Allegedly, a broken mirror leads to seven years of bad luck. This is due to the fact that a mirror reflects the soul. So, when you break a mirror, you break the soul into pieces. Now, severely damaged, the soul can't fully protect the body from misfortune.
Now, Colin was not particularly superstitious. His wife, Penelope, very much was. She had a thing about being balanced. If she spilled salt, she insisted on throwing a little over both her shoulders. If someone's foot touched hers, she needed them to also touch the other foot.
These were small idiosyncrasies and Colin easily adapted. Her bits and pieces were easy to integrate into his everyday life. He was also sure that if someone asked Penelope, she would have similar examples of his habits that she adapted to.
But, Colin had never truly believed in it before. He knew not to walk under a ladder or open an umbrella inside. But, if push came to shove, Colin was willing to compromise on those ideals.
When Penelope was on a work trip, Colin followed the general rule of her superstitions. However, they weren't at the forefront of his mind. So when he accidentally broke her small, light-up make-up mirror, he didn't think much of it. Tossing the pieces into an empty drawer in the bathroom vanity, Colin resolved to fix it later.
As Penelope's return date crept closer, he knew he wouldn't be able to fix it in time.
With a day left before she got back, Colin went out to the store and bought the same exact mirror. After a quick set-up, there was no distinct difference between the old one and the new one. Colin promptly forgot about it.
The next day, Colin's package of sausages in the fridge suddenly inflated. What on Earth? After a quick Google search, he learned it was from botulism. What were the chances? Thankfully, the expiry date hadn't passed yet. Google said to take it back to the store to dispose of properly. He did exactly that and put it out of his mind.
Penelope returned and Colin felt whole again. He missed his wife. As he drove her home from the airport, he got cut off twice. How strange. Once was explainable. Twice was odd.
Over the next month, the small annoyances continued to build up. Colin was "randomly selected" for jury service. He had a brand new soda can explode in his face when he opened it. For an entire week, Colin missed every bus by just a few moments.
However, each incident was spaced out far enough that he didn't put it together. He would notice when it happened that it was annoying, but it was disconnected enough that he quickly forgot.
It all came to a head when Penelope and Colin were walking back from the farmer's market. The sidewalk was not particularly crowded, but there were a few people out and about. In the course of five minutes, three separate people walking in front of Colin and Penelope suddenly stopped walking directly in front of Colin. The first person, Colin managed to avoid directly crashing into. The second, he didn't have enough time to stop and not hit them. The third not only caused him to bump into them, but they also caused Penelope to bump into them.
Penelope pulled him to the grass off the sidewalk. "What did you walk under a ladder or something?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've been really unlucky today. The market was out of the ramps you wanted, a child sneezed all over your front, and that is the third person who stopped walking suddenly in front of us." Penelope gestured dramatically with her hands.
"Huh," Colin tilted his head in thought. "You know I missed every bus I tried to catch last week."
Penelope gasped. "You must have done something."
"I don't know. I'm not sure that I've done anything specific." Colin scratched his brow.
"Okay, we're almost home. What other bad luck have you had recently?" Penelope tugged his hand to get him moving.
The rest of the walk home, Colin detailed all the little annoyance he'd been dealing with. He didn't stop talking for fifteen minutes. Every time he got close to stopping, another example would pop into his head. Eventually, they returned home.
"... And Cheryl typed the wrong dial-in number, so I was stuck waiting to enter the wrong meeting. I missed the first fifteen minutes before I could join. Oh! And …"
"Stop! This is serious. What, were you cursed? Some should salt won't be enough to fix this. It's like you acquired seven years of- " Penelope stopped talking suddenly.
"Wait, what?" Colin asked, worried.
"Did you break a mirror?" Penelope gave him the stink eye."
"No! Of course no-" It was Colin's turn to cut himself off abruptly.
"Colin, what did you do?"
Colin let out a groan. Then he went to their bathroom and came back with seven pieces of a broken mirror.
Penelope screamed. "No! No, no, no, no, no. Colin. Not in our home! Have I taught you nothing?"
Colin sighed. "I'm sorry, love. It was an accident, I swear."
"Wait, this is my make-up mirror. I used it this morning. But your bad luck has been happening for weeks you said. When did you break my mirror?"
"No, this morning you used the new one I bought you. I meant to fix this one before you got back from that conference."
"How do you fix a broken mirror?" Penelope let out a frustrated scoff. "Don't answer that," Penelope added when Colin opened his mouth as if to try to answer.
"Okay, how do we fix this?" Colin asked.
"Well, first we need to grind up the pieces of the mirror," Penelope said.
"First? There are multiple steps?" Colin asked skeptically.
"There are when you don't handle it right away," Penelope said dangerously. "Then we need to bury it."
"Bury it? Where are we going to do that? We live on the third floor. We can't just dig a hole somewhere in London. That would draw some attention - potentially for vandalism."
Penelope raised an eyebrow at him.
Colin raised his hands in submission.
"Are you done interrupting me?"
"Yes, I'm sorry." He said.
"As I was saying, we need to bury it under a full moon."
Colin immediately pulled out his phone to look up the next one. "Okay, the next one is Saturday, October 28, 2023. That is only 13 days away. I have already survived a month and a half with the bad luck. What're a few more days?" Colin said.
"You better get all the pieces and get to grinding!" Penelope shook her head. "Imagine, a broken mirror in my home."
Colin didn't stop her when she left the room. He would probably be in the dog house for the foreseeable future.
The next several days were an exercise in patience. Now that Colin knew he had bad luck, all his little annoyances felt unbearable. Where before he might shrug them off, Colin was fired up and chomping at the bit to take it out on something.
Normally, Colin was affable and happy-go-lucky. But this was messing with his equilibrium. His fuse was extremely short.
Grinding up the remains of the mirror, Colin decided that if he went to the park in the middle of the night, he'd be able to bury the leftover pieces, with no problem.
The day of the full moon, it was as if his bad luck intensified. Colin would have been so late to work after sleeping through his alarm that he called into work sick. He was just thankful all his bad luck seemed to be minor. So far, nothing life-threatening occurred.
Colin knew he had been a bear and a nightmare to deal with. He avoided his family. His sisters had threatened to kidnap him from his home since he hadn't seen them in days. His brothers were teasing him and pretending they didn't notice.
Poor Penelope bore the brunt of his anger. She had been a saint. Once all the pieces of the mirror were in the ground, he was taking her out for a romantic dinner, gifting her a spa day, and getting her favorite author's latest book.
Dropping the glass fragments into the ground with the light of the full moon over him. Colin felt as though he could breathe again.
Quickly, but effectively, Colin filled in the hole. Letting out a sigh of relief, he took a moment to fall down to the ground. He wanted to relish in his freedom for a moment.
After a brief pause, Colin stood up and set his plan in motion to pamper his wife. Then, he would ask her all about her superstitions to ensure this never happened again.
Unbeknownst to him, there was a tiny shard of glass from the mirror that fell out of the back of the drawer in the bathroom vanity to the space below. This particular shard was so small it was indistinguishable to the human eye . . .
The End.