Chapter Three: Quartet Beneath the Bridge of Sighs
725 Words
Venice at dawn resembled a waterlogged antique painting, its colors bleeding into the damp air. Elena stood in the shadow of Rialto Bridge's arch, her fingers absently tracing the cold metal surface of her pocket watch. The hands remained stubbornly fixed at 2:07—a cursed number that had haunted her through three rebirths: the bakery's stopped clock, the moment of gunfire in the Louvre, and the last digits she'd seen before each death.
Seventeen oar strokes disturbed the canal's surface, perfectly matching the lemon-juice watermark on her mysterious commission letter. A sharp pain lanced through her right eye where golden cracks now spread toward her temple like ancient porcelain glaze. Blinking away condensation from her lashes, the world distorted into watery surrealism.
"Day four of the third cycle," she whispered to the mist. This time she'd arrived three days early, determined to break the Bridge of Sighs death pattern.
Near the bridge pilings, an old man in a fisherman's cap adjusted his vintage camera. When lens glare hit Elena's pupils, a memory seared her vision—the same man (younger, with all fingers intact) pressing a gold coin into a crying girl's hand aboard the Titanic. The stench of burning coal and the iceberg's eerie hum flooded her senses.
"Photo, signorina?" His Italian carried distinct Madrid inflections. The business card he offered bore tea-stained edges that rearranged into "J.C." through her Time-Stain vision. "The Bridge of Sighs is most beautiful at dusk... especially under a full moon."
As her fingertips brushed the card, her right eye exploded with four overlapping premonitions:
The camera tripod piercing her chest (8 hours hence)
Herself kneeling to drop something into the canal (12 hours)
Lucas aiming his service weapon near St. Mark's Clocktower (18 hours)
Most horrifying—her mirror image emerging from the water, dripping hands already gripping the bridge (now)
She stumbled backward into a familiar scent of turpentine and cordite. Lucas's damp trench coat pressed against her as his handcuffs glinted coldly.
"What fortune, Restorer." His mint-laced breath warmed her ear. "I've a mirror needing authentication."
The canal rippled unnaturally. Twelve blond children processed beneath the bridge, each carrying mirror shards and singing a discordant rhyme:
"Time's a wheel, death's the start,
The glass girl waits at 2:07..."
Elena's pulse hammered where Lucas restrained her wrist. The calluses on his hands betrayed years holding paintbrushes, not firearms. Turpentine and her proprietary restoration varnish clung to his coat.
"You were in my studio yesterday." Her accusation hung between them.
Before he could respond, the children's mirrors aligned. Sunlight ricocheted into the old man's camera lens.
The explosion shattered storefronts along the canal. Pinned beneath Lucas on slick steps, Elena's skull impacted stone—triggering another Time-Stain vision:
Twenty years earlier: a doppelgänger blown backward at this spot.
Sixty years prior: a nun dropping a pocketwatch into the water.
Oldest of all: a ruby-ringed hand submerging a painting tube in 15th-century gloom.
"Don't look!" Lucas's trench coat muffled her vision too late. The rising object wasn't her reflection but a corroded bronze coffin. The submerged Music Angel engraving warped as new text surfaced:
"Hic manebimus optime"
(Here we'll dwell most excellently)
Lucas suddenly released her, pressing his gun to his own temple.
"Never noticed the paradox?" His exhausted whisper raised gooseflesh. "You always die first... but I'm the one who vanishes."
The children's mirrors now displayed Lucas's deaths across timelines—poisoning, hanging, defenestration... culminating in the imminent suicide.
Elena's hand moved without consent. Her restoration knife disarmed Lucas with uncanny precision.
"Because you're no policeman." Her voice turned alien. "You're the first Time-Stain Curator."
The coffin burst open. Twelve geysers erupted clock-face positions as a robed figure emerged—wearing Sofia's face like a mask. Flaking skin revealed biomechanical gears beneath its neck.
"Welcome to Cycle Four's initiation." The creature peeled away Sofia's features to reveal Elena's own face, now fully cracked with gold. "Choose: gauge out Lucas's eyes with your knife, or let him shatter your Time-Stain eye?"
As countdown began, Elena found herself dual-seeing—both advancing toward Lucas's amber eyes and staring down his gun barrel. The canal became liquid mirror. Dozens of skeletal hands dragged her under while the children's mirrors showed her stabbing Lucas. Water closed overhead as the gunshot echoed.
Final understanding dawned:
"The mirror's truth is the real you."
- Writer
