Portrait of a Darkened Soul

The door was propped open, beckoning passersby to enter the inky otherworld that it guarded. Phantom hands gripped me, pulling me toward that gateway to hell masquerading as a house of mirrors. They tied a ribbon around my core and tugged me closer. The feeling was nauseating, and yet I couldn’t turn away.

I hadn’t been able to face my reflection since the accident. Two months had passed since I’d hit that girl on the bike with my car. Two months since I’d last looked in a mirror. Maybe it was morbid curiosity, but after all that time the pull toward that house of mirrors was too tempting to ignore.

Slowly, I inched my way closer to the entrance. Step by step, breath by breath. The lights and sounds of the carnival faded away into nothingness until all that remained was that open door. I paused at the entrance, my touch featherlight on the doorframe.

“Tickets, please,” came a voice to my left. I turned to see a man sitting at a small table near another door. Beyond it mirrors glimmered in the darkened room. The man extended a hand, his dull eyes watching me wearily. Wordlessly, I handed him two tickets and drifted through the door.

Immediately, I was met by my reflection. The sight made me recoil as though I had touched a hot stove. I closed my eyes, urging my heart to slow. My breath rattled in my lungs as I took a step forward and looked again.

This time, I did not flinch. I regarded my reflection with the detached gaze of a bystander, looking myself up and down, taking in the details these months had made me forget. My freckled cheeks, my limp hands, my feet that always pointed straight forward. Distantly, I noted that my hair no longer shined the way it once did. My eyes were as dull as those of the man whom I’d given my tickets. My mouth hung in an upside-down smile. The girl before me looked empty, hollow. And I couldn’t ignore the voice in the back of my mind telling me that I deserved to look that way.

I don’t know how long I stood there before moving on to the next mirror, and then the next. I saw my body squished and stretched, twisted, and turned. Each reflection I observed more vividly than the last, each one coming into sharper focus until I reached the deepest part of the mirror house.

I looked back the way I came. The labyrinth of mirrors threatened to swallow me whole and the dim lights made my head swim. I spun in circles, for minutes and hours and days, until I wanted to vomit from the dizziness. Colors blended, and everywhere I turned all I saw was that face. My face. The face of…

“A killer.”

I froze, my body seizing at the cold voice behind me. That virulent voice whose vowels were talons and consonants were fangs. I turned slowly to find the source of that voice and found myself looking in another mirror.

“Who told you that?” My voice was a whisper.

My reflection lifted a brow and her mouth quirked to the side. “You did.”

“No, no I didn’t,” I shook my head in earnest.

“Oh, but you did,” there was a wicked smile in those words. “Just now, did you already forget?”

“No,” I shook my head again. “No, no…”

“Oh, I bet it was delicious. I can almost feel her bones against the windshield.”

“Stop! Please,” I begged. “I didn’t want this.”

“You’re a killer, Ophelia,” she smirked.

“It was an accident,” my voice shook.

“We both know that’s a lie.”

“But it’s not!”

“Killer.”

“Please–”

“Murderer.”

“That’s not true!”

“Villain.”

“STOP!”

I punched the mirror, bracing myself for the blinding pain to shatter through my knuckles. But it never came. Instead, my fist met a cool, viscous surface that felt like jello. My swing knocked me off balance and I fell after my hand, sinking into the mirror. The air stalled in my lungs as I melted through layers of guilt and hate until I lay on the floor, staring up at a murky sky.

“Well, that was dramatic,” came a voice like silk and venom above me. My reflection stood over me, hands on her hips and a triumphant smile on her face. “But since you’re here…”

She trailed off, lifting her gaze to the horizon. Midnight-colored hills roiled in every direction. The only light in the world seemed to come from an assortment of rectangles and ovals and squares littering the hillsides. The mirrors.

I stared at them, willing my body to fight back and escape through the nearest one. A flicker in one of the mirrors caught my eye. Two men were racing through those gaps of light. It looked to be a security guard, followed by the man at the mirror house entrance. I swallowed a sob as I realized they were racing to find me, dreading the moment they realized they were too late. I was already gone.

A shrill whistle brought my attention snapping back to my reflection. She still had her fingers in her mouth as the call echoed through the landscape. A moment later an answering call thundered back, followed by a mass of darkness swarming the horizon.

My eyes widened. “What is that? Let me go,” I struggled to sit up, but she pinned me under her knee.

“That,” she said, “is an army of your inner demons, coming to smite you.” She tipped her head back and cackled. “Don’t tell me you don’t deserve this.”

The army got closer, until it hovered around us, a cacophony of shrieks and screams and howls forming a cocoon of torture. The knee lifted from my chest and I sensed my reflection edging away and joining the horde. I wanted to run but I lay paralyzed, staring at the swarm above. It descended upon me, and I screamed–

Hands gripped my shoulders, turning me onto my back. I lay shaking on the floor of the house of mirrors, my hair soaked with snot and tears and my hands clawing away invisible foes. Blood soaked my knuckles, and shattered pieces of glass lay around me, brushed to the side by whoever now held me still.

“What happened here?” demanded a strong voice. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head.

“No idea,” came the gruff voice of the man who collected my tickets earlier. “I heard a noise and called you over. I never expected this.”

The man holding me steady paused a moment before speaking. “Well, we’ll never get answers out of her while she’s in this state. Let’s get her in an ambulance and follow her to the hospital. Maybe the paramedics can give her a sedative or something to calm her down.”

I whimpered and swung my arms. No. But strong hands grabbed mine and the sounds of sirens tainted the air with their foul message: something bad happened.

Someone picked me up and carried me out of the mirror house into the bright sunny carnival that still existed outside of that evil place. Onlookers stared and mothers grabbed their children as I was loaded into a white casket on wheels that would take me to the hospital. I tried to call for help, but it was no use. No one could save me from what already dwelled within my soul.

A needle stung my arm and I thrashed against restraints I hadn’t noticed until now. Sobbing, I barely felt the cool sedative enter my body until my eyelids grew heavy. In a matter of seconds, time froze still and the world fell out from beneath me, leaving me to float into the abyss.