The Mirror

Alter Ego English coursework from ages ago..

It was all over.

                I stared at her in horror, as she lifted the mirror above her head, a crazed look in her eye as she prepared to smash it down. In my mind, I could hear her voice as she laughed at me, mocking me for my stupidity. Now her red eyes met mine, widening with anticipation.

                “Goodbye,” she whispered.

                It was all over.

 

I opened my eyes to find sunlight streaming through my curtains, the bright rays sending patterns across my wall. It was a Tuesday, and after a second spent enjoying the warmth under my duvet, I groaned and sat up, knowing I had only half an hour to be up, dressed and out of the house.

                Thirty-five minutes later I was grabbing my bag, and running down the stairs two at a time, with a quick farewell over my shoulder aimed at my exasperated mother. I now had less than two minutes to make it down the road, across the junction and round the corner to the bus stop – unless I didn’t mind the walk half way across the city in the freezing cold. As soon as the front door was shut behind me I set off at a sprint down my road. But I was wearing flat black slip-on shoes and with every step they slipped off, precious seconds wasted as I struggled to keep them on my feet. I eventually reached the junction, certain that I had already missed the bus, but still running as fast as I could.

                I was halfway across the street, ironically named Serendipity Rd, when I heard the squealing of brakes, and turned to see a black Aston Martin hurtling toward me. Before I could so much as think the word ‘damn’, the luxurious black vehicle was upon me, the world going black with one final stab of pain through my back.

 

An incessant beeping broke the darkness of my mind. It seemed almost to be trying to communicate something, but as deep in the black haze as I was, I couldn’t work out what that could be. I slipped away again, my mind rebelling against the sound.

                But suddenly I was being pulled back, or rather a part of me was, my mind seeming to separate into two unequal parts, the bigger reaching out toward the noise once more. There was an almighty crack and my eyes flew open, my mouth stretching into a Munch-style Scream as pain flashed through my head like a lightning strike.

                I caught a short glimpse of my parent’s distressed faces, and the frowning brow of a grey-haired nurse before the world slipped away once more, my mind hazing over into a place without pain or noise.

 

When I finally woke it was to a bright hospital room, sparsely decorated with sweet smelling flowers and a painting on one wall of a bowl of fruit. I barely had time to make these observations however, before into my vision ran the frizzy haired, jeans-wearing therapist that was my mother.

                “Oh sweetie,” she trilled, her blue eyes brimming with unshed tears, “you’re awake!”

                My dry throat managed only a slight crackle, before my mother was hushing me and putting a cool glass to my dry lips.

                “Here, drink this; and don’t try to talk, you’ve been out for a while.’

Here she burst into tears, shallow sobs wracking her thin frame, “Oh sweetie, we were so worried about you, it’s been two weeks, two weeks! And apart from that one moment, when you woke for a second, there was no sign of any life from you. You just lay there, so still, so silent,” she shook her head. “No mother should have to go through that, not one.”

                It was at that point that the nurse came in, alerted to the fact that I was awake, ready to administer pain relief, which I was glad to accept. Other than the dull throb that I could feel in my head, and the soreness of my throat, the rest of my body felt like it had been taken apart, bone by bone, and reassembled by a five-year-old with some interesting theories on the human body. I doubted that I could have reached over to comfort my mother even if I had had the energy, which I didn’t. And so barely ten minutes after waking up I was slipping once more into darkness, though this time it was a drug induced sleep, rather than the result of a collision with a huge steel box on wheels.

                This pattern of waking and sleeping continued for a couple of days before I was able to stay awake without needing any pain relief. And it was several more days before I was able to move around enough to take short walks on crutches around my room and certain other areas on the ward. However time flew and it did not seem long before my father was helping me to pack the few belongings that he and my mother had brought me, ready for my return home.

                And so it was that when I woke the next morning it was to my own room and to sunlight shining in familiar patterns across my wall. What I was not expecting though was the dried blood that I found covering my right hand, however this was soon explained away – I had obviously had a nose bleed during the night and the blood had gone on my hand. And so, as I shuffled on my crutches over to the full length mirror hanging on the wall, I expected to find blood on my face from the nose bleed. What I found instead was much worse, and only by biting hard on my tongue did I manage to keep from screaming.

                The face was undeniably mine, even with the differences from my normal appearance, that much was obvious; but it was an older, and unquestionably eviler, version of me. The girl, or woman, had pale skin, the colour of ivory, and a long white scar which travelled from the corner of her left eye, down her cheek to her jaw and across her throat. The one thing however, about this woman, which captured the feel of evil most effectively was her eyes. For she had dark, crimson, slit pupils, which hung like bleeding gashes in her two huge black irises.

                But barely a second later, the face had faded, my own beautifully dull grey eyes staring back at me, with a look of mingled shock and fear. That was my first glimpse of her, the Reflection, but it was not my last.

                It was as I was stumbling away from the mirror, that I noticed, for the first time, what I had missed before that moment. A single smudged red handprint on the edge of the curtain. I stared down in horror at my hand and the crimson that covered its surface. I felt sick, acid tasting liquid rising in my throat like a rushing tide.

                Everything went still as I shuffled forwards, barely aware of what I was doing, until I stood a foot away from the curtain. I raised my right hand, holding it above the print on the fabric. They were the same. The world seemed suddenly to tilt and I grabbed the windowsill, the curtains parting in the process, revealing more red handprints smudged across the sill and frame of the window. One print stood out from the rest, not only because it was on the actual glass of the window, but because it was backwards. It was on the outside.

                I got to the bathroom just in time to throw up the contents of my stomach, as the room continued to spin. As I pulled myself up against the sink I averted my eyes from the mirror afraid of what I might see, instead focussing on the cold water as I let it wash away the acrid taste from my mouth. In any case I needn’t have worried, when my eyes did eventually stray to the mirror it was my own grey eyed reflection looking back.

                I washed my hand in the water, not looking at the blood as it swirled down the plughole. When it was clean I went to the airing cupboard, and found an old towel, one that no one would miss, which I soaked in water. I then took it back to my room, still limping on my crutches, as I moved as silently as I could, hoping my parents wouldn’t wake. I closed the door to my bedroom, and turned to face the window, setting to work getting rid of the blood as quickly as possible. My mind shied away from the word ‘evidence’, but that’s what it felt like.

                The blood on the window frame and windowsill came off easily enough, as did the print on the outside of the window, but the curtain was more difficult. Eventually however, after a quick, and silent, trip to get the stain remover, the red disappeared from the cream fabric, leaving a faint shadow of a hand only visible close-up. Now all that remained was to get rid of the towel. It was easy enough to find a solution, but putting that solution into practice was more difficult, as it involved standing on my desk to reach the attic door in my ceiling. The injuries which I had recently suffered made this a rather unwise thing to attempt, and with the issue of my parents, who were likely to wake at any moment, and whom it seemed probable would come in to check on me, it came across as particularly foolish.

                Despite these problems however, I somehow managed it, the thought of someone finding the bloodied towel in my room adequate encouragement.

                After the blood had been completely removed from sight, the day went on as dull and uneventful as ever, giving me plenty of time to think over what I had seen - something I resented, as it also gave me the chance to build up a reasonable sense of dread about the coming night.

                I was edgy all day; anxiety showing itself enough to make my mother ask, more than once, whether I was in pain. But I refused all drugs she offered me, afraid they might make me drowsy. I dared not think about the next day and night, and all those after, knowing I would have to go to sleep some time, but dreading to think what I might find when I awoke. I still did not know what to make of the bloody handprints, but I feared the worst; I had found no cuts or wounds on myself, which meant that the blood had to be someone else’s.

                I changed the subject within my own mind, before I could start to question how I had come to have someone else’s blood on my hand. There was also the question of how, with so many recent injuries, I had managed to climb in, and out, of my window in the middle of the night; for that was what the handprints seemed to suggest. But I tried my best to ignore these worrying thoughts, knowing they would get me nowhere. However, with little else to occupy my head it was a pretty futile effort, my thoughts returning to the subject as easily as opposite ends of a pair of magnets – the two seeming determined to stay together, no matter how many times I tried to pull my mind away.

                That night I sat rigid in bed, eyes wide open as I fought against sleep, determined not to lose consciousness. But the later it got, the more the shadows seemed to reach out, toward me, enveloping me in their sleep-inducing arms. My eyes started to droop. But I mustn’t fall asleep, I mustn’t.

                I opened my eyes, it was morning. I felt my stomach clench with anxiety, my throat constricting. But my hands, once I had persuaded myself to look at them, were free of blood. I looked at the curtains, no blood. I almost cried with relief, and my heart, which before had been racing, returned to its normal speed. I pulled back the covers, climbing out of bed, and grabbing my crutches. I started toward the mirror, needing to see my normal reflection to convince me nothing had happened.

                My relief didn’t last long, ending abruptly as my foot met with something lying on the floor. It was a bag, an old one of mine which I had not used in years, one that I had not moved from the bottom of my wardrobe in years. My heart stopped. Pain filled my chest, a slow stabbing, twisting, from within. I stared horrified at the backpack at my feet. It had happened again.

                 IPods. That’s what was in the bag, and mobile phones, jewellery, keys, small ornaments, wallets. The kind of stuff you would find lying around in someone’s house, there was even a small framed photograph of a little girl with golden ringlets smiling into an invisible camera. I shook my head, shocked. Why? Was the question that came to mind: Why was this happening? I turned to the mirror, knowing what I would find; barely surprised to see those black and crimson eyes watching me.

                For the first time I was able to examine the face before me, and I was astonished to find that instead of fear, as before, I felt only disgust towards the reflection. She smiled at me sweetly, reading my thoughts.

                “Why are you doing this?” I hissed at her, and she smiled before copying my expression and voice.

                “Why are you doing this?” she moved the emphasis, turning my words back on me.

                “You’re not me,” I stated.

                “No,” she mused “I’m worse. I’m only a part of you. The part you fear. The part you ignore,” she shrugged “The bad part I guess you could say.”

                “This stuff, where did you get it? And the blood. Whose was the blood?” but she merely winked, her face starting to fade. “Why are you doing this?” I begged, voice rising. “Why!?”

                The bag, like the towel, went into the attic. This meant another climb, up, onto my desk, but by now I was starting to forget my injuries, my mind filled with the horror of unanswered questions.

                 For the rest of the week, it went on much the same: every night a struggle to stay awake, every morning the discovery that I had once more failed, and that, while I slept, my body, controlled presumably by this dark side to myself, had been out stealing; attacking; murdering for all I knew.

                And then one day it got worse. Morning; bright light; and the discovery of a bloody knife, resting on top of the bed covers. I reached the bathroom once more in the nick of time, my stomach revolting against the image. As I stood, my eyes met hers in the mirror.

                “Oh dear,” she murmured patronisingly, “are you not feeling well? Perhaps you should see your doctor... ah no, wait,” she grinned “I have a feeling she may be... otherwise occupied.”

                “Wha-,” I broke off suddenly, the meaning of her words making me sick all over again. “No,” I muttered to myself “No.”

I stumbled out of the bathroom, too desperate to get away from the reflection to bother with my crutches. I slid down the stairs, slipping on the carpeted steps. The TV was on, my father watching the screen, his face a picture of shock. It was the news, a picture of the most recent murder victim filling the screen. Dr Anne Orchard, my doctor, brutally stabbed in her home the previous night, found by her partner that morning in a pool of her own blood. My knees buckled, horror clenching my heart like a fist. You did this. You did this. The words kept repeating themselves, an invisible form of torture.

                I turned away from the screen, not wanting to see, not wanting to hear, what I had done, described back to me as the horrific crime that it was. I will kill her. The certainty in my own mind surprised me, I hadn’t realised before that I had formed any such plan, but now it was clear what I had to do. I would kill her; end it all now, before it could get any worse. The stairs seemed nothing now, as I climbed them stiffly, the pain numbed by the coldness of my own thoughts.

                She was waiting for me. Laughing at me. I picked up the knife, and held it in front of the mirror.

                “This ends now,” I whispered, anger boiling beneath my skin.

                She merely laughed, unaffected.

                “I mean it,” I was annoyed that she didn’t seem to be taking me seriously.

                “Oh I don’t doubt that,” she chuckled, “Only, you might want to hold that knife to yourself, your death is the only way to kill me.”

                “But the mirror-“

                “Is merely my way of... communicating.”

                “Fine,” I said holding the knife to my own throat. “We both die then.”

                I took a deep breath, closing my eyes, getting ready to slit my throat.

                “Don’t you want to know how I did it?”

                My eyes opened, staring at her suspiciously; the question sounded awfully like her trying to buy time.          “What?”

                She laughed again.

                “So suspicious. I’m merely offering you the chance to find out how I did it. How I got inside your head, how I controlled you.”

                “I don’t want to know.” My eyes closed once more.

                “Tough,” she hissed, suddenly angry, “Because I’m going to tell you.”

                I opened my eyes just in time to see her hand slam into her side of the mirror, before the knife dropped from my own hand and my palm flew towards the glass. As soon as my skin touched the glass there was a low howling in my ears and I found myself in a world of haze, staring into my own room through a large rectangular screen. In my room stood a woman, and as I watched, she straightened up from the half crouch she had landed in, and I found myself reflected in her red pupils.

                “Now,” she said “you are going to listen to me while I tell you, from the beginning, how you came to be in that mirror and how I came to be out here in the world, in your place. You are going to listen to what I have to say because I don’t plan on getting any other credit for my genius in this new life of mine.

                “Now, the beginning. I have always been inside of you, been a part of you, but I have always also been a minority. And then came that happy day, that happy accident, when I was given the chance to finally separate myself from you. And so while you were healing in hospital I was waiting, waiting for the moment when I could set into motion those genius plans which were to be my life’s accomplishment. The very first day you returned from hospital I began my scheme. And now I must tell you something that I am afraid may make you either very happy or very sad. You see, my dear, it was all in your head. Every image you saw, the blood, the stolen goods, even this knife,” she picked up the bloody blade. “This knife which you then went on to threaten me with, it was all in your head. Right where I put it, right where I planned it to be.

                “You see I lied just now, when I said the mirror was only a way for me to communicate, in truth, since I separated from you, it has been my prison, the object that I chose to be my home away from home if you like, my home away from you. And the only way that I could ever be free from the mirror was to swap places with you, and take your place in the real world.

                “But until now I have been too weak, being separated from your body has done that to me. However, you have repaid me; I mean without you I may never have become strong enough to escape. You see, every time you felt afraid of me, in fact, any time you so much as thought of me, you were adding to my strength. And then, when you finally made up your mind, only a little while ago, that I was important enough to bother killing, you made me important, and gave me the last strength I needed to switch our places.

                “What do you think to that then, eh? Genius, no?”

                “No,” I breathed.

                I had been listening silently until that point, trying to find some way to get out of what I now knew to be the inside of the mirror, and she had finally given me the answer I needed.

                “Not quite,” and I threw out my hand pressing it to my side of the glass.

                On the other side of the mirror, she stared at me for a moment, looking faintly surprised, before breaking into peals of laughter.

                “Silly child,” she hissed. “You have not the strength to control me. Nor now the time to build that strength. You see I lied when I said I couldn’t be killed by the breaking of the mirror, it is in fact the only sure way to kill the one trapped inside, and I shall not hesitate in proceeding to do so.”

                I watched as she reached forwards, taking the mirror off the hook on the wall.

                It was all over.

                I stared at her in horror, as she lifted the mirror above her head, a crazed look in her eye as she prepared to smash it down. In my mind, I could hear her voice as she laughed at me, mocking me for my stupidity. Now her red eyes met mine, widening with anticipation.

                “Goodbye,” she whispered.

                It was all over.

Reviews

[EMP]

mmm i like this, i like this a lot