side of their mouths, brows furrowed, features twisted,
almost pained – just like the pictures Casandra had showed him during their
session.
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