A father being obsessed with
A father being obsessed with
The first crack in the mirror appeared the day Ethan turned five. A clean, straight line, like a razor had sliced through the glass. It coincided with Ethan’s first foray into the world of “What if?” questions, the ones that gnawed at the edges of a parent’s sanity. “What if the sun doesn’t come up tomorrow?” he’d asked, his eyes wide and innocent.
“What if the clouds are just hiding the sun?” Edward had countered, his smile tight. He’d been a scientist, a man who worshipped reason and logic. But Ethan, his son, was a whirlwind of unfiltered imagination, a constant reminder of the universe’s vast, inexplicable mysteries.
More cracks followed, a spiderweb of fractures blooming across the mirror as Ethan grew. “What if we’re just robots programmed to think we’re alive?” he’d asked at eight, his words like tiny shards of ice piercing Edward’s carefully constructed reality. “What if the world is just a giant computer simulation?” he’d pondered at eleven, his voice laced with a nascent cynicism that sent chills down Edward’s spine.
Edward tried to quell the questions, to redirect them with logic and facts. But Ethan, with his relentless curiosity, was like a relentless storm, tearing down the walls of Edward’s carefully cultivated world. The mirror in the hallway, once a testament to his own controlled existence, became a warped reflection of his internal turmoil.
The final crack, the one that shattered the mirror entirely, came on Ethan’s sixteenth birthday. “What if you’re not my real father?” Ethan had asked, his eyes searching Edward’s for an answer he already knew he wouldn’t find.
It was the final straw, the culmination of Edward’s unspoken fear. He saw himself in Ethan, the insatiable curiosity, the desire to delve into the unknown, a yearning that was both fascinating and terrifying. He couldn’t bear the thought of being eclipsed, of being replaced by some imaginary, “real” father.
So, Edward started digging. He delved into Ethan’s past, obsessively piecing together his life, searching for any anomaly, any hint of something “not real.” He combed through Ethan’s school records, interrogated his friends, even hired a private investigator.
He became consumed by the “what ifs”, his obsession morphing into a grotesque distortion of love. He saw his son not as a person, but as a puzzle to be solved, a mystery to be unraveled. He forgot about his own life, his career, his sanity, all consumed by the insatiable hunger to prove his son’s “authenticity.”
But his search yielded nothing but more questions, more cracks in his own reality. The more he sought, the more he realized that the truth, like the universe itself, was vast, unknowable, and ultimately, irrelevant. The only real truth was the love he felt for his son, a love that was as vast, as unknowable, and as beautiful as the universe itself.
One day, he found Ethan staring at the mirror, a piece of tape holding together its fractured reflection. Ethan looked at him, a question in his eyes.
“What if,” Edward finally whispered, “we just accept that we don’t know?”
The answer, like a warm, comforting embrace, enveloped them both. The universe, like a mirror, was a reflection of their own minds, forever fragmented, forever beautiful. And in that moment, Edward saw himself reflected back, not as a scientist, but as a father, a man finally accepting the mystery of his son, and his own heart.
