The image (I pray) of a hugely corpulent man, fully nude and as pale as an exsanguinated corpse, accosts me while I shave. He struggles, wedged and overflowing the claw-footed tub that Mrs. Mallory had installed last season. He is not a guest, and I do not understand his speech, but I feel certain that he implores me to somehow act upon his behalf. The feeling is like a physical tug inside my brain, as if the blood were rushing from one lobe to another in a grisly parody of the tides of the deep Bay of Fundy. My balance is…affected. I tip slightly toward the quivering image in the tub. I must remain extraordinarily attentive to my razor work, for the whole contents of two fully-grown men would certainly not be enough to sate the man’s carmine thirst. Were I to nick myself, I am not certain that there is anything about his condition, bloated and stuck though he appears to be, that would prove sufficient to save me from a gruesome attack. Is that what his speech, low and guttural and atavistic, impels me to? Is that how he is released? If I could afford to waste the motion, I would shudder at the thought. I might wish that this were not the only mirror in the house, if I didn’t also know and fear the power of mirrors, counteracted only by the presence of water.
I believe this knowledge is shared by the corpulent man, and is how he came to be wedged into the tub. If there is a correlation there, mirrors and blood and water, I cannot discover it, not with sufficient distinction to leverage the knowledge against the strangely physical image.
Though unfashionable, perhaps I shall simply grow a beard.
