Reflections

The fan above your bed spins idly, daring you to fall asleep.  Tonight, like many other nights, you lie awake, exhausted with an overactive mind.  Every night is the same.  You lie here, regretting another mediocre day.

Eventually sleep comes for you.  But that is the way of things.  Dreams have a way of sneaking up on you and whisking you away.  Perhaps your waking mind cannot fathom the places where dreams go.  Or perhaps there’s a part of you that lies deeper, past that edge of consciousness, waiting to be set free.

For that part of you, tonight is a night of wandering.

Your eyes open.  For a moment you are unsure of where you are but then you realize you are simply in your room.

You sit up and cast your eyes along the walls.  The window is dark.  Where are the stars?  You flip the covers off and turn to stand up and cry out.

There is no floor.

Where once there was smooth hardwood, now there is nothing but darkness.  Your stomach tenses in fear as you jump back to the centre of the bed.  Your eyes flicker back and forth searching for something to ground you.  The walls and door of your room are there, but they are floating in darkness.

With one shaky hand you pull yourself towards the end of the bed and peek over. Sure enough, there is nothing but the black.  But where is the light coming from?  Why can you see?  You look up and sure enough, there is no roof.  Instead, there is a small circle of light high above you.  It’s like an opening casting a spotlight on your room.

There.  What is that?  Just beyond the foot of your bed there is the hint of something.  It is an edge.  No, it’s a step.  A single step, floating in the darkness.  Your breath catches as a burst of excitement fills your chest, followed by the cold shudder of fear.

Dare you leave the safety of your bed?

Yes.  You do.

Your bare foot steps hesitantly onto the cold step.  It seems to hold your weight as you inch yourself forward until both feet are fully committed.  Immediately a second step appears below the first.  You exhale slowly and gather yourself.  The darkness around you is overwhelming, so you focus on your feet.

One foot.  Then the other.

A third step appears.  Down into the darkness you descend.  Above you your bedroom fades into the black, and old steps disappear as new ones form, removing all trace that you were there.  

Time feels different here.  In the same breath you feel as though you’ve been walking forever but also just left your bedroom.  Either way you feel a sense of urgency in the pit of your stomach.  Be swift in this place.

At last you arrive at a landing of sorts and the ground is smooth rock.  There are crystals scattered about that give off a faint glow.  Or maybe it’s just your mind grasping for reality.  Regardless, there is light.

The path ahead of you beckons, but the darkness here is heavy.  Only a few feet ahead of you is illuminated at a time, and you can’t help but think of Hansel and Gretel following the bread crumbs to get home.  You quicken your steps.

At last the path leads you to a dead end.  

In front of you is a wall.  It is smooth and black and doesn’t seem to reflect what light there is here. 

You cautiously extend your hand to feel it. It is smooth and solid, and as soon as you make contact your own reflection appears in front of you.  The entire surface is a mirror.

The sudden appearance of your doppelganger surprises you and you take an involuntary step back.  Your reflection does not.

Their voice pierces the silence and echoes inside your head like a thunderclap.

“Why are you here?”

You are momentarily caught off guard by the question, still stunned by your own reflection moving of its own accord. 

“Wha…What?”

“WHY ARE YOU HERE?” The voice is more insistent now, and your own eyes stare back at you with a dangerous intensity.

“I…I don’t know.  I woke up here and there were stairs and it’s dark and…I don’t know.”

Your reflection is quiet, then it cocks its head to the side as if listening to some unseen voice.  After a moment it turns back to you and regards you silently.  

“You are not ready.”  Their voice is cold and accusing.

The surface of the mirror ripples and a hand shoots out and grabs you.  Its grip is like cold iron and it pulls you into the liquid surface of the mirror.

There is an explosion of light and a loss of sense of self.  Perhaps you are falling.  It is difficult to tell, there is only light.  

Gradually you become aware of a tingling sensation like electricity running through your whole body. Then it is over and you find yourself standing in the middle of a dark room.  

Your first thought is you must be in a laboratory.  There are spheres made of light everywhere, encased in metal cages.  Some are attached to long poles like lamps, others are affixed to the walls and still others are strewn about haphazardly.  There is a large desk to one side of the room.  The floor is stone and the walls, the walls…there are no walls. Only shelves.  

Not a laboratory, a library.

As you take in your surroundings, several of the light spheres lift up and float towards you.  They float in position at various heights 360 degrees around you, bobbing ever so slightly.

When you cast your eyes to the wall the light spheres move to that exact spot creating an illuminated corridor of light from you to that place.  As you expand your attention to a wider field of view, more spheres join and they expand their reach so that you take in more of what you are looking at.  

Fascinating.  You really can only see what you are looking at, or for.

“Ahem”

A polite cough shakes you out of your reverie.  Spinning you find yourself face to face with a hooded figure.  Their face lies shrouded in darkness.

The figure is silent for a long time.  Finally they speak, and their voice comes from every direction at once.

“Be careful what you take.”

Your mouth moves incoherently.

“Wha…?” is all that manages to make its way out of your mouth.  You swallow and try again. 

 “Who are you?”

“I AM TRUTH.”

With that an endless stream of spheres appear, and like a tornado they swirl around each other faster and faster until they disappear from the naked eye view, but the full extent of the library is revealed. 

It is roughly in the shape of a circle, with wide shelves joined together which are then further extended vertically as far as the eye can see.  In fact, you are pretty sure your eyes simply can’t make out how high and how far it goes.

After a moment the tornado of light spheres begins slowing down and then finally scatters into whatever corners they came from, leaving you with your handful of lights.  

Hesitantly, you look to the stranger for permission before walking in a somewhat dazed state over to the nearest shelf.  The books are beautifully bound and cared for.  Their covers are thick leather with embossed runes for titles.  You cannot read them, but as you grow closer you hear whispering in your mind that grows ever urgent.  

You extend your hand carefully and just as you are about to touch it you withdraw.

“You can’t handle the truth.”  A line from a movie whispers from the depths of your subconscious and your chest tightens.

The stranger walks toward you purposefully, stopping directly in front of you.  You can feel their eyes upon you behind their cowled face.

“You dare come here.”  It is a statement, not a question.

“YOU DARE COME HERE!” The voice is angry and consuming and your hands shake.  Everything inside of you screams to run away.  This is wrong.  This is so wrong.  Yet you hold your ground.

The step floating next to your bed appears in your mind.

The hardest step isn’t the first step; it’s the next step.

The stare of the hooded figure is unwavering and intense, leaving nothing but your own breath to keep you from running.

“I’m done running.”  It comes out unexpectedly, but it has the ring of truth to it.  That’s why you are here.

The thought is crystal clear.  

The globes of light around you grow in number and the library shifts, causing your stomach to lurch.  You are still standing in front of a bookshelf but somehow you know this is different.  This shelf has answered you.  Without looking you reach a hand out and grab a book.  The runes on the spine glow brighter as you pull it from the shelf.

Thousands of spheres of light pour down from the atrium of the library while thousands more pour in from every possible direction.  They swirl together into a bright white helix, moving and twisting at a frantic pace.

The hooded figure turns, and for a moment the light from the helix illuminates their face.  It’s your own, but the eyes hint at depth you cannot begin to understand.  

“It is done.”  Their voice sounds more distant now, and for a moment a look of compassion crosses their face, then they fade back into the darkness.  One last whisper, so faint you’re not sure it is real, touches your ears.

“Truth not earned is dangerous…”

The helix is wider now and soon it will consume you.  

“I’m not running any more,” you whisper as you open the book.

There is an abrupt sense of shifting and like a dam bursting all the protected emotion you’ve accumulated is released all at once.  It is churning and raw and your head fills with images and ideas you cannot quite grasp, all culminating into the white-hot image of the helix.  It is fear and pain and love and regret and your insides burn so hot you don’t even realize you are screaming.

Then there is nothing.

You awake on the floor of a white room.  There are no doors, no windows, and the only remarkable thing is the person sitting cross-legged staring quietly at you.

With a start you sit up, and not surprisingly they look exactly like you.  They have a faint glow to them, like something you can see only out of the corner of your eye.

You want to ask “Am I dreaming?” but ultimately you decide that it doesn’t matter.  What is reality but an illusion anyways?

You blink.  That sounds…true.  

“You sent me there,” you finally say.  

They just sit quietly and wait, looking slightly amused.

“You broke the rules.”

They quietly wait.  

“I broke the rules.”

They smile and hold out their hand, palm up.  You reach for it.

Your eyes open, and you are staring at the fan in your room, humming softly.  You throw off the covers and climb out of bed, careful to notice the floor.  The mirror in the corner stares back at you, cold and unforgiving.  Your lip begins to quiver, and you sink to the floor and curl into a ball, sobbing silently.