A Piece of Candy

A Piece of Candy

The mirror showed a reflection that was not my own. I took a step back, startled by what I was seeing, but not confused. I felt my brain register the visual. Processing it like someone trying to process a memory from long ago that had been triggered by an aroma. As I processed the image, the mirror expanded. No, not expanded. Multiplied on itself. I saw fire. I took another step back, but I didn’t take my eyes off the mirror. The mirror multiplied again. The fire dilated, it spread from the first mirror to the second mirror. A feeling of intrigue came over me. Curiosity even. What exactly was I seeing? Yes, it was a mirror, and it was fire within it, but why?

I stepped back again, and again, and again. The mirror repeated it methodical behavior and separated onto itself once again, then again, and again. The fire followed it, like an eager child following a parent with the hope that a piece of candy would be the reward if the child was diligent about it. One more step back and I felt something hard against my back. I turned around, only to see that the mirror had multiplied to a point that it had formed a half circle. I turned completely around and stared into the fire, as it was right upon me, but I could not feel its heat. There should have been heat. The fire was a deep red, like the red of blood. It wafted and wavered back and fourth like the waves of an angry sea. I reached out and touched the mirror. It was cold. I pushed on it, and that fire began to ooze out of the mirror and spill onto the floor. It was thick and oozed ever so slowly. As soon as it touched the floor it burst into flames, and this time I felt the heat.

Afraid, I jumped back from the flame. You see, I am scared of fire. Scared to be burned. Always have been and as a result I have never been burned in my life. I could feel the heat hit me in the face. I could feel its anger, its hunger, its need to be fed. I watched it struggle to ooze from that mirror as the mirror folded onto itself, and the second one did as well, but now the fire was coming towards me. No longer having a source to continue to grow, it began to creep across the floor boards in my direction. The heat stirred an immense fear within me. It was hungry, and it needed to be fed……by me.

I tripped and fell to the floor on my butt, and another section of mirror folded in on itself. Half of the mirror that had formed disappeared. I looked around and noticed that the fire in the reflection still raged on, but it was different, then the fire that had manifested in front of me, now seemingly right at my feet. In this moment, I realized that if I moved back again the mirror would decrease in size again, giving me room to maneuver away from the actual fire in front of me. I scooted back until I felt the mirror against my back. I watched it fold in upon itself like a cardboard box being folded in to make one multilayered piece, but the more the mirror folded the larger the flames got in front of me, and the hotter the room got. I was beginning to sweat. The sweat was running from my hairline into my eyebrows at an alarming rate not only from the heat, but from how afraid I had become in those minutes leading up to this moment. Truly, any curiosity or understanding of what was happening before had disappeared the moment the fire became real. Now, I was focusing on escaping this situation before it was too late.

Pressing my back against the original mirror, I felt it crack. The shards pressed into my back. I sharply turned towards the mirror out of pain. Now, facing the mirror, I could feel the heat of the fire behind growing more intense, but something more disturbing now had my attention. A little girl sat in the floor in front of me with her had out. The mirror itself had suddenly vanished and its place was this child. In her hand was a red piece of candy. I stared at her for a second, confused at what I was seeing. Her legs were crossed and I could not see her face because she was looking at the floor. The heat from the fire behind me was so intense now, it began to burn my skin, and this revelation jolted me back to reality. Ignoring the candy, I grabbed the girls hand out of desperation driven by pain. “Run!”, I yelled as I yanked the blonde haired child up off the floor. The candy fell out of her outstretched hand, and she looked up at me. Her eyes were red, and full of that fire I saw in the mirror. She looked at the candy on the floor and immediately screamed in response. Her eyes bled, and her face burst into flames. She continued to scream. The scream itself sounded like that of a rabbit caught in the mouth of a gruesome predator. It was so loud and high pitched I could feel my ear drums busting.

I was terrified. Trapped between the flames of the fire caught at my back, and what appeared to be a child in flames in front of me. I screamed from the pain and fear I felt. I screamed, and I fell to my knees in despair. There was nowhere for me to run, I was trapped, and I was going to die. Suddenly, the girl stopped screaming in front of me, her mouth was still open, but the sound had been muted. She pointed at the candy that had fallen to the floor. On my knees, I could feel the blood running down my back from the shards of glass. I could feel the fire, ever so present behind me, threatening to consume me at any second now. I grabbed the candy. I threw it in my mouth. I swallowed it whole and harshly. Expeditiously even. My throat began to burn, and then my stomach. I grabbed my chest because I could not breathe, and then suddenly, the world went black.

Again, the mirror showed a reflection that was not my own. I stood there for a moment, realizing I was back in the same room, but this time, there was no fire. I refused to step back this time, and the memory of what I had just experienced was still upon me. However, I did not feel heat at my back, and the pain of glass in my skin was no longer with me. In fact, the longer I stood there and thought about it, the more it began to feel like a distant memory. I stood there in that spot refusing to move my feet but looking around. There was also no little girl. I looked at the mirror. No fire, but in its place, water.

I immediately realized in that moment, I had two, maybe three options: One, step back. Two, push the mirror, or three, step into the mirror. I wholeheartedly refused to step back from the mirror, thus avoiding the creation of the scenario that I had just recently experienced only this time combatting a room full of water unintentionally. At the same time, my mind could not fathom stepping into a world that didn’t seem to entirely be real.

I pushed hard. The mirror crashed to the floor in slow motion. Not matching the force behind my push. Almost like watching a motion picture slowed down. As the mirror fell, droplets of water rose from it. In those droplets of water, there seemed to be a little girl with red hair. As the droplet rose from the descending mirror, they increased in size. The little girl became more pronounced. Like before she held her hand out, and in it was a blue piece of candy. She smiled at me, and puzzled, I stared into her blue eyes.

The mirror hit the floor, and shards of glass sprang up from it with the intensity of a river bursting from a dam. I watched in horror as water began to poor from out of the mirror at an alarming rate. The glass from the mirror suddenly took on a swift direction towards me. It flew into me, piercing my skin where my shoulders and chest were, and I cried out in pain. The water began to fill the room quickly, and I looked down at my arms now covered in blood, bleeding into the rising water around me. It was cold, so icy cold. I stepped back.

I could see the mirror under the surface of the water multiply. I stepped forward. Now the water was up to my knees. I panicked. I stood there and looked around the room. There were no windows, and no doors. I had no way out, and I quickly realized that drowning was a real possibility. I stepped forward again, this time virtually standing inside the frame of the broken mirror. The water at waist level now, and so cold my body had begun to shiver. I reached into the water and grabbed the mirror by its frame. Not knowing what other options, I had, I lifted the frame up out of the water. A hand grabbed my wrist as I did so. I turned to see the little girl staring at me. Her pale blue eyes stared blankly at me, in them, the reflection of rising water, and still bleeding, the blood began to glaze over her hand and then drip into the rising water. She screamed that ear drum busting high pitched scream from before. I let go of the mirror frame and clutched my ears in response. The water level rose to my breast, and I could feel my feet beginning to rise up off the floor. The girl stared at her hand and the blood that had remained. She whisked her hand in the water, and the blood burst into flames. The scream stopped but her mouth remained open, and my heart fluttered in angst because now, treading water had become a real means of survival.

The water was now forcing me towards the ceiling of the room, soon there would be no air and I would surely drown. The girl still there watched me sob and look for an exit. There was none. I gave up. I stopped treading water. I let myself sink under the surface. She swam to me. Red hair, blue eyes, and a piece of candy in her hand. I took the candy, swam to the surface, and swallowed.

The mirror showed a reflection that was not my own, because I stared at the floor. My vision could not see past the bottom portion of the frame because I was afraid to stare at the mirror. I didn’t want to look at it. I knew this story now. It was a story of failure. If I looked at it, and tried to decide what to do, I assuredly would fail. There was no correct decision, and so if I stared at the floor, I would not be forced to make one. Yet here I was making a decision. The decision to not make a decision. A tear grazed my cheek. Pain filled my heart. I closed my eyes, and I stepped forward. Into the mirror because making no decision was still after all making a decision. I felt nothing, but I heard a voice. A song rather.

“What must we do in times like these,

Times full of strife and longing,

A future we cannot see,

What must we do in times like these,

A past full of pain and wronging,

No cure for our disease

What must we do in times like these,

A present full of indecisiveness and desire

A longing to be free.”

Following the song, with my eyes still closed, I heard an echo. “Make your decision”. I opened my eyes, I ran. It was dark, and suddenly, it was also cold. I kept running in the dark until I was out of breath. I couldn’t see anything; it was pitch black. I turned around, to see the opening of the mirror and the room behind it. I didn’t care, I wasn’t going back. A figure formed in the mirror frame, and the darkness around me started to lift. I looked around. I was sitting in grass. As green as the greenest blade of grass you could have even seen. I looked up and there was water floating above my head. The color was this pristine clear blue, but it moved like a calm ocean that had been flipped upside down. I stared at the figure coming towards me. A woman in a red dress floated towards. The dress had a tail of fire that blazed as she glided in my direction. She stopped a few feet in front of me. Her dark eyes were inviting as she held out a piece of candy. I stood up. I stared at the candy, and then back at her. She smiled at me. Her smile was so inviting. I stepped towards her cautiously. She nodded at me, and her coal-colored eyebrows rose in what seemed like surprise that I had taken such a bold move forward. I cupped her hand and moved my face towards the piece of candy to see if it had a scent. It did. Oddly enough it smelled like burned fish, and suddenly I was taken back to the burning room and overcome with a feeling of drowning. The scent of the purple candy had triggered those very recent and very painful experiences. I stepped back and looked at the woman. She could see the confusion overcome me. I watched her mouth open slowly as that terrifying scream began to lift from her throat.

I stepped forward and grabbed her throat with one hand, and her long black hair with the other. The flames of her dress engulfed my clothing, and began to melt my skin, but I did not care. I would no longer be a victim of this narrative. I would no longer let my surroundings control me. As I squeezed her throat ignoring the pain the flames were bringing, I could feel the muscles in her throat collapse. I looked at her and realized she had stopped screaming only to begin laughing, and her face, her face looked like my own. My hand around her throat seemed to not sway her behavior. I didn’t care, terrified at what I was witnessing, I squeezed harder as I watched blisters form around my fingers from the fire. I ignored the pain for as long as I could. I screamed and squeezed. Eventually, I couldn’t bare it any longer, and I could feel my body let go as it began to lose the fight. Unconsciousness began to set in, and my grip loosened. My knees buckled under me as the muscle in my legs burned away to ligaments and cartilage. The woman stopped laughing and grabbed my face. Her dark eyes did not reflect me, but a black background. She leaned in towards my face. The laughter had stopped. Her mouth engulfed mine as my eyes drifted towards the ceiling. The water began to come crashing down and that was the last thing I saw.

The mirror showed a reflection, that was my own. I stood there in awe. It really was me, truly me. I touched my face, and the mirror did the same. I looked around the attic room and there was the window that should have been there all along. I turned around and there was the door that I had originally come through. I took a step towards the door. I went to take another but hesitated. I looked back at the mirror, and it was just me, standing there. It had not multiplied this time. I walked towards the old wooden door and turned the brass knob. Behind the door, was the stairwell that led me here. I ran down the dusty old wooden steps onto the next level and I ran to the next set of steps to the bottom level. I opened the front door of the house and went outside into the warm sun. I threw myself down on the porch outside the house and took a breath of the fresh air. Tears began to stream down my face in disbelief. Somehow, I had survived this nightmare.

I opened my eyes in horror, the grass was purple, and the sky was red. A blonde-haired woman with blue eyes stood there before me.

Holding a piece of candy.