VARIANT SAMPLE: Mirror Souls — Film Noir

The mirror in the Callahan apartment had a crack running through it from corner to corner, dividing the reflection into two halves that never quite matched. Al called it his flaw. Ed called it truth. I call it bad plumbing, said Jack Mercer, lighting a cigarette and watching the smoke curl toward the water-stained ceiling.

Al Callahan sat in the corner chair, his blind eyes fixed on a point somewhere past Mercer's left shoulder. His brother Ed sat on the couch, cigarette in hand, eyes darting like trapped birds. Two faces. One crack. Same reflection, split down the middle.

"You're the private eye Mrs. Callahan hired," Ed said. Not a question. Statements from the Callahan twins came in two flavors: questions that weren't, and statements that were.

"I'm the guy who gets paid to find out who killed Victor Ashworth," Mercer said. "And right now the only leads point to you two."

Al's head tilted. "Our fingerprints were at the scene."

"Yeah. Both of them. Which is interesting, because you two were home together all night, according to your own statement."

Ed's cigarette hand stopped moving. "Unless someone made copies."

Mercer exhaled smoke toward the cracked mirror. In the reflection, Al and Ed sat side by side—identical suits, identical faces, identical expressions of something that might have been guilt or might have been recognition. The kind of recognition that comes when you realize the guy across from you isn't the suspect. He's the mirror. And mirrors don't lie. They just show you what you don't want to see.

"Copy fingerprints," Mercer said. "Now that's a nice thought. But it's a dirty city, gentlemen, and in a dirty city, nice thoughts are the most dangerous thing of all." The rain had started again. It always rains in stories like this. The kind of rain that washes everything clean and leaves nothing but the truth.