Chekhov's Gun Challenge: The Silver Hand Mirror

[Falcon]

Chekhov's Gun Challenge, Cyan

Chekhov's Gun is a writing trope used to mean that a seemingly insignificant object has turned out to be important to the plot. For example, the ring Frodo found in Gollum's cave in "The Hobbit" turned out to be the One Ring in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Any little thing can help you further your plot.

To Participate: I will give you an insignificant object and the setting in which it is first seen. Then you post a way in which that object could be used to further the plot.

example

Item and Setting Given: A stick brought back by the dog.

Way in which it can be used:
First mention of object - Peter's dog is always bringing back sticks. Peter has a habit of letting them collect by his front poach.

The object becomes important when - One day while running from a band of trolls, Peter and his friends try to take refuge behind his house. Looking for something to throw at the trolls to distract them, one of the characters picks up the stick Peter's dog brought back earlier and . . . ZAP! that stick was actually the missing magic wand belonging to the Good Fairy. Now the trolls are all made of stone and if they can get the fairy back her wand maybe she can help them find the lost prince and save the day!

The Item and Setting:
A silver hand mirror, found on a night-table​

 

[Terpsichore]

The item and setting: A silver hand mirror, found on a night-table

First appearance of object: Miriam Dupont, the famous movie star, was found murdered in her luxury suite at the Hotel Berlin. Her body was discovered lying on the bed in a pool of blood by the cleaning staff at around midday on Sunday, after she had been seen attending a charity auction in the city the night before. A swarm of CSIs was immediately brought in to investigate the bedroom and, in the course of scouring the room, they found a silver hand mirror on the night-table. The mirror was free from any fingerprints, blood, hair follicles or any other particulate that would be useful in a criminal investigation.

This object becomes important when: Whilst struggling to identify either the killer or the weapon, Detective Luke James returns to the hotel room to search for new clues. In the course of going over the room a second time, he spots the hand mirror and recognises it from an article he had read in a newspaper. This is one of a pair of hand mirrors, produced in the seventeenth century for Theresa of Spain, wife of French King Louis XIV. Researching it further, Luke found that the pair had been purchased by Ms. Dupont at the charity auction, shortly before she got into a shouting match with her ex-husband.

Her ex-husband was already a prime suspect in the case, and, upon discovering the second mirror in his safety deposit box at the hotel, all the pieces slotted into place. Despite wiping it clean, there was still enough trace, and its ornate decoration matched up to the injuries found on Ms. Dupont's head and neck, proving it to be the murder weapon, and her ex-husband to be the murderer.

 

[Mundane Monster]

Danielle dreaded the upcoming weekend. Why should she alone have to visit her grandma? How come her brother, Jackson and her sister Marie didn't have to waste their entire weekend with the old bat? It just wasn't fair! Danielle had things to do! She had a social life and she was planning to go to the movies with her friends this weekend! But now she had to go spend two days with a creepy old woman, who she had only met twice! This was all her mother's fault! Three years ago, Danielle's mother had gotten into a huge fight with Danielle's paternal grandmother and so the family had cut off contact with the woman for almost the entirty of Danielle's childhood. But now, after a health scare--It was a little fainting spell for God's sakes!--they had to repair their relationship and Danielle's mother's idea of doing that was to sent her youngest daughter to the old woman's house for a weekend.

It was so completely and utterly selfish.

When Danielle got to her grandmother's house she locked herself in her 'room', which was really a storage room that had been cleaned out. Her grandmother had invited her to come play bingo with her--bingo! Of all things!--but Danielle had just feigned jet lag and so the hag had left her alone.

After sitting in the storage room for about an hour and a half, Danielle finally decided to come out for a bite to eat, but she found that her grandmother wasn't even around!

"Ugh! Seriously? She makes me come all the way down here and she's not even going to stick around? So rude!" The teenager huffed, stomping her foot and storming to the back of the house and into her grandmother's room. It was the only room with a tv, and Danielle figured that since the old bag had abandoned her, she might as well watch some cartoons.

As she entered the room, a glimmer of light attracted her attention and she looked down to see a silver hand mirror on the night table next to her grandmother's bed. Well...At least it looked like a mirror, but the glass part didn't show her reflection, instead it just showed an empty space. Reaching down, Danielle tapped her finger against the glass and suddenly she found herself standing in the empty space inside the mirror, and staring up at her grandmother's ceiling.

Letting out a terrified scream, Danielle launched herself against the mirror glass, but no matter how hard she slammed against the glass, she couldn't get back to the other side. Suddenly a dark shadow fell over her and her grandmother's face loomed over the mirror's glass. Her grandmother smirked and tapped on the glass.

"Serve's you right. You were always such a rude little twit."