A boy was looking at himself in the mirror. In the reflection, the boy studied him in the mirror. He studied the slight stubble on his chin. He studied the marks left from the time that littered his skin. The boy took in many things but what caught his mind the most was his eyes in the mirror.
The simple small one-bedroom studio the boy lived in was full of disheveled clothes lying about as if the aftermath of a vicious rushed hate crime directed at clothing articles. Scattered among the dredges of his room were books, some looked like unfinished hardbacks with no cover; some books had names, others did not. Most books had text that ended abruptly at random awkward parts as if the hardback was meant to hold more but the author never went to finish them.
In this bedroom, the boy stood in front of the foggy dirty mirror hanging from his closet coat hanger.
The boy took his hand and rubbed it across his face. First on his right side, then on his left; the boy repeated this over and over again all the while he stared into his reflection, his self. He repeated this action until some unknown question in his mind was seemingly quelled. The boy tore his gaze away to look outside his apartment window.
There, outside his window, he could see above the smaller building directly opposite his room was a blimp. A blimp the color of a vibrant red lollipop. On it were the words in dark purple leaking paint.
"Where did the missing children go?".
The blimp floated for a couple more moments before being taken down by a black shadow that couldn't be seen clearly even with the backdrop of the sunset layering upon the entire city.
The boy harrumphed at the sight. He preemptively looked toward his phone as his phone lit up with an influx of notifications from news articles from the newspapers and news sites he subscribed to. He looked back to his books before searching through them. He searched through them before finding a specific blue-back hardcover that had no name. In it, read the words.
"The date was May 14th. The day was tempestuous white in full throttle as mist steamed heavily across the hot streets giving the streets I knew a sense of wonder-like unfamiliarity. I had taken a hot shower in preparation for a walk but as I was drying off I saw a blimp high in the sky above just barely giving my apartment window a strange sight that drew my attention. I could just barely make out the words 'Where did the children go?' When suddenly the blimp exploded into pieces. Looking at the blimp I was astonished but even more so I was astonished by the multiple notifications on my phone that came to be just moments after the blimp exploded."
The text ended abruptly. The boy stared at the text expressionless but his body moved with active purpose to his phone and checked the date
May 16th. The boy took note of the clear sky sunset backdrop of the outside world. Suddenly, A light flashed in his eye as he, for one single moment perceived a carbon copy of himself underneath what looked to be a silver blue overlay as if layered by stained glass.
The vision faded faster than it arrived. And the boy knelt. After a couple of minutes of staring off into space, the boy went to turn on the small television in his room. He switched on a cartoon series ignoring all the news channels covering the breaking news story of a certain blimp.