Bahram Zaimi - BASEMENT COMMANDMENT. Edited by Rowan Silva

Upon one last glance into the mirror, “Oh, I am not wearing my panty,” she said with a shameful laugh, noticing that the white underpants had fallen on the floor, in a gap between the back of the mirror and the wall. She crouched down and stretched her index finger while holding the ball of money in her palm. As her finger reached the underwear, she hooked the tip of her finger to the elastic band and pulled it toward herself. The elastic stretched but it was like something was holding it back. The panty was stuck to something at the back of the mirror. She dropped the money on the floor and moved her head toward the gap as close as possible to see what had been tangled in her panty. Her left eye saw in the darkness deep behind the mirror, a wooden frame. She stretched her arm into the gap, felt the wood, and grabbed the outer side of it, sliding it out. A small part of the wooden frame appeared from the back of the mirror. It had canvas stretched over it.

To get the whole of it free from the back of the mirror, she stood up and dragged it out until the frame reached and leaned onto the apartment door. She lifted and carried it to the wall in front of the sofa and placed it on the floor, its back leaning to the wall. She stepped back to figure out the painting. The canvas had been painted with a white paint, no drawing or figure on it.

Whose is this painting and why it was hidden behind my mirror? At least now I know why the nails are on the wall. She hung the painting on the two nails above. It fit perfectly stable on them. She went back and sat on her sofa, leaning back with a fearful thought in her mind, I am living in the house of the wild beauty in the mirror, these things belong to her. The new puzzle gave life to the idea that the woman in the mirror was responsible for all the unsolved cases. She had brought things which belonged to her into the apartment. On the other hand, even if the idea was an illusion, how she could trust her mind? Her fear was gradually escalating, she couldn’t sit on her couch and seek peace of mind anymore. She felt trapped by the woman in the mirror. She had never felt surrender like this, like prey willingly embracing the hunter.

Troubled minds can better communicate with horror. She leaned back to the sofa, feeling the dampness of sweat on her back. She dug her fingers into the sofa fabric, twisting the leather, staring at the painting. Have the courage; there is no session for help tomorrow. She sensed something in the painting, in the whiteness.

There were various shades of white and grey: the landscape of a snowy day. The ground was covered with deep snow, thick fog in the air, and some movement. Grayish shapes were appearing very vaguely, in the mist, and before acquiring a clear shape they disappeared. Then there was plain white again. Nostalgia. She turned her gaze to the window, wishing she could see the same scenery in reality outside the window. She said with a soft voice, “Oh tomatoes, I completely forgot the shop might close any minute.” She jumped off the sofa to her feet, grabbed the car keys, and rushed toward the door. Strangely, all fear had been removed; either the woman in the mirror had captured her, or they could share the room. She had a desire to smile like the woman with glowing blue eyes. She took one last glimpse in the mirror; the reflection of the mysterious shades of the painting appeared once again. This time they brought to her mind some reminiscence of the past; she had been there.

She opened the door. The ball of money and her panty stayed behind on the floor. The elevator door was open and she entered. She looked at the buttons, waited, and thought, how can I manage this time to deal with the landlady’s scolding complaints; to calm her of my two month’s overdue rent, given the money I spent on the mirror. She was there when the men were carrying the huge mirror up the stairs for me. I cleverly walked behind the moving mirror past her front desk. Last time she caught me, I had to listen to her nagging for more than half an hour. Her husband doesn’t seem like a bad guy, though too obedient to her. I have never seen him look at women straight in the eyes, bashful and afraid of his wife’s wrath. Apparently she is the real owner of the building, the business, and her husband. Fortunately, the couple is asleep at this time of night, I hope. She pushed the first-floor button, and the elevator door closed.

The old landlady and her silent husband were working behind the counter at the side of the corridor, exceptionally late this night. She was declaring the apartment numbers of the tenants with overdue rent with her husband bent over the countertop, submissively as always, writing them down on the day’s collection sheet paper. She used to stand at the elevator side of the counter with her husband in her shadow; by the time the elevator doors would slide back, she was there to corner the renters in arrears before they had time to escape. They would either pay with many apologies to lower her naggings as much as possible, or run away to save their eardrums from the nastiest insults, all the way through the long corridor while being followed by her and her mouth.

The elevator cabin was hot. Sometimes the heater did not work, and sometimes it overworked. The air conditioner was always broken. She had been sweaty before entering, and was now sweating further going down five stories in the heat; the perspiration had completely saturated her thin dress. It molded her body like a transparent wrapping. She tried to pull the dress out, to reshape and conceal her cleavage, but the displaced fabric reversed like a magnet to its sinful position. The confined space filled with a strange body odor.

The elevator doors slid back open to the corridor. The old husband was cleaning his eyeglasses to take a few moments away. Somebody went out the entrance doors at the same time, leaving them open. The cold air outside plunged headlong into the corridor, rubbing all the precious perfume from the elevator cabin, vacuuming it from the cabin into the corridor. The loaded air on its way out, in a hurry to steal all the loot gave a share to the old man’s nose. The man dropped his eyeglasses on the countertop, his mouth open, his nostrils widened to inhale a good load of this scent. The stream of the strange aroma burnt his nostrils for milliseconds; his mind paused, then a powerful wave of electricity flowed through his nasal paths with the speed of light to all six million of his sensory cells. The incompletely evolved human sense of smell was unable to assess it in any of the primitive rankings between pleasant and unpleasant, therefore he succumbed under the influence, and was paralyzed.

Floating in the passing current, anchored to the countertop in greed for the source, his upper body passed the visual blockage of his fat wife, and he lay his chest on the countertop, securing his belly to the inside edge of the reception desk in an attempt to get more share of the running air. His head, overhanging the edge of the countertop, faced the woman shyly stepping out of the cabin. His eyes got a blurred vision of a white feather angel parading past him. As she passed the intruding head, the man’s head and two fully open pipes of his nose were detecting her movement like the turning of radars. The unclean eyeglasses were smashed under his chest.

As she was passing the counter, she remembered the ball of money that was missed on her apartment floor at the door. She decided to turn back, but the elevator doors had closed and she heard the screeching noise of the cabin moving up for another passenger. I cannot go back and stand at the elevator with my sweaty back stuck to this dress in front of that man’s widened eyes. Besides, the landlady’s head is bent over a paper and I am fortunate that she has not raised it to see me. This is an exceptional opportunity to flee her nasty complaints. She sweated more when she remembered the money was not the only thing she had forgotten to pick up. Her panty.