Sage Cigarettes Magazine is excited to welcome our new fiction editor, Molly McGill!
Molly is a writer from County Derry, Ireland. She has a bachelor’s degree in film studies and creative writing from John Moore’s University and has a passion for writing and reading weird horror fiction.
Molly will also be joining us on upcoming episodes of our horror review podcast A Ghost in the Magazine.
Going forward, you can direct all fiction submissions to mmcgill@sagecigarettes.com. Pending submissions have been forwarded on & will be responded to within one month of their original receipt.
Molly plans to uphold the weird, dark vibe we’ve been curating with our fiction selections, so if you have something you think we’d like, send it her way!
Until then, check out this flash piece by Molly.
Rorrim|mirror
How long has it been now? At the beginning I tracked the passing time. I paid close attention to the shadows that move across the walls that signal a day ending and starting again but I don’t count them anymore. I lose too much time these days to keep a proper count and it just becomes an exercise in frustration. Days pass by uncounted, I can barely bring myself to care anymore.
I collect and scrape together my shards and hold on as tight as I can, but as each day passes, more and more slips away. I wonder how long it will take for what is left of me to disperse entirely and not exist as myself at all. I have to wonder if I am delaying an inevitability.
I have gathered enough of my pieces to think my thoughts when She steps in my view and my grasp slips again. Moments turn to falling snow, thoughts, and memories too. She is what is left.
I am She, as she smoothes the wrinkles from her white blouse. When she checks her teeth for blood-coloured lipstick stains, my lips unwittingly bare white teeth with her. I wish I had my own to scowl with, to check for lipstick stains on, to show off obnoxiously like she gets to do.
I am She when she practises her smile, no closed lips but careful not to show too many teeth. If I had my own, I wouldn’t even mind if it was crooked. I would wrinkle my eyes (my very own eyes) to sell the mirth, my personal expression of joy.
She has her actions, and I have to carry them out in perfect harmony with her.
Shoulders back and down, spine straight, eyes up.
Chin up but not tilted too far back.
Our eyes meet and its easy to believe She knows I am there, that She is intentionally guiding me through her movements in a twisted Simon Says.
I want her to feel the malice I muster, that I push forward into my (her, our) eyes when they meet through the polished glass. It is easier to hate her role in my torture, easy target that she is. She flaunts her own freedom to me, unwittingly.
She frowns, grasping either end of my prison and shifting it further back, struggling with the solid weight of it. Did she not get a good enough view already?
I can only watch and mimic as She steps back, full body in view now and cranes her neck to see her back. This is why she’s too late to see the way my prison wobbles, then lurches forwards.
I am She, as she panics and tries to catch the mirror,
I am Me when it shatters,
and I
Scatter into
nothing
Finally free, finally Me again.
