The rain had stopped hours ago, but the streets still looked like they were bleeding. Puddles of oil shimmered beneath the flickering yellow lamps of East London, 1967. Smoke from the factories hung low, moving like ghosts that forgot where to go. I stood there, half-soaked, half-dead, staring at the iron rails that cut the city in two.
They called me Martinez Seventeen years old(17yo). Too quiet to notice, too strange to fit in. My clothes were old enough to have their own stories, my shoes made a sound like they were apologizing to the ground. I slept in a narrow room behind a butcher's shop — one bed, one broken lamp, and a small mirror that never showed my face properly.
Each morning, I'd walk to the corner café, not to eat, but to smell the bread. Hunger felt cheaper than spending five shards on a stale bun. People used Shards now — thin metallic pieces with numbers etched on them, born from the ruins of old coins. Someone once said they were made from melted church bells and war medals. I liked that. A world trading its sins and pride for a loaf of bread.
I drew on scraps of cardboard I found near the tracks — faces, clouds, strange shapes that never stayed still. Sometimes I'd sell a sketch to a drunk sailor for a shard or two, enough to buy tea that tasted like burnt dreams.
That day, though, the world decided to look at me.
Two men — thick, loud, faces carved out of factory smoke — stopped me near the alley behind the pub. One of them, a bald man with a grin sharp enough to cut glass, said, "Oi, artist boy, draw us something funny."
I tried to walk away. My mistake.
The first punch landed before I saw it coming. Then another. Then laughter. I fell, but the world didn't. Their boots kept finding my ribs, my back, my thoughts. I remember tasting rust and smoke. I remember thinking, maybe this is what truth feels like — when it stops pretending to be kind.
When they got bored, they left. Just two more shadows swallowed by the fog.
I lay there for a while, staring at the puddle beside me. My reflection was shaking, like it was trying to crawl out. The lamps above flickered again, and for a split second, the puddle wasn't water. It was glass — clear, deep, endless.
I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it was the first time I saw myself smiling.
I walked, bleeding but calm, down to the public washroom near the old station. It smelled like mold and piss, but the silence was beautiful. I locked the door, sat on the toilet, and looked at my reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink. My face was swollen, eyes hollow, a boy who looked too old to still be called one.
I whispered, "You did well."
And for a moment, the mirror whispered back.
The cracks began to shift. The light inside the washroom changed — softer, blue, almost sacred. The world outside grew quiet, like London had stopped breathing. I blinked, but the reflection didn't. It was still me, but not the one sitting there. His eyes were clean. His mouth was calm. He looked… free.
Behind him, the ceiling peeled away into a sky of mirrors, stretching forever. Clouds of glass floated like dreams that never learned to die. The reflection reached out a hand — mine, but lighter.
And when I touched the mirror, it didn't feel cold.
It felt like coming home.
For a while, there was nothing. No noise, no breath, no thought.
Only that heavy silence that wraps around you like sleep.
I don't remember falling asleep.
I just remember the silence,
the kind that feels like someone closing a book halfway through the sentence.
---
The next morning, people found the washroom door locked from the inside. The janitor cursed, broke it open. The toilet seat was cracked. The mirror had fallen. And Martinez was gone — as if he had stepped through.
They said a boy must have run away.
But no one noticed the small sketchbook left behind on the wet floor.
The last drawing was a boy sitting beneath a broken sky, smiling,
as shards of light rained down on him like blessings
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