I stood in front of the mirror and saw a reflection of a stranger in my clothes. A stranger she was, I did not know her, other than the fact she was wearing the same type of clothes as I was. My extended finger touched hers and marred the perfect outline of her fingers. The mirror showed her faltered smile, which eventually dimmed the lights around us. Both of us left the mirror simultaneously, and we arrived at a forsaken place where all was dark, grey and mundane.
I could not understand; I was at a place where wooden floor planks creaked under my foot and mirrors stood everywhere but now, I was with her in this living graveyard or someplace of that sort, our feet trapped in layers of mud and grime. The fog was frightening, and I could sense a faint smell of iron. My replica stood at a distant. Her senses were sharpened as they were exposed to an unpleasant mix of iron and rotten meat. The smell was strangely familiar to my nose, as if I have smelt it at some point of my short life. It lingered at my throat, and I saw my replica wrinkled her nose and her eyebrows met with a frown. I ignored her.
I continued to walk on, and on, and on. The fortress in front of me began to show some of its dark outline, and soon I could see some poison ivy creeping up the old, giant fortress like little creeping pests. They were like claws grasping onto the frail walls, eating away the remaining bricks and cement. I took a few steps forward and was instantly met with a loud, booming noise, like thousands of cannons being released at the same time. The ground shook violently and I was there, stuck in a gigantic quicksand I thought was mud, my eyes darting everywhere in search for my replica, whom I later spotted yards away from me, standing as uselessly as I was in the quicksand that threatened to swallow us. All around me, bricks and cement and stones and rocks were thrown in all direction as the fortress fell; dust was mixed with the fog in the air and the howling of the wind tortured me (and my replica) with its stench of iron and bad meat. And then It stopped.
My heart was pounding madly against my ribcage. I did not remember being eaten up by the quicksand. I found myself sitting in the corner of a perfect little grey room, accompanied by a small girl of about four or five. Her tiny frock was neat and clean, but her face was strewn with what looked like dust and her own tears. Little creeping pests of poison ivy were slowly crawling their way up to her little ankles, but she sat there motionless, her eyes blank and dull and grey, just like her surroundings. On the walls, I saw her homework. It need not make any sense of why she was doing homework on her walls, but I felt I could sympathize with her. Her cute objets d’art were neatly lined up along the window like dominos.
Suddenly, I felt so cold; so did my companion. She produced a thin blanket and persuaded me to join her. We would play a game, she said. The person who stays in here the longest, wins.
It wouldn’t be hard, seeing as I was cold to my bones. We snuggled up in that thin blanket and I watched the poison ivy creeping up to my own ankle as how they had to my companion’s. I began to wonder what happened to my mirror friend.
There were cannons again. The ground shook under me and the floor began to part. My companion jumped to her feet (so she lost the game), pulling the poison ivy free from her ankle and looked out of the window. Her objets d’art had fallen like dominos, and out of her reach. I would spare some of my compassion for her broken decorative items if I wasn’t so afraid of the failing ceiling. I mimicked my little friend by pulling my ankles free of those poison ivy and I stood there, in the middle of the room, looking for a door. I saw that my replica had returned to me, and together, we watched my little friend cried silently on the floor while the ceiling above us started to let go of some particles. What I hadn’t noticed before was a sole Victorian mirror which hung on the furthest end of the room’s wall. Also, lined up against the walls were chunks of unrecognizable stuff which emitted a foul smell. I knew they were the source of the iron-and-bad-meat-smell, and later, to my horror, I realized it was the smell of blood and flesh. A closer look gave me the confirmation I needed. The gory details made me nauseous.
And a little confusion left me dazed: the room was a perfect little room, how quickly it had expanded.
The quake had stopped now; the eerie silence was killing me.
The little girl had stopped crying too, and she led us to that mirror. The walk wasn’t long, but I would appreciate if the morbid images were omitted from our journey. And then, we arrived.
Now, all three of us stood in front of the big mirror, but I could only see one reflection.
Me.
0 comments:
Post a Comment