Smoke and Mirrors

I can't decide if I am completely satisfied with the story itself. What I was really after here was to create some imagery using the Metaphors of Smoke and Mirrors. Someday I would like to use that imagery in a short suspense film.

 

It was dark in Uncle Bart’s old shack of a house. Leila knew from the moment she walked in a few hours before, that she had made a mistake in coming. The stench of cigarettes and beer filled the room, fruit flies swarmed in the kitchen like it was their safe haven. Safe haven? Why did Leila think she’d be any safer here than at her dad’s place? She had come on a mission to learn more about her family tree, and now all she got was tears, smoke and mirrors.

 

“What the hell do you want to know about yer Grandpa fer?” Uncle Bart verbally lunged into her. He took a swig of his whiskey and settled his body against the wall behind him, ironically bumping into the wall clock which seconds ticked past loudly.

 

Leila couldn’t stop bawling.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I came Uncle Bart!” Leila screeched in desperation. “ I just thought you might know what went wrong--- why my dad isn’t making sense--- why he won’t tell me about where he came from or his background. It’s like there’s a part of me that’s dead from not knowing…”

“ It might just kill ye if ye knew!” Uncle Bart yelled and raised his hand as if to slap her. As she flinched away though, suddenly he had a gentler demeanor. “ I’m sorry Kip… (he pauses) I used to call you Kip, didn’t I…”

 

Leila’s stare penetrates his eyes. She looks hopeful, yet still untrusting. Her breath was heavy from hyperventilating.

 

“Kip, dear, there are some things better left unknown…Your father, he, he was the favorite. I never could fit to his standards, ma always said that he was made of stronger stuff than the rest of us. “ He paused and set his drink down on the soiled kitchen counter. “Stronger stuff? Stubborn as an Ox he’s always been! Ma would never see it though, your Grandma I mean. She’d always say; Ben this, Ben that. You’d think that Ben was God himself, she worshiped him so much.”

 

He lunged his scarred hand into one of his pockets and pulled out a package of cigarettes. Finding a box of matches on the counter, he stuck a lit cigarette into his mouth and breathed gruffly.

 

Leila looked around, and all she saw was chaos. The chaos of the kitchen not cleaned in weeks. The chaos of her Uncle who stood there weakly, half dependant on himself, half dependant on the alcohol and cigarettes he consumed almost constantly.

 

“ Why can’t I know what happened?” Leila pleaded. “ Please Uncle Bart, there must have been something…”

 

“ You’re just like your father, aren’t you? You know, he tried to figure out his family tree too. Back when your uncle Dan and I were going to college, your Dad has his head stuck in the sand about his own life. Always wanting to know about your great Grandpa Charles. Yeah your Dad was hunting the ghost of a dead man! And he never found him. So why should you try to figure out what went wrong? You’ll never amount to anything if you live your life thinking that way…”

 

Uncle Bart took another puff of smoke through his nostrils, and for a moment, just a moment, Leila was spellbound. “ You mean…I should give up…”

 

“Yeah that’s right. You should give up on those crazy ideas...” Uncle Bart looked down and gruffly took another swig of whiskey. “ Get out of the hole and make something of yerself while you still can… forget about the past. Stop hunting Ghosts!”

 

Leila was spellbound briefly, but once she looked around again, at the dark, dank, crummy kitchen, and at her Uncle who couldn’t even stand up straight, she knew it had all been a masquerade. “ Make something of myself? Forget about the past? But what happened to you?”

 

Seeing her Uncle look angered, she fled down the hallway to the bathroom, closing the door but it wouldn’t lock. She turned on the light and looked in the mirror, her eyes were red from tears. “ God why can’t I understand? God may I please someday understand?!?” She could hear her uncle outside yelling angrily in drunken slur, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. It was like some chant from some spell. Her Uncle was under a spell and he couldn’t see it. Now sitting on the cold linoleum floor in the bathroom, she leans against the door with all her might, trying to keep anyone from coming in. She buries her face in her hands and sobs. “Dear God what is wrong with me? Why did I come here? -- I wish I could end this! What the hell is wrong with my family?”

 

Meanwhile her Uncle pounds on the door. “Let me in Kip, let me in! I need to talk to you! You know I didn‘t mean a word I just said…”

 

“Shut up!” Leila yells. “Shut up!”

 

Outside the door Uncle Bart, in drunken stupor, crouches down with the cigarette in his mouth, and smoke enters the backroom through the crack at the bottom of the door. Leila cringes in fear. It’s as if evil is entering the room whether Uncle Bart comes in or not.

 

His voice softens, and become audible again. “Kip let me in please. I’m sorry. To tell you the truth, I’ve been hunting Ghosts myself…” She gave in. What he said was just enough for her to slowly let him into the room. Her arm bumped the lightswitch as she did so… making the room eerily dark again. She stood before the mirror, wiping her soaked face with a Kleenex. Uncle Bart entered slowly, and slowly eased the door shut behind him. They were submerged in almost pure darkness, their faces side by side, dimly reflected on the bathroom mirror. “I’ve been just like you all along, I’ve wanted to discover what it is that made our family so twisted in this way, why ma always treated your dad likes he’s the king of kings, why I’ve always gotten the short end of the stick…”

 

He took another huff of his cigarette. It’s smoke bouncing eerily off of the bathroom mirror, clouding out any vision of their faces side by side. Leila shrieked slightly as Uncle Bart put a hand over her mouth. “Shhush!!! You need to let go… You need to forget about the past..”

 

“Why can’t you let go?” Leila screamed, broke free from his grasp, and pushed her drunken uncle aside. Emerging from the cloud of smoke she left the building and ran. Haunted by the smoke and mirrors.