Poetry by Rowan Evans

Author’s Note

This vignette serves as a prelude to the Through the Shattered Glass series. It explores the fragile moments before chaos erupts, before memory fractures, and before the ordinary world gives way to the spectral and uncanny. Written from the perspective of the original speaker, it is meant to foreshadow events and imagery that will later unfold in parts one and two, offering readers a subtle bridge into the haunting, fractured narrative landscape. The mirror, the table, and the dripping faucet are not mere props—they are harbingers of the shattering to come.

Through the Shattered Glass
Before the Glass Shattered
Vignette by B.D. Nightshade

I adjust my tie before the mirror, slow and deliberate,
catching the first gray light slipping across the dining room table.
The silverware glints, cold and precise,
the table itself a sentinel of order
amid the subtle chaos of a waking house.

Outside, children tumble down the hall,
bare feet thumping on polished wood,
hands brushing the walls as if leaving invisible trails.
They laugh and scream, chasing each other’s shadows,
tracing maps that only their eyes can read.
One knocks against the doorframe—
I hear it, but say nothing.
Ordinary mornings demand no alarms.

The faucet in the kitchen drips,
soft, insistent, like a heartbeat just beneath awareness.
One. Two. Three.
I wonder, briefly, how many droplets it would take
to fill the sink, the floor, the world.
The thought is ridiculous. I smile faintly,
glancing again at the mirror.

The reflection is banal.
A man straightening his tie.
Light brushing hair over the temple.
The children racing behind him.
And yet, in the edges of glass, shadows stir—
corners too dark,
angles that don’t quite match the ceiling,
that seem almost to breathe.

A glass tumbler teeters at the edge of the table.
Just a nudge, and it would shatter,
sending silvered shards across the floor.
I consider it, then laugh softly.
Morning is safe.
The glass is whole.
The table upright.

A faint scent of iron drifts in from the sink.
Fleeting, almost imagined,
and I notice it only because the air itself is too quiet.
The children dart past again,
hands brushing walls, gliding across surfaces
that tomorrow—or the day after—
might carry traces of something else:
the memory of a slip, a smear, a drop.

The faucet drips.
One. Two. Three.
I count in rhythm with the pulse in my veins.
I feel the house settling around me:
boards creaking, windows catching the wind,
a distant cough from the street below.
All ordinary. All benign.

And yet—
the edges of everything tremble.
Corners of the mirror catch motion too swift to follow,
too fleeting to name.
A shadow arcs past the reflection,
laugh low and guttural,
older than the children’s mirth.
I glance again. Nothing there.

I step back from the mirror.
The children scatter to chores,
the day stretches wide, unbroken, bright.
Yet the air hums, subtle and patient,
as if rehearsing the sound of what is to come:
a misstep, a hand slipping,
a cup teetering just a fraction too far.

I pause at the sink, fingers lingering over the dripping faucet,
imagining the droplets gathering,
then falling,
falling…
and breaking everything.

The world seems to inhale,
holding its breath with me.
The silverware catches the light again,
the table remains steadfast,
the mirror still reflects an ordinary man.
Yet in the quiet,
I know the tremor is waiting.
It is patient.
And when it happens,
the glass will shatter.

Closing Note

This vignette plants the seeds for the fractured reality that defines “Through the Shattered Glass.” The seemingly mundane elements—the mirror, the table, the dripping faucet—become catalysts for the haunting events that follow. As the narrative unfolds, the boundaries between self and shadow, memory and echo, begin to dissolve. The chaos is inevitable. The shards are waiting.

Journey into the Hexverse

Continue the haunting path through the shattered reality of B.D. Nightshade’s series:

Through the Shattered Glass – Part I – Witness the first fracture of identity and memory.

Through the Shattered Glass II: Fragmented Nightmare — Through Another’s Eyes – Step into the other’s perspective, where echoes blur the line between past and present.