The day I got caught getting off with my mirror was the day that my dad died. The two things weren’t related, but I didn’t plan for either eventuality. She came in when I was naked and had trimmed my balls all nice and was tonguing the toothpaste off the glass, and told me he had died badly. That morning I had also researched whether it was possible for James Bond to have taken that route down the Thames in The World is Not Enough. Inconclusive. My dad was kicked in the head by a horse. The horse was called Gnarls Darwin. My dad got a bleed on the brain and had died before he reached the hospital. The chap who owned Gnarls Darwin took me out for a beer that evening to apologise for the killing of my dad thing, and she came with me. She didn’t mention anything about me kissing the mirror, but I noticed that when the chap was looping wasabi peas into his mouth, she was watching him with tears in her eyes. He caught about nine peas. Which is a quite a lot. I think she was really impressed.

Jordan Harrison-Twist is a writer based in Manchester. His essays have appeared in 3:AM Magazine & iiii Magazine. He is the one-time winner of the Retreat West micro fiction competition, in which he has been shortlisted and long-listed; he has also been long-listed in the Reflex Press flash fiction competition.