Here's something dark for you to chew on: I've been thinking about angels recently, especially when I was in the ER the other day. The triage nurse asked what brought me in. I told her that my stomach was on fire. She laughed. From then on when they came into my room to check on me, they called me not by my name, but by my rage. Where's the girl with her stomach on fire?

The doctor said that nothing was wrong with me. That all my tests came back normal. He left the room and I saw through the glass window in my door an insane woman locked in the room across from me, banging furiously on the door with a cheap shoe.

She looked strung out. Mouth open like she was rabid, red eyes, dirty, matted hair, teeth that could have fallen out if you just reached out to touch them. I wondered if the fluorescent lights in the ER burned her eyes alive. They say people on m*th can't stand bright lights. I wonder if the nurses in the ER had a nickname for her, too.

I'm willing to bet it wasn't a nice one.

I was still thinking about angels, about how there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who are fine with reality as it is, stone cold sober and happy to merely exist, seemingly never questioning the space they take up. Then, on the other end of that spectrum, are the others: those who will obliterate their entire physical body to match the chaos inside their minds.

Maybe it's religion that makes the difference, why most people seem alright to wait this life out and when something bad happens to them, call it god, no questions asked. Or maybe it's luck. Maybe it's being hugged and told that you are loved. Why was that woman screaming and locked in a room, when across the hallway, I was also enraged, the only difference being that my demons stayed shut up inside myself, and I had never been out after dark with strangers willing to sell their souls for one more hit, one more ounce.

The second kind of people in this world know that angels don't exist, because they themselves have been outside of their bodies, leaving earth, stuck somewhere between heaven and hell at all times, with no one worshipping them or even really noticing their presence, unless it suddenly bothers them or they are paid to do it.

If it is known that angels ascend into heaven, the bright place shot through with light, m*th heads would never want to enter it, because it would set them on fire.

I stared into the glass window on the door of my hospital room, a looking glass that showed not my reflection, but the reflection of a woman entering hell, her eyes not seeing the reality she was so desperate to escape from, clawing at her skin because it was a prison and probably felt enflamed, like it was on fire.

When the nurse came back into my room, she said, "Ah, the girl with her stomach on fire!"

I said, "No, you're blocking the view. The woman on fire is in that room."

I didn't worry about the voices. They weren't real. I knew that and as long as I knew that, they couldn't hurt me. That is, until today.

I stared through my own eyes and felt my mouth move. I heard a voice that wasn't my own. It said things I would never say. And my friends, they acted like they knew this voice.

"Oh, hi!" they smiled and said a name I don't remember anymore. The voice responded. They talked and asked about things that someone who wasn't me wouldn't know. My friends recognized them and in that moment I knew something unimaginable. I didn't live alone. I woke up, and those breakfasts I didn't remember, that wasn't an accident, that was my roommate: the roommate in my head. I started wondering something else. Was I the voice? In this moment I couldn't move my body. I couldn't control what I was saying. I couldn't exist in any way that mattered. How could I live like this? Or, was this something that couldn't be called living?

I started to panic and my vision went black. I felt myself sit down. My friends asked if I was ok and the voice that wasn't mine responded again.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just nauseous."

Was I the voice? Cause, I made that same excuse whenever the screams started. I could feel something biting my lip. I rolled my eyes. I'd worked so hard to break that habit. But, it wasn't my eyes that were rolling. It was like when you're annoyed at your parents but instead of saying something, you say it in your head. It was like that, except it wasn't a choice. It had never been a choice. I started to fight. Staying like this couldn't be possible. I had to live. I had to exist. Why was this happening? My life was mine and I couldn't let that get taken away.

It was to no avail.

That night I stared in the mirror. Something felt wrong. The person who stared back... wasn't me. I looked down, I felt the body I was in. It wasn't mine either. I looked in the mirror hoping, praying that something would change. It didn't. I looked down. I'd never seen these clothes before. It was a set of black overalls and a denim jacket. This wasn't mine. I tried to remember what happened today. Why did I put these clothes on? Why was I wearing something I didn't own? I didn't know. All I knew is that I'd lost control that morning. Someone had bit my lip and it wasn't me. My friends had spoken to a voice that wasn't mine. They had known that voice. It wasn't new. I looked in the mirror again. There was a note. It read like this:

"Hello, I'm sorry. I know you don't like it when I take control. It wasn't my fault this time, I promise. I know you don't remember what happened and why you came to be this way, but we'll take care of you. I may not be your friend, but I am not your enemy. If it hurts to read this, throw it away and forget it all again. You just have to decide it was a dream. It all seems impossible anyway, right? If you don't want to forget, if you want to know why, leave a note on the mirror and check back tomorrow. Good night and sweet dreams-- Jennifer."

I stared at the note. My hand started to tremble. Thoughts raced in a flash of color. A cacophony of voices filled the insides if my brain until my own thoughts were drowned out of existence. I waited, and my mind went dark. After a time, I was alive again. My thoughts started turning everything around. I hadn't forgotten and I wanted to know more. I couldn't stay like this anymore. The voices couldn't be ignored.

A pen had been set next to the sink. A note card lay next to it. I picked them up, jotted down a sentence and signed off.

"P.S. don't go. I need you and I want to know more.--Jackson"

Then, I turned off the lights and went to bed. I shut my eyes and let the blackness take me once more, but this time I wasn't scared, I was terrified.

I used to love mirrors.

Windows and mirrors, but mirrors even more so held fascination for me because these didn't open up space somewhere out there... they doubled it, right here and now. Of course, glass is glass, and both windows and mirrors cut a person from that place beyond. But the magic of mirrors, in doubling, is that they magnify, as if, the light and mood.

Our atmosphere.

A window, big or small, only exaggerates the confines of the interior.

The interesting point, to which I am slowing coming to, is that I never saw myself in these mirrors, only the silent beatific extension of living room. So much so that in every house I've ever lived I have liberally hung these before even thinking about curtains. It will be of no surprise that then I lived alone.... and on reflection, not alone...

In my current abode, having grown old, I have several companions, human and animal. I have hung only one mirror, and this I said aloud, while hanging it, was for safety.

It's by the rear door, and in our shot gun sort of house, shows everything over the shoulder.

Demons behind the mirror....they are portals you know...sometimes to other worlds...sometimes to a vision of your true self...forget Lovecraft that was fiction when he spoke of Old God's Cthulhu and such Yogrosoth...maybe they exist in a fevered morphine dream he had....it was whispering at first when I looked in the mirror...couldn't understand it...shoom ssshh pshhh...until words came forth....let me through...let me through it said...I broke from my gaze in horror and broke the mirror... whatever old God's demons were fucked now...until I looked in the downstairs mirror the next morning going to work....the words release me came out of it and I broke that one too...until I looked in the rear vision mirror of the car....