The mirror was scuffed and crusted with dirt, almost to the point where Paul could no longer see himself reflected in it.

Not that this was a great loss. What little Paul could make out disturbed him. He had not seen his face very often over the years. It had fared about as well as everything else.

Gone was the smooth skin, and the wide, happy eyes and easy smile of his youth. In their place, he seemed to wear a mask of creases and thinly veiled despair. Lines carved from decades of stress crisscrossed his rubbery skin, made callous by wind-born ash and the hot rays of the unfeeling sun.

Paul peered into the remnants of the mirror and mumbled to the scratched out figure he saw there as though it were not him as if the mirror were a portal to another sad and broken man in another forgotten room.

"You’re an ugly one," Paul said to the disfigured form in the mirror, "how did you scrape by all these years?"

There was a beat and the man in the mirror who was not Paul answered, his voice gruffer than Paul’s and at a slightly lower register.

"Been tough," the man said, "real tough. At times I thought I wouldn’t be able to go on."

Paul gave the eerily Paul-like figure a nod. "I feel you brother," Paul said, and looked down into the shattered basin of the long dead bathroom sink, "it’s been a hard road."

The man in the mirror looked down too and asked quietly. "You met anyone, out there?"

Paul hesitated. Without looking up he answered "sure." Then he hastily added, "lots."

The man in the mirror looked Paul in the eyes for a long time. Paul returned his pitying gaze.

"Anyone," the man in the mirror chewed on the second word before spitting it out in a whisper, "real?"

Paul licked his dry lips and his reflection did the same. Paul’s lips were always dry.

"Real as you," Paul said to himself.

Fed up with his own reflected company Paul hit the mirror with a nearby hunk of shattered porcelain, smashing the glass loudly. His doppelganger dissolved into dozens of shards and fell away to the floor. Paul sighed and the sigh made him cough, and the cough deteriorated into chest heaving hacks. Only after a few minutes did the coughing spell subside allowing Paul to continue probing the dark depths of the long-abandoned suburban house.

So far it was a good haul. He’d found some genuine survival food in the basement – the kind of nitrogen packed stuff they sold in the months just before the war began, all those decades ago.

Paul had several cans of survival food stacked by the front door, which just barely hung on a single hinge at a jaunty angle in the rotted door frame. Type A freeze-dried eggs, nearly thirty pounds of the stuff.

All that remained to do was tear apart the kitchen cabinets. If he was lucky Paul would find some ancient bullion or a jar of honey. Not much else kept after forty years.

He was halfway through the kitchen cabinets when he heard a noise. It was, to his astonishment, still familiar, so long after the end of the world. It was the sort of noise that gets lodged somewhere deep in your brain and never leaves, no matter what else changes.

Someone was knocking on the front door.

Paul froze in abject fear. He had not seen another living person in decades. He had not seen another living thing in years, besides a periodic rodent or insect.

Now, inside this abandoned house on an abandoned street in an abandoned country in an abandoned world, someone was knocking on the door.

There it was again.

Paul started sweating. This, he was certain, was it. His battle with insanity had finally been lost. He’d always thought it was inevitable – eternally roaming the dead streets as he did, all alone. In fact, he’d expected to succumb to it years ago. Nonetheless, it was strange to finally see the breakdown beginning to happen. It seemed so real.

The person knocked a third time. Real or imaginary, they were not giving up. Paul took a deep, hoarse breath, swallowed the lump of fear and phlegm in his raspy throat, and walked over to the door. He rested his hand on the rusty doorknob and closed his eyes tight.

With a loud creak, the door swung open.

Paul stood there with his eyes firmly shut and waited.

"Paul?"

Paul refused to open his eyes. He knew that to open his eyes was to give in.

"Paul, what are you doing?"

A woman’s voice.

"Paul, open your eyes silly."

Paul refused. He wouldn’t. Even as a gentle warmth began to glow on the skin of his cheeks and the darkness behind his eyelids decreased beneath the glare of some new light.

"Paul, honey, it’s alright. Open your eyes."

Paul felt the hand before it touched his cheek, in that way you feel a lover’s touch even when their skin hovers just above your own. When the soft palm of her hand finally made contact, Paul couldn’t help but start to cry. Was that bird song he heard, out there in the brittle fingers of the long dead trees? How could his own mind be this cruel?

The woman must have seen Paul’s tears. "Oh now, what’s this? Paul, it’s alright honey." She stepped closer and embraced Paul, wrapping her small, delicate arms around his wretched form, paying no mind to his terrible odor.

"Don’t be afraid, Paul." She whispered, and suddenly Paul recognized that voice. "Open your eyes, honey."

Held in her arms, his face buried in the crook of her neck, Paul’s fears vanished as he smelled the deep flowery scent of her favorite perfume, the one Paul bought her for Christmas last year.

Yes, Paul thought, we celebrated at her parent’s house. The whole family was there. And I bought her perfume.

Paul could remember the party, the warmth of the fireplace, the scent of baking pies and the loud chatter of happy family and friends talking over spiced rum and eggnog.

Soon enough the rest of his life began to come into focus as well. His job, her job, their house, their car. His birthday last week and their trip two months ago to Prague. It was his first visit to Europe and they’d had such a good time he’d sworn he’d go back every year.

The broken world Paul had suffered through for four decades – well what of it? A nightmare, a specter – no more real to Paul than the man in the dirty mirror or the monster under a child’s bed.

What was there to fear in a single look? Just a peek.

Paul opened his eyes and two gorgeous blue orbs, like clear, deep wells, looked back at him. Her warm breath brushed the smooth, shaved skin of his chin. He leaned forward and relished the taste of her mouth as they kissed.

"You’re a strange one Paul, you know that?" She asked.

Overjoyed, Paul just nodded. "I sure am, aren’t I." And they kissed again.

She broke the kiss short and stood at arm’s length wearing a smile. "Well, you ready then? We don’t have this truck all day you know."

Paul looked past her at the U-haul truck parked in the immaculate asphalt of the tree-lined block. Two happy children biked by on the sidewalk and waved to Paul on the stoop of his house.

Suddenly Paul remembered – it was moving day. They had bought a three-bedroom across town – bigger than this little one bedroom they were leaving behind. Someplace where they could raise a family, someplace to grow old together.

Without looking back, Paul smiled broadly and kissed her again because he could. Then he bounded off the porch, down the two concrete steps, and ran to the truck and into the driver’s seat.

"No time to waste," he said as he went, young again, "the future waits on no one!"

She laughed lightly and made her way into the passenger seat. Once she was buckled in Paul started the truck. Right before he set off, she gave him a long look.

"I love you," she said, and asked, "do you know that, Paul?"

Paul had eyes only for her. "I love you. God, how I love you."

One more kiss and they were on their way, driving down the long curve of the block, past the manicured lawns and blacktop driveways of suburban bliss as the warblers sang to each other beneath the perfect blue sky.

As their truck took a left turn and disappeared from sight, behind them – down the fragmented path of the uprooted sidewalk and across the ancient lakebed of the shattered asphalt – past the twisted plastic corpses of two melted tricycles – back on the porch of the house they’d just left – the front door hung ajar, lopsided, held aloft by only a single rusty hinge.

From the street, one could see hardly anything within the dark hole of the door frame: only several large rusty cans labeled "Eggs – Type A" in big, block letters and a motionless mass of tattered, soiled rags.