The reflections of the towers near the centre of the district had been changed into pinnacles of blackened bone and scorched metal. He watched in uneasy fascination as they began to move and sway, shedding flakes that drifted down slowly on the streets below. They now appeared to be tottering towards each other in a stately dance. Fearing they might crash down at any moment, he dragged his gaze away.

In all this time, the cacophonous music (if that was an appropriate term) had risen and fallen in turn, as if turning towards him or moving away. Suddenly it became almost deafening.

He wheeled around, expecting to see a grotesque parade of bands and marching people coming down the street. From the volume, the narrow space should be full of twisted musicians, banging and clattering away at unimaginable instruments.

But the road was empty. Nobody walked past the few drab shops that were left. Yet that noise!

He walked a few steps, doubting his sanity. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the window of the shop behind him. Turning slowly, he grew cold as he saw the terrible truth. The parade was taking place in the twisted world of reflections he had just discovered.

He backed away from the glass slowly. That was where the people were. Or what was left of them.

Passing from window to window, their faces were distorted in the antique glass. Or maybe it was the keen edge of the fresh pain they endured that was to blame.

They grinned and leered appallingly, as if desperate to imitate some unnatural joy. Like dolls with false faces, he was sure their expressions were intended to mislead and confuse.

Some forced a lacklustre march, while others merely slouched along miserably. Those unable to do either were drawn along on carts knocked together from urban detritus and pulled by human mules.

They looked to him like animals held tightly together in the fist of pain, their suffering forged by the fires of cruelty. They were no longer people, of that he was certain.

A man the size of a mouse ran in between the legs of the reluctant celebrants, seemingly desperate to keep up with them. He risked being trampled or kicked aside but he obviously preferred that to being abandoned and alone.

His fellow marchers took no special care to avoid him. In fact, he was sure one had deliberately tried to stamp on the small, desperate figure.

There seemed to be no trace of pity in the faces of those who paraded past. A succession of grimaces danced swiftly across their faces.

The dust and blood had painted a sinister mask on the face of a young girl nearby. She wore so much eye make-up that it looked like black fungus had sprouted on her upper lids, amassing there before crawling out to the tips of her lashes. The colour on her lips might have been the blood of a small animal.

Her lying lipsnake smile seemed stuck in place. But the rictus of fear quickly melted into tearful laughter before transforming equally as swiftly into an expression of near ecstasy. Then, for a moment, her face grew blank, almost placid, before the awful cycle began again.

The impetus for this hideous assembly must come from somewhere, he knew. He felt sure there must be someone leading the procession - some evil demagogue or twisted ringmaster. Once or twice he was convinced he was on the verge of glimpsing this mastermind as the parade turned slightly this way or that.

But he never did. The jumble of twisted limbs and wracked faces hid the head of the column from sight.

A chill struck him to the core as he realised some of the faces passing by were familiar to him. A childhood sweetheart, almost forgotten, stamped along in desperation beside the man who had cost him his job only last year.

There was the sympathetic doctor who'd bent the rules to help him when his father was ill. Next to him was a woman who'd lied that she'd seen him stealing from a supermarket.

Everyone he despised or loved was taking part in this evolving promenade of despair. But not him.

He had no way of knowing if he was being spared or condemned.
 
The streets he had walked down earlier had all been empty. He did not know if the town's citizens had all been abducted, absorbed into this terrifying mirror world, or whether they were being held safely somewhere while their hideous mirror-images had been stolen.

It was early, he reasoned. Maybe everyone was still in bed while their dream selves promenaded through this dreadful double existence.

The noise and tumult of forlorn figures was thinning out, as if the parade was passing on, eager to be somewhere else. He pressed his face to the glass, shielding his eyes to see more. Then came the worst shock of all.

Did he see his sister's face? There, on the last mannequin, just as the parade wheeled away from him, passing into shadow. He ran from window to window, pressing his face hard against them.

She was tied securely to the back of a huge, ramshackle cart daubed in obscure graphics and obscene graffiti that had been thrown together in the inconvenient marriage of the paint pot. He tried to catch her attention as the cart lumbered along on its uneven wheels, which cracked and creaked with every revolution.

He had no idea if she could see him through the glass. Maybe light could only cross one way.

As she swayed and rocked on the back of the giant wooden juggernaut, she showed no sign of discomfort. Then he realised, with horror, that her eyes were the only part of her left alive.

Trapped in the moribund body, they glistened with tears that spilled over and ran down her cold hard cheeks.

She'd always loved parades as a child, so this fate was particularly cruel. He wanted to smash the grimy glass and leap through to save her. But something told him that he'd only find himself inside a derelict shop and that his sister would be lost forever among the dust and shadows.

A figure shuffled by very close to the window. As the dishevelled man hobbled past, what had appeared at first glance as expensive trainers revealed themselves to be bandages, wrapped around his feet thickly, bearing near identical blood stains on each foot.

He tapped the window, hoping that the bizarre penitents could see him just as he could see them. As the man responded, turning his bleary-eyed face to the glass, he pulled himself upright and staggered forward for a moment, as if posing for a camera lens, a malformed smile stuck to his twisted face. The spectacle was hideous. Then the pathetic performer slumped back down and shuffled off to join the horrific Harlequinade once more.

In those few seconds, he had recognised the man as a popular television host, fond of attacking everyone weaker and less fortunate than himself. Any pity he may have felt for the man's diminished state disappeared at that second.

Suddenly the public address system in the nearby square sprang to life, crackling and squawking uncomfortably. It was obviously picking up the signal from the otherworldly antenna he'd seen in the reflected world.

He imagined the vile broadcast being picked up by millions, trapped behind their gloating grimaces, waiting with sadistic elation for the coming disaster to befall someone else. But not them.

The parade was getting farther and farther away. It was processing down a street that had no twin in his own world. As if to assure himself of that fact, he glanced back quickly. He saw only a closed down bar and a bare, dirty wall.

Looking back he saw that the parade was even further away, as if it was picking up speed. He wondered where this street, that existed only in the reflected world, led to. He peered hard and saw that the sky above the far end of the street was dark, threatening rain, or perhaps something worse.
 
The buildings there seemed to be getting closer to the sides of the two-storey high cart to which his sister was tied. Maybe the street was getting narrower. It was certainly getting darker.

He felt a sense of loss, yearning to speak to his sister once more. Just once more.

The loudspeakers in the nearby square crackled with a stranger sort of static now. The cacophony was growing fainter as the procession moved away. Even the noise was leaving.

He plucked the paper from his ears, so as to hear the discordant music for as long as he could.

"Wait for me! Wait …"

The wind picked up suddenly, mixing with the sound of the static to create a cruel facsimile of mocking laughter.

He pressed his face against the large window, tears smearing the glass, breath misting it. Trapped this side.

"Wait for me!" He could barely make out his sister's face now, tiny in the darkening distance.

Through the static, her words mouthed by an insincere actress, he heard her say "Let's keep in touch".