Reflection

It was a hard, hard lesson, learning to be kind to myself.

Contest Prompt

Staring into the mirror you notice some unsettling reflections. It seems you have no power to break from the gaze!".

The crack in the mirror froze me in the act of shaving. “How’d that happen?” I asked. The old Victorian house had come cheap or I couldn’t have afforded moving in. Things had gone wrong since that first day. Lights would flash on and off, doors opened and shut on their own, a stray black cat thought the Victorian was its home and I’m allergic to cats.

I’d gotten the place on contract with free living inside while I worked on the place before flipping it and moving on to the next place. I’m a pretty good DIY type guy, had to be. My dad left the day I was born. Mom was sickly. I learned early it was up to me to fix whatever broke. I had to be creative. We were always in debt. With mom’s passing I was on my own.

“Hey. You can’t move in here.” It was the homeless girl I’d kicked out for freeloading inside. She was back, this time with the black cat held in her arms.

“You need to reflect on your miserable life,” she hissed. The cat joined her. I sneezed and waved at cat hair floating in the air.

She’d left the front door open. When I grabbed her arm to march her outside, it slammed itself shut. A gust of wind began rattling the windows. “There’s always the back door.” I was determined to get her and the cat out of there.

“Catch me if you can.”

The girl shook free, racing away before I could react. The cat, now on the floor, nearly tripped me up, winding her tail between my legs. I heard the girl laughing at me, saw her taking two steps at a time heading upstairs. “Got you,” I cried. There was no way out. All that was up there was an attic bedroom, long unused.

My foot broke through the rotten wood of the first step taking my weight. “The girl must have missed it,” I said to myself, shaking bloody splinters free. My leg looked like a porcupine had attacked it. More laughter echoed from above.

My luck changed when I reached the attic. The lights came on and stayed that way. She was standing, facing me, beckoning, the large bedroom mirror doubling her image behind her. When I went in, the door slammed shut behind me. “Good,” I said, standing there and catching my breath. “No escape.”

“Reflect on this, big man,” she said as I approached, making sure she would make no move around me.

My eyes flicked to the ones in the mirror, haunted ones, devoid of hope, trapped in some unspeakable inner turmoil. I could not look away. “What?” I began, feeling the word die on my lips, and my unease grew.

“Reflect long and hard, big man, until the truth will set you free.” The girl clapped her hands and the attic door opened behind me. The black cat jumped up to join her. “We’ll be downstairs, making ourselves at home.”

I didn’t care. I had to calm those mad, mad eyes staring back at me. My hands reached out to touch palm to palm with those in the mirror as I leaned close, and closer still. “You’re O.K.” I whispered to my reflected self.

Images in the mirror danced around that scene of horror, raising my alarm. they wove in and out of those terrified eyes. Childhood demons dreamed alive existed there in that gaze. Each injured memory, emotional wound and insult found it's place in that returned gaze.

The pressure of my weight upon the mirror cracked lightning shaped fissures in its surface. Blood wept from where my hands met those of my reflected image.

In horror I felt myself sinking inside it to become one with the image of myself. The pain grew so intense I half fainted, feeling myself falling, falling deeper into my reflection. Then, I was consumed in darkness. The attic lights went out.

We live together better than I thought we might, the witch girl, her cat, and me. I am the true image of myself, trapped in the fractured maze of a broken old mirror.

The young witch’s familiar, the black cat, no longer bothers me. Living in the mirror I no longer am subject to being allergic to cat hair, nor the troubles of the world I used to have to endure. My physical wounds have had time to heal. This is a calm and peaceful world. I neither eat nor sleep. I exist.

Now, I have plenty of time to reflect.


WC 750