If stories were judged by their first lines, Mr Pritchard would still not be a great storywriter. Partly because his first lines aren’t compelling enough and mostly because it needs more than a line to make a story. For the last five years, he has been writing nothing more than the opening lines of stories that do not expand a word beyond. Every evening, after he tends his garden that seems like an overgrown hedge, he settles himself in the study of his modest country manor. There, he sits in his ornate Bavarian chair. He rests his left hand on a large mahogany table and holds an exquisite gold-plated pen with his right hand. The pen just touches the surface of the papers. He fixes his eyes on the Belgian mirror before him and smirks elegantly, posing as if an artist no less than Rembrandt were painting him.

After staring at the mirror until his eyes burn with tears, Mr Pritchard starts writing a story, better say, a line. His lines include, “My grandfather impresses the maidens with his fake teeth.” “The first human I ate was the last human I ate because I ate myself.” “I have to complete this story or else people will think I cannot write anything,” and four hundred such lines, which would have made wonderful stories, if only.... It is not that Mr Pritchard cannot imagine anything beyond the first line; in fact, he imagines so much that the excess of imagination floods his mind with ideas. Overwhelmed by the influx of plots, characters, narratives and dialogues, he cannot find a way to pen down his feelings. At the end of the day, he concludes that the story is simply too profound to write and impossible to finish. He then stops thinking about the topic altogether, and begins a new story, which, thanks to his profound imagination, remains inevitably unfinished.

Today, Mr Pritchard sits in his study with no less enthusiasm. Back in his garden, a wonderful idea had struck him, an idea that would certainly create the best story in the world. For a minute, Mr Pritchard smirks at the mirror, but today he has no second to spare.  He begins scribbling—“After he rescued the body from the river, he realised that the woman was his wife whom he had thrown in the river earlier.”

As he finishes the sentence, he raises his head to look at the mirror, which he often does for further thought. As soon as he looks at the mirror, he screams.

He yells with a mouth wide open enough for a swallow to nest in. Panting and gasping, he moves his hands and eyes all over his body, to check if he has transformed into a woman just as in one of his unfinished stories. He exhales after confirming his masculinity, but screams again, for a woman, possibly a ghost, lies in his mirror.

The woman, with her head inclined downwards, is grey-haired and dressed in a blue velvet gown.  Her left hand rests on a large brown table. Disturbed by Mr Pritchard’s ear-splitting screams, the woman bangs both her hands on the table, and shouts back, “How dare you disturb me? I was about to write the first second sentence of my story.”

She quickly grabs a towel and covers her mouth, “You didn’t see my broken teeth, did you? Tell me you didn’t see them.”

“Who cares about your teeth? You are ugly, with or without them.” Mr Pritchard replies, reclining backwards. At once, he reminds himself that he is not talking to an ordinary woman and his body trembles. “How dare you come inside my mirror? And I was writing the first ever second sentence of my story, not you!” Mr Pritchard cannot still believe his courage to shout back at the woman.      

“What proof have you?” asks back the woman.

“I have my sentence, unlike you, witch!”

“Didn’t I tell you I have a sentence too? Listen me read it, you dirty pig,” The woman lifts her paper and begins, “After he rescued the body from the river-”

“-he realised that the woman was his wife whom he had thrown in the river earlier.” After a gasp of disbelief, Mr Pritchard finally opens his mouth, “How on earth do you know my sentence? You ugly hag!”

“Ah, I understand now. You thief, you stole my line after looking at my paper in the mirror. You cheating pig,” the woman cries back.

Mr Pritchard grinds his teeth, points his finger towards the mirror, and shouts, “Mind your tongue, filthy woman. Thank god I wrote no more than a line or else you sneaky witch would have copied it all.”  

“Oi! Think before you speak, you illiterate one-liner bastard. You would have copied the rest of my story had I finished it. Ah, how you would be happy to nick my wonderful story.” The woman sighs sarcastically. It was the derisive sigh, Mr Pritchard decides, that hurt him more than the devious remark.

“How can you say you had a story? The story is mine, mine, and MINE.” Although Mr Pritchard shouts with all his strength, he can feel his voice croak and falter.

“Is it so?” asks the woman in a childish mimicry. “Have you any proof? Say what’s in your story. Let’s hear what you have to say.”  

“Aha! You lying woman, so that you can hear my story, write it, and call your own. I know how purloining and deceptive women can be.” Mr Pritchard’s eyes sparkle at this sudden realisation.

“I am not that daft that I have to rely on you for my story. I know you are waiting for my story to write it as your own. Ah, will you ever be able to finish a story?” The woman laughs the same jeering laughter.

A woman’s compliments are known to make a man mad, her taunts even madder. Mr Pritchard pulls his hairs, shuts his ears, fists the air, and after biting his lips in rage, yells, “No, no, no, stop feeding lies. Don’t you fear god? You’ll be punished for this lie. You’re a liar!”

“Stop laughing at me, get out of my mirror, now,” the man rises from his chair and yells again.

The woman’s wicked laughter seems to echo the empty halls of Mr Pritchard’s manor. With an intent to torment our poor man further, the woman speaks, “Admit it, you will never be able to write more than a line, hahahaha. Oh, I pity you. After all, your sins are-”

The marble paperweight immediately strikes the mirror. The sound of a single plain glass frame breaking into thousands of sharp pieces fills the room for a moment. The sound dies as soon as the pieces land on the floor. Mr Pritchard walks around the very spot where a moment ago the mad woman sat mocking him. He murmurs something and leaves the room, but does not shut the door.

It is the third mirror Mr Pritchard has broken this week.