The two old men came to the repair shop one misty afternoon, dressed in black and looking ill, they moved quickly across the room. I’d never seen these identical twins, they behaved exactly the same, with sunken faces and hollow eyes, they greeted me by name.
“You are Milton Chance, the repairman of broken mirrors. You take people’s seven years of back luck, and make it disappear. Fixing mirrors has been your trade, of this you should be proud, but the effect of your actions is truly quite profound. These people do not deserve their luck; they lost it fair and square. But by fixing their mirrors, you change their fate. Surely you’re aware.”
They spoke in harmonious rhyme, with voices like crackling flame. Of course at first I thought this was some sort of silly game. I looked up from my reflection in the shattered mirror before me, and I asked them what they wanted.
“Please, I’m listening, do inform me.”
They seemed surprised I asked and without a moment of refrain, they handed me a sheet of yellowed paper, on which I read fifty names.
“Find these people,” they said, “and find them soon. A storm is brewing down below, the storm of destiny’s doom.”
“Destiny’s doom?”
“We are not masters of our luck,” they said, “we are pawns of destiny, and by fixing the scale as you have done, the balance has ceased to be. Soon all the bad that you’ve withheld will boil to the surface, and heaven forbid you’re still alive to experience that resurgence. By bringing good luck to people’s lives, luck they did not deserve, the imbalance has grown to a horrific scale, and bad luck wants its turn.”
I did not know what to say. I read the list twice more.
“These are people that I’ve helped? They’ve come in to my store?”
“They are living with luck, the stolen kind, and we ask of you to turn back time.” The old men sighed, preparing now to leave, but before they parted, they said one last thing, “Unleash on them some overdue fate, and you will save us from dismay. Destiny’s doom rapidly approaches, you have but five more days.”
Away they went, leaving me with this list and a sense of dread. What had I done wrong? Was it true what they said? I fixed mirrors for a living, I was a simple man, fixing mirrors was a hobby, not part of a master plan.
Fifty names of fifty strangers: the first on the list was Alan Pritchard, and they’d included all their addresses, so finding them would be much quicker. I ran to my car, and there I heard a soft voice. Is this what you want? Did I have any choice?
I found Alan picking vegetables from his garden, peaceful as can be. I stood across the street from him, hiding behind a tree. He seemed a normal man, with a quaint little home, and my opportunity arose when he went inside to answer the phone. I took a shovel to those plants, turned that garden into mush. It felt rather childish, but maybe it would be enough.
An elderly woman I found hanging clothes and bedsheets out to dry, and when she went into her house, I set the laundry on fire. Next, I found a young man fixing bicycles in his garage, and that night I broke in to tear them all apart. A family ate dinner, sharing a prayer, and I took their fluffy cat and spray-painted its hair. A father and son shared a beer, watching TV, and for them I severed their electricity. The next four people, I slashed their car tires. To another’s car I dismantled the engine with pliers. The following two folks woke in the night to the sound of bricks thrown through their windows, giving them quite a fright. Then there was Sally with a beautiful swimming pool, which she wouldn’t be using any time soon after I sullied the water with motor oil, shimmering beneath the moon. In the morning, one stranger discovered dead mice in their front hall. I interrupted a half-dozen breakfasts with repeated phone calls. To one poor family, I chopped down a tree and let it crash down through their ceiling. I uprooted flowers, I stole little things, and I rang doorbells at midnight only to flee. I shaved a dog’s coat, flooded kitchens with clogged drains, vandalized nurseries, and bored holes into rooftops in the rain. My deeds nearly done, I was haggard and unshaved, and by the time I came to the fiftieth name, I had not slept in five days.
Back at my shop, I checked the list to see who would be next.
It must’ve been a mistake, this name, an error in the text.
“It’s you,” said the old men, hiding all the while. They came out from the shadows, sharing identical smiles. “It’s you who caused this big upset, an issue nearly resolved, and we thank you for your efforts, but we do not make the call. You’ll have to pay for what you did, for tempting fate like so, and please accept our apology, but it’s time for you to go.”
They reached out their bony fingers, grasping at my neck. I outmaneuvered them easily, tumbling over my desk. The pieces of mirror I’d yet to fix, they glinted in the light, I chose a piece, a jagged piece, and gave up quite a fight. Within moments the men were dead, their throats slashed to the bone, and all was quiet for a while, until a ringing from the phone.
“Hello?” I answered, cautiously.
“Milton,” said a voice. “You cannot escape.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“They call me Mr. Fate.”
They never found my body, and the old men vanished into thin air, and the police could not explain my actions, the mayhem I’d caused there. They decided I’d gone mad from staring into mirrors, they closed my shop and let it rot for thirty some-odd years. My final job, that shattered mirror, sits unfinished on my desk, and if you find it do not fix it, for you already know the rest.