One time when I use to look at myself in a mirror in the dark,there wasn't much difference than when I look at my self in a mirror in the light.

In the light,i knew i was standing there. In the dark,i didnt know where i was,but i knew why I was there!

Maybe now when I'm standing in the light,I'm really in the darkness,that's why I can hardly see myself.

Do i want to see myself in the light of the mirror or the darkness of the mirror?!

I have chosen the darkness of the mirror!

Because every time i leave the light of the mirror.

I return to the dark of the mirror!

And a part of me appears.

So, I will keep looking into the mirror in the light.

And keep returning to the mirror in the dark!

Til I fully see the image of me in the mirror in the dark!

I look into the mirror and say, "Hah!"

"Hah!," it says back.

My left brain says "2 + 2 = 4," and my right brain—it's left brain—says, "4 = 2 + 2," because mirrors are commutative.

My left brain and my right switch places.

All it took was turning on the light.

"Are you Dennis, Devil?" I ask.

"Devil, Dennis you are!" the mirror replies commutatively.

The pair of us, paired, pared...

"We few lived evil, we few," the mirror offers.

"Devil Dennis, deified, sinned, lived," I respond.

I deliver top spot, reviled.

Deliver top spot, reviled I.

Lights out! and there's only one Dennis left, but which?

The reflection in my mirror is wondering the same thing as me, on the opposite end of a decision I was afraid to make.

I want to commit an atrocity. Each time I look down into the city I reside, I see myself reflected in the mirrors, in the cityscape, wondering, contemplating commiting this quiet obscenity.

The me I am would never do such a thing, never even dream of it. The atrocity itself is one that induced many of nightmares and warrants unwanted thoughts. Thoughts that should be chased away.

When I look away, does my reflection grin? Does my reflection know the sweet satisfaction of having done it? Does the reflection of my inner psyche know what consequences have the equal reaction?

I wonder if when I put down my wine glass on this dusty glass table, is the dusty version of me looking back? Are they enjoying the same glass of Merlot? Do they hate it too?

My husband might be their husband too, or maybe they had to just pretend to match my image. Was the mirrored me also violated by the same unwanted hands? Were they loved by the same tender heart that fixed it all up when the pain of a forced situation felt it could never be mended?

Does my reflection look at me and wonder if I was raped too? Does my reflection wonder if they should get revenge like my horrible atrocious thoughts force me to think?

If my reflection had been in my situation, maybe she wouldn't feel guilty for wanting to use a corrupt system to avenge herself the way I sometimes hate to feel. Maybe she wouldn't be afraid to hit back.

My reflection looks at me and sees a coward.

She wonders if her own reflection would've been too afraid to do it. She wonders if her reflection had the strength to actually go through with it too. She knows her reflection is the worst part of her, exposes all the flaws and fears.

She knows she would've never been brave, so how could I be? The only thing the mirror image of us can do is regret that it isn't the other.

Neither of us are particularly brave, neither of us can follow through with revenge if it involves taking advantage of an unjust system. Neither of us believes there's someone else on the other side.

We are nearly identical, she's just got bangs that go to the left, while mine go to the right.

We're both the best and worst versions of ourselves, when she smiles, I smile. When she dies, I will die. When she gets justice, I'll be happy for her.

Even now as I look into the eyes that are the same color as mine, I wonder if I can even like her when I don't like her reflection.

in the mirror

my self glows

abundantly

self assured

youth ridden

smooth skinned

flashing dashing

oozing desirability

give me that

a tin plated glass

with the power to

reverse my torments

erase the living horror

separate me from that

sad sorrowful silhouette

dejected downcast outcast

I cannot help but observe

in naked eyes of wanders

who catch a passing peek

forced to pivot away fast

for fear fright

what I have

am

is infectious

-Lacitia-

There are girls all around me, in their heavy, polished wooden desks. Many of the girls are paying attention, many of them are not. Some are fastidiously taking notes, some are doodling, and some are discreetly whispering to the other girls around them. Each girl wears a crisp blue and white uniform, not quite the colour of the sky and not quite the colour of the clouds. The uniform is pretty, but there are so many other clothes that are pretty. It gets rather repetitive wearing the same thing each day.

I am in class, but I'm not paying attention to what's being said. I can always go back and read the textbook anyways. I have better things to do right now. Right now I am talking to my friend Navalia, who has her long black hair in two long plaits that have their ends pinned to the top of her head. There is a bright blue ribbon in her hair, softly iridescent, matching the colour of her uniform. Other girls have different ribbons in their hair, but Navalia likes matching.

"Mrs. Ansami is so boring," Navalia whispers to me, so quiet that the teachers cannot hear us, and neither could anyone spying for them.

"I know," I reply, "this is the worst class."

"Well at least the other classes are better."

"You're right. They are better. I don't know what's wrong with her. She's so monotone."

"Well, at least we have some time to just talk."

"Yes, it's a chance to cool down after everything that school puts us through."

"So, did you get the new skirt you wanted?"

"Yes, it looks lovely on me."

"Burnt orange is your colour."

"It really is. I'll let you borrow it if you want, though."

"You're so sweet."

"Aww, thanks. You are too."

"I wish we could wear our miniskirts to school."

"Oh, I wish so too. The girls would be so impressed by the clothes I have."

"They would. It would be so much more fun if we could dress how we wanted."

"Oh, so true."

We keep on talking until the ringing school bell dismisses us to different classes.

———

-Alissiya-

The house is empty right now. I'm ostensibly supposed to be guarding the house against thieves, or burglars, or any of the like. But how I can protect the house when I'm a twelve year old girl, I'm not quite certain. There are locks on the door anyways. Locks that prevent any intruders from coming in unnoticed. Why I'm here, I'm not entirely certain. But in this time, when the adults are at work and the other teenaged girl is at school, in this time I finally have some time to myself.

I finally have time to take down the brave face that I've been putting on. I'm allowed to sit on the couch, with no-one to see me. And I'm allowed to mourn and mourn and mourn my heart out until the time when the doors are opened and the family comes into the house, a house that is ultimately theirs, in the same way that I am ultimately theirs as well.

I think about my mother. It's been months since I saw her last. Months since I've been in her embrace. The way that I miss her, it's unspeakable. The grief settles its way deep into my heart, seeping through all parts of me, deep down into my very core. I miss her. I miss her, I miss her, I miss her so very much. And I don't want this life, not if it means being away from her. And it does. It does mean being away from her.

I am a prisoner, trapped by my hunger, trapped by my mortality, trapped by my need. But my immortal soul needs so much more than what my body needs. My immortal soul needs my family. My real family, not the masquerade of a family that I am forced to live my life with. I need my real family. And I cannot even grieve for them, not when my false family are here in this too-bright, too-large, too-cluttered house that is eerily shiny.

I lay down and I let myself feel my emotions. And it's a whirlwind storm that drowns me. But it's also an oasis in the desert. I need to allow myself to feel openly, because otherwise the secret girl inside myself is banging and clawing at the door, screaming to be let out, until her hands and throat are bloody.

Time passes by crawlingly slow, as does every second that I am in this house, or outside somewhere in the custody of the house's owners. But still, it feels like no time at all has passed when I am faced with the sound of the doorbell ringing.

"Coming," I call out. I unlock the door, the wooden door on the inside. I unlock the white gridded gate on the porch. And I welcome in Lacitia, who has her bright purple school bag on her back.

"Hi, Alissiya," she chirps brightly. She's two years older than me but she acts younger.

"Hi, Lacitia. How are you today?" I keep my voice bright and chipper.

"I'm fine. Just tired out from school."

I wish I could go to school.

———

-Lacitia-

I am at the dinner table, a finely-carved, gleaming wooden table. I am with my family, and with Alissiya, and we are just casually talking. My mother is wearing dark eyeliner and coral lipstick. My father has on a plain white truck-shirt that goes well with his dark hair. Alissiya is wearing a red dress. Everyone is happy. We're all together, and everyone is happy.

"What should we wear to Hannah's wedding?" my mother asks.

"I really like the blue dress we saw in the marketplace," Alissiya starts. "The dress with the pearls on it."

"Oh yes, that's beautiful," I agree. "Is that what you're going to be wearing?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I'll see if mom and dad have the funds for it. What are you going to be wearing?"

"I think I want to wear the red dress with the sequins that we saw a week ago."

"Oh, yes," my mom agrees, "that would be so beautiful. You would look so beautiful in that."

"I would, wouldn't I?"

"You look so beautiful no matter what you wear," my dad tells me. "Both of my girls do." He smiles.

"I just wish I could wear whatever I wanted to school," I fume ruefully.

"I don't understand that rule," Alissiya admits. "Why shouldn't you girls be allowed to wear pretty clothes? It doesn't detract from your education at all. In fact, it might create a more fun learning environment."

"I agree," my mother states. "I wrote to the authorities of the school. But their answer was predictable. The school uniform apparently instills a sense of responsibility and community within the student populace."

"All it installs is resentment," I riposte.

"Well," my dad begins, "you could do an act of civil disobedience. Force them to rethink their policy."

"I could." A smile forms on my face as an idea forms in my mind.

———

-Alissiya-

"Mom," I ask my fake mother, my eyes bright and shining, hiding all the chaos in their deep, dark depths. "Why can't I go to school?"

"What do you mean, Alissiya?" She's looking at me as if she did not expect at all for these words to come out of my mouth. And honestly, I suppose that she didn't. She never expects anything less than absolute gratitude from me. I know that I walk on very dangerous ground.

"You send Lacitia to school," I try to explain. "And that's very good. Good for her. But what is the reason that you don't do the same for me? I'm not, I'm not asking to go to school. I'm just wondering what the reason is?" Fear thuds in my chest. But as always, I keep it hidden deep within me. Her face darkens, her black-framed eyes seeming much colder.

"Why are you asking me this?" Her words carry the subtlest bit of threat, unknown, probably, even to her.

"I'm just wondering why. I mean, it's not that I want to go to school. But won't it make it easier for me to relate to and understand Lacitia?"

"Well, we just don't have the money to send you to school," she explains. "We're middle class and you know we're middle class. We don't have the budget to send you to school. You already know that we spend a lot on you as it is."

"Oh, I understand," I lie. So they have the money for bright, shimmery, lustrous, expensive dresses in chic cuts and intricate designs. But they don't have the money to send me to school. I get it. A middle class lifestyle is worth more than the education of a false daughter from the slums. I get it.

"Also," the lady keeps on talking, "it wouldn't be worth it putting you in school. You're smart, I'm not going to lie, you are smart. But your intelligence isn't quite the sort of intelligence they look for in the school system. You wouldn't do well there."

"Oh, okay. That's perfectly understandable. Thank you for the explanation, mother." I bite down all the rage that is welling inside of me.

"Besides," the lady tells me, "school isn't any fun anyways." There is a hard edge to her words. I'm going to have to win back her approval. Be the good daughter she wants me to be.

———

-Lacitia-

"We should do a protest, make them see us for who we are." I'm talking to the children gathered all around me. My friends are here. But even people who aren't my friends are here. Dozens of people from all the grades are here. And they're all listening to what I say.

"Yeah," a girl with a striped headband agrees, "we should totally rise up. We should make them see that they can't control us, they can't control what we wear."

The girls all around us cheer.

"So what should we wear?" my friend Alaia asks.

"Well" I begin, "we might as well go all out. We might as well wear the most beautiful, expensive things we have."

"Oh, that will be so great!" a girl with red highlights in her hair declares, "it will be like a party!"

"So it will," another girl with dangly earrings agrees. "It will be both fun and rebellious at the same time. Which is a glorious mix."

"So, should we change in the school washrooms, or should we come to school in our party clothes?" my friend Maria asks.

"Good question."

We continue to talk about our rebellion, all standing in the gazebo of the school park, next to the playground. We're too old to be playing on the playground, but a lot of the younger kids like it. There are not many of us coalescing and colluding here, in the shade, where the recess supervisors cannot hear us. But there are enough of us. Enough that we pose a threat to the status quo. This is beautiful.

———

-Alissiya-

"What did you learn today?" I ask my not-sister. She is smiling, as she so often is. There is hatred in her eyes, hidden deep. As there always is. Unknown to her.

"Oh, just, boring stuff. We did draw something cool in art today, though."

"That's nice, what did you draw?"

"We had to make mandalas, and we could draw all sorts of patterns, as long as they had radial symmetry."

"That's interesting. What's radial symmetry?"

"Oh, don't you know?"

"Can you explain?"

"It's when the same pattern repeats in each part of a circle, meaning, around the centre."

"That makes sense." I try to imagine what she could mean.

———

-Lacitia-

Today is finally, finally the day. The day when we are going to put everything into motion. The day when we are going to have our voices and our desires be heard. I am jittering with excitement on the inside, and restless in the outside. Alissiya is helping me with my makeup, which is a godsend, because my makeup needs to be absolutely perfect today, it needs to match my coral minidress with the frills and the shining tassels.

"Thanks, Alissiya," I tell her, spraying my fastidiously curled hair, dyed at the tips to match my dress. I take my backpack, slip on some high heels, and I make my way to the school, which is a short bus ride away from my house.

"Where are you going, pretty young lady?" an older woman on the bus asks me.

"Just to a protest," I answer her. "We're fighting for our rights to wear what we want at our schools."

"Good girl," she replies, smiling with her red lips. "May the gods aid in your journey."

The bus stops and I walk out, and in no time I am at the gates to my large school, which shines in the sunlight. About one in five of the girls are dressed like me, are dressed lavishly in colours and cuts and patterns of all different sorts. They all look glamorous. We all look glamorous. We all scan the crowd of incoming children, and smile upon seeing each other.

There are no teachers at the gates of the building, nor are there any in the halls. But in the first class I go to, the teacher looks over the crowd of students in front of her, and she immediately calls the principal

"What do you girls think you're doing?" she asks. She doesn't sound mad, and the usual warmth of her voice is still there. But still, there is something annoyed to it. Which makes her a hypocrite to be honest, standing there with her blue skirt and cream blouse that is not quite up to standard for the teachers' uniform.

"We're standing up for ourselves," one girl replies.

———

-Alissiya-

She left her uniform at home. She honestly left her school uniform at home. And, everyone is gone from the house. No-one is here to see what I do, to see where I go. This is a golden opportunity, an opportunity which I cannot afford to miss out on. This is something that I've wanted all my life. It's something that I've never known that I could have.

Yet it is something that is deeply dangerous. It is something that I know is deeply dangerous, something that I know that I should not do. The rational, reasonable part of my mind is screaming at me to stop, it's screaming at me to not carry out my plan, but I am just not thinking rationally right now. I'll never have a chance like this again.

So I slip on the uniform, which is a little large on me considering that Lacitia is a couple of years older than me, and I board the bus.

My heart is thudding the entire ride to school. I feel like I'm going to vomit. It is simultaneously the best and worst sensation that I have ever felt in my lifetime, except for the times when I get to be with my mother. I'm not thinking straight, I know I'm not thinking straight at all, but I don't care. I don't give myself time to examine all the reasons this is dangerous. I don't give myself the opportunity to come to my senses.

At the school, I am able to slip in unnoticed, and I am able to melt into the crowd of students, all dressed like me, dressed in blue and white. I have to pretend that I'm supposed to be here. I have to pretend that I belong here, with all these middle class children from middle class families living their middle class lives. I have to pretend, and I have to make it believable.

That should be easy. I've been pretending all my life.

And it is easy enough. I go with the students that look my age, and follow them into one of the classes.

"And who might you be?" the teacher with her crisp blue skirt and inquisitive blue eyes asks.

"My name is Avilia," I lie, "it's my first day here, after moving to this city."

"Strange. The school didn't notify me of any new students."

"That is strange indeed." I have to think fast. "Maybe they just forgot. I'll tell my parents to contact the school."

"Okay," the teacher acquiesces. "Go take a seat."

The class is about history, and it is one of the most interesting things I have ever heard in my life. We talk about the thought processes and the values of people in the late Middle Ages, and about all the social developments that were going on at the time. We talk about how the power structures of society affected the way people viewed themselves and society, and we talked about how technological inventions lead to new ways of seeing the world. It's absolutely entrancing.

———

-Lacitia-

I am in the assembly room, along with all my fellow protestors. We're all so pretty. But we're also all getting a talking to. Well, I knew that this would happen.

"What you girls are doing is commendable," Mrs. Valzim, the principal, is telling us. "It is exactly the type of citizenship we long to foster in this school. But the problem is, you have to understand that the rules that are put in place are put in place for a reason. In this school we are breeding an atmosphere of diligence and professionalism, and the uniforms are a part of that..." I stop listening to her as she drones on, opting instead to post to my Connectio account some selfies of myself in this pretty outfit, bravely standing up to those who seek to oppress me.

———

-Alissiya-

"Hello. I'd like to talk to a miss Avilia." There is a woman in a crisp white blouse entering the door to the class, just as we are about to leave. Her hard eyes land on me. This is bad. This is very, very bad.

"That's me." I try to keep my voice even as I follow her out the door. It's not like I could run right now, they'd just trap me. And, if I try to resist, that will make me look all the more suspicious.

She leads me down the halls, not saying anything as her polished shoes hit the hard school floor. My heart is racing. And, the rational part of my mind, which I had been suppressing until now, is telling me that I should have listened to it. I knew that this would happen. The part of me that I so thoughtlessly suppressed knew that this would happen. But still, I was blind and foolish and thoughtless. Why was I so impulsive? This is all literally my fault.

She stops at a private office, and I can see that there are two police officers there, guns and handcuffs glinting on their belts. I act surprised, I act confused.

"Did you think wouldn't catch on?" the lady asks.

"Catch on to what?" I ask in fake earnestness.

"We know you didn't pay to be here. We don't know who you are or where you came from, but stealing an education is a very heavy offence."

"But I didn't steal anything. Maybe my parents forgot to sign me up."

"We keep fastidious records. And don't think we haven't noticed how that uniform is a little too big on you. Those aren't really your clothes, are they?"

The police officers move to surround me. I do not resist as they wrench my arms behind my back and clamp cold metal handcuffs around my wrists.

In that reversed place, I am Mara Vex, the part of me that never learned guilt. I move through ruins I made myself, laughing like a crack in the earth. I betray because I can, because the ache on someone else's face feels like sunlight on my skin. Every kindness shown to me is just a weapon handed over, blade first. I am hunger without end, a mouth that sings when everything falls apart. There’s no shame. There’s only more.

1.

The embarrassment coils tightly in my chest, and pools like liquid heat in my belly as I see her walk into the staff room.

Only four more days, I rationalize quietly to myself as I pointedly look anywhere but at her. I hope it comes off natural, but I know she hasn't looked at me once, let alone looked long enough to care. Only four more days, and I will be free of the suffocating shame that comes with drunkenly stumbling into a coworker, who you called friend but did not earn such the same title at a bar when introduced to the flock of men circling like vultures, and confessing harboured feelings that really were her fault because she was the one who would flirt, just for her to say in return: "I've known you liked me since we met."

Incensed, I stalked away to take another sip of my drink. I didn’t even like her as a person then, let alone thought of her as much more than a loud nuisance in the room. Just another body, one that I didn’t even pay attention to because I was working double the hours and had a tumultuous relationship to pay attention to. The crush came on suddenly, and she would stop me to tell me how I deserved so much better. That I shouldn’t settle. She understood me in a way my girlfriend never would. She remembered things about me my girlfriend didn’t. So I ended it, because I am not cruel.

Our respective best friends chat amicably, and try to offer me encouragement. My best friend says she's not even that hot. Her best friend says she's bicurious and I should make a move. Be bold.

So, too drunk to rationalize that this was a terrible idea, I stomp over and suggest just the thing. That we kiss. Soberly, I would've recognized how she stepped a bit away like she was ready to bolt, and how she didn't look at me once. I said bye, and ran tail tucked between my legs to the comfort of more alcohol.

"We only have four more days together." Was her rejection. Whether it meant four more days till she was free of me and my apparent fawning over her— which is that really fair, when I didn't like her as a human being until a month ago and the feelings more or less bodied me two weeks later?— or that it would be too awkward and it wasn’t that she found me completely repulsive. Regardless.

I don't look at her when she comes in. I use my newly bleached hair as a veil, and angle myself toward my friend to stave off the incoming panic attack. When I do manage to jibe at her as I usually do, our eyes meet and she looks as unsure as I do. Once were summer planning for when she moved and we would visit, were just dwindling pleasantries. I wanted to hop out the window, or brain myself on the edge of the chair that I’m gripping too tightly to hide my tremble.

I'm mildly offended, really, that she took my natural charm and humour to be flirting. I'm more enraged that she thinks because I’m a lesbian, I MUST like her. As though it were the most natural progression in the world. That kills the feelings, but the shame curdles and hurts my stomach.

She does not look at me. My mind stays on her.

2.

I wander into the room, my hair having won my rage-fuelled affections that day trying to wrangle it into something cute, so I just slump down in my chair. Our coworkers trickle in, one by one, and I keep rushing to the bathroom to check how I look. It’s a different style than I’m used to; florals and flowing rather than grungy and gothic. I keep the eyeliner in my waterline, because there’s some things I will not give on.

My friend says she likes my shirt and I want to snap that I don't care what she thinks, but that’s unfair, so I say thanks and trickle back to the staff room, my knee bouncing. My attitude had nothing to do with the flower print, anyway. I was still a bitch at my very core. Ruminating on this, I barely notice when she comes in, except for the complete stiffening of my body. But our boss is talking, so mercifully, I don't have to pretend to want to say hi. She looks at me, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking or feeling.

Her eyes are so dark, so deep, and I’m struck that there is very little I actually know about her that isn’t surface level of what she brings to lunch everyday. "Your highlights are really coming through today."

I cock an eyebrow, feeling the fight or flight slowly leave me as our eyes meet, hoping I don’t look like a baby deer with legs that barely work under her scrutinizing. "Is that bad? Should I shave my head?"

She grins, a laugh stuck somewhere behind her teeth, “Yeah, maybe." And then our

attention is taken by our boss once more.

My heart practically glows. Thank god my shirt is a horrifying salmon colour, so she can't see how it's trying to upend my chest and land on the table. Something does— a bag of lollipops. She talks about how kids nowadays don't know about these kind of suckers. I think I’m a sucker, with the way the feelings swing like a mallet to knock me on my ass. On a nostalgic train, we chat about our childhood movies and idols. I make her laugh, sweeter than the red candy I roll between my lips. I can finally breathe again.

We get to work, on our own respective projects. My hand stalls on the page I am trying my very best to pretend is important, but she passes by me and she smells of perfume. It's sweet, and sharp, but my hand refuses to move and my coworker looks at me strangely as my eyes follow her until she’s hidden behind the bend of the hallway.

She's never worn perfume to work before.

I feel like maybe I see her staring throughout our brief time together, but she also steps away at times. Gets away from me, more feelingly. Its curious. Bicurious, my mind snickers.

3.

I can feel she’s there like a prickle of heat on the back of my neck before I see her. I'm turned away to the round table of staff busy making plans for the coming months, but the tingling thats more of a feeling than a sensation knocks my slumped spine straight. I fix my hair from where it lay uselessly on my back, check my lipstick surreptitiously in the reflection of my phone. She drops her stuff and says she likes my top that my friend said made me look like I was going to church. She looks expectant. Worship of a kind. I can practically feel my eyes brighten, and how embarrassing is that, as I make a joke about whatever managed to slither out of the slop my brains become. Always making a joke. For the risk of a smile, or the wish of a laugh.

Someone mentions the weekend— suggest we go to a bar. Me and her both freeze, and if I wasn’t frozen in every synapse of my body, I might’ve blushed. She always looks like she’s blushing, so, who can tell. But I stammer through a joke, and her body slumps in relief. I tentatively poke around other places we could go, anywhere but where I remember being shot down and reconcile with the fact I can never go back to my favourite bar again, when that someone won't let it drop.

I keep making her laugh. I try to keep the flirting inflection out of my voice because that got us into this mess. Not me. I wasn't nice when I met her. I hated her, really, I did. I don't know why, maybe because she was nice, or loud, or got the job I wanted that she clearly didn't respect if she’d leave so fast. But she would flirt. “You know you love it,” when I say she’s being stupid. With a wink, or a smirk, or a flick of her hair over her shoulder.

She has a problem with straight girls kissing gay girls, but has no qualms about straight girls flirting with gay girls... hm.

But as much as I try, I can't be mad. Even when I try to think of everything she’s done that’s bothered me. Even when I play out our entire brief working relationship. Even when she tries to placate my friends and I by saying we'll hang out when she moves away. We'll take road trips. Rent a boat. It's a lie, but it's said so painfully saccharine I can almost believe her. I don't. The someone from before, sweet and kind, lights up with the idea and I don’t have it in me to snuff it out. My best friend knows it as well as I do with every ticking day that passes like the click of a gun in a game of Russian roulette. But she also believed it for a second, too.

For once, my inability to trust serves me well.

I won’t see her again the second our brief hour before work is done tomorrow. I know this. So, I spend my shift outside standing under the clear sky and flickering sunlit tree tops trying to summon some kind of joy of life back. I’m not depressed. I’m not much of anything.

4.

Fuck.

I wake up two hours before my alarm, my stomach rolling and face hot and god, my head hurts. I dreamt of her. I dreamt of a lot of things, as I always do, but I dreamt of her about to leave. About to leave with her friends on Sunday night like she's set to, and how she hugs our little group goodbye. But I pull her tighter, and she doesn’t drop my hug until I finally unlatch and join my friends, set to head home with heads swimming with liquor. And she stands, torn, between both groups. They call for her. We wave goodbye, and I smile the same smile I have for months. But then she turns on her heel and marches back and grabs my face and kisses me. She kisses me like she means it, not because she's drunk or bored.

I remember my coworkers words from yesterday, as I pickup my best friend to do some shopping. "Well, at least you tried and now you know. So when she moves it's not gonna be like oh my god if I told her she might have stayed because we'd be together.." and she smiled toothily. I scoffed, shaking my head, because that’s not quite how it feels. I’ve never been an optimistic, but I’ve also never been so downtrodden over someone before.

We get her a card and a gift. It was my idea. My friend shrugged it off, but I insisted. I paid. We sign the card together, as unserious as ever, and she grins as she reads it. She props the card— rude to anyone else but apparently endearing to her—up against the drinking game we got and snaps a pic, smile ever present on her face. It’s sweet. I haven’t seen this smile before, but it’s sweet and soft and gentle. I can’t look away.

We take a look through the cards in the game. ‘Drink if you’ve ever been rejected.’ What a joke. I want to crumple the card up and stuff it in my mouth, but instead I show it to my two privy friends and force it into the middle of the deck. We won’t get to it. I hope she doesn’t have a shuffle habit. I hope a lot of things that I shouldn’t.

She hugs me twice. Once for the card that she coos over though I’m not sure for what, and once for the gift. Funnily this kind of felt like the hug from my dream the night before— that half hug. She’s warm beneath the thin fabric of her shirt, and I try not to inhale because I think I would choke to death on the heady feeling it gives me.

Someone says it— let’s hang out tonight. I stiffen, because surely not, and I was right. But she suggests tomorrow at her place— I choke. But it’s not cemented until she texts a time and not an excuse.

The one other coworker, the coworker that’s less than a friend, but more than a coworker that I told the tale of the Great Rejection to is grinning toothy again.

“What?” I ask, my back to the bar of the swing set and the matching hat to my best friend on my head blocking the sun and also her unusually tall head.

“Your four days are over.” She says first with a waggle of her eyebrows, and I roll my eyes. “If you pull the rejection card give it to her and ask for another chance.” Again, I roll my eyes. In the land of improbabilities, so lives this girl.

Later when it’s just my best friend and I and I’m a couple drinks in, wandering around downtown aimlessly with restless hearts and minds, I look to my right and see tulips. Flowers she bought for herself one day because she felt down. She doesn’t like tulips, but they’re cheap. I stamp the thought of what kind of flowers she must like, and the ones I’d pick out for her. I don’t stop thinking about her for a second. My friend is gracious when she doesn’t mention how I won’t stop talking about her, either.

5.

We never hear from her. We don’t see her. But I dream of her, and I talk about her, and it feels awfully like I’m mourning something that I never really had, never really could, and yet it felt perfectly like I should.

He knelt before Reverie Ash, wrists bound, head bowed.

The gold dust on the floor clung to the sweat on his skin, turning him into something half-statue, half-corpse.

Reverie stood over him, silent, hands clasped behind her back.

The room was empty but for the two of them. She had dismissed the guards — not out of mercy, but out of respect.

Some reckonings must be private.

“I loved you,” he whispered, voice breaking open like a wound. “I followed you. Everything you asked—”

He choked on his own breath.

Reverie tilted her head slightly, studying him like an interesting ruin.

“I never asked for anything,” she said, voice like steel skimming ice.

“I expected.”

The was a difference.

Fear stripped the color from his sky blue eyes when he raised his face to hers at last. But desperation still shone there. Hope clung like rot.

“It’s not too late,” he said. “You could choose a different way. We could still—”

She crouched in front of him in a single, fluid movement, her face mere inches from his.

He flinched.

She smiled.

“You think love is a leash,” she murmured. “You think loyalty is a negotiation.”

She reached out and gently brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, like a mother blessing a child.

“You don’t understand me at all.”

And then — almost tenderly — she pressed a blade, thin as a whisper, beneath his jaw.

Not to kill.

Not yet.

First, she wanted him to see it coming.

First, she wanted him to understand:

He hadn’t failed her by betraying her. He had failed himself by thinking she was someone who could be betrayed.

“You were never my equal,” she said, soft as a secret. “You were my shadow. And I am tired of dragging shadows behind me.”

When she stood again, wiping the blade clean on the edge of her cloak, the room smelled faintly of copper and crushed dreams.

She didn’t look back.

There was no need.

Reverie Ash never mourned what she had already outgrown.

I see myself in shades of monochrome, skin dusted ash and hair singed with every shade of dye I've ever subjected it to. But the mirror's hair hasn't been chemically straightened. It falls in unruly, long curls. Somehow I can make out the caramel it grew as once upon a time. Her face is gaunt, the cut I got on the bridge of my nose when I was thirteen clear as day and beaded with fresh blood.

I tilt my head infinitesimally. The mirror stays the same. Watching. Haunting.

"Don't like the sight of me, sweetheart?" The mirror asks— it's my voice, I'm sure of that, but pitched higher.... softer. Younger. I cringe at the familiarity, as it had once been mine before I had killed my lungs and throat with smoke and liquor. The nickname, one I had never uttered as it had been my father's for me.

I don't respond. I know the mockery, having wielded it as my favourite weapon for so very long. It's evident in the rise of her eyebrows, the flash of iris' that speak of nothing but anger whereas mine are horribly clouded by pills and home-made potions. I am not sure which is worse, cowering beneath that hateful gaze. Cruel, and unabashedly searching for something to caddle-prod at. My eyes fall to her arms, knuckles white around the lip of the linoleum sink. She has no tattoos, but has every open wound, every bruise, every inch of pain that my body healed from.

She is nothing but a mottled desperation. I meet her gaze.

"I'm sorry." Is all I can say. Because I am. This little girl— masquerading as an abuse-prone teen, deserved the world. Sorrow, black and barren and hideous plunged through me.

Her eyes drag from the roots of my hair— all one solid colour, but I'm insecure as my hands rises to cover it— to the ink snaking down to my palms.

She scoffs, "You're not. You left me to handle everything you couldn't. Because youre weak." She leans forward, her grin broad— all uneven teeth and vitriol. "But yet you're worse than I am. Aren't you?"

I grind my teeth down onto my tongue until it hurts. "I don't know what you mean." I return thick with poison on my forked tongue that forms stories, heretics behind an enamel cage.

But she is my epic, deep and dark. Taunting. Haunting. "You still hurt those you love. Your eyes strayed from the perfectly loving girl at home, to someone who reminded you of the first person to ever give you attention—"

"—Thats not true—"

"—It's what happened, isn't it? You left her because she didn't fit your idea of a romantic fairytale you love to write about. And you spin lie after lie, or worse, tell everyone who will listen the things you were entrusted with the second you feel jealous, or less then. Because you cannot stand being disliked."

I burn with every lick of heat I have endured and in turn, bottled. "I need to move forward, not stay back. I'm imperfect, but I'm not evil. You were. Or... I was." I blink a few times, like trying to clear the spots in my vision when I get too anxious. She mirrors me, almost like a tic she doesn't know she's doing.

Unity, I think. We are still the same person, no matter my aging face and her broken body. "I'm sorry that I couldn't protect you." I say, mapping the bruises on her body and subconsciously touching mine with the pads of my fingers like I'm expecting the pain to be there. But it isn't anymore.

"The difference between you and I, lovely girl, is that I never pretended to be good, or kind, or nice. But every day you pretend to be something you aren't, weren't bred to be, like you're trying on faces and seeing which one appeals the most. Will give you the love you have never been able to accept, or feel. Like you'll be cleansed of your sins, and yet—" Her arms arch wide to their sides, something I don't do because I hate mine, and I stare at the broken dominant hand that still hasn't properly healed after three years. I cringe, again, because she is the embodiment of all I want to forget, laid out so obvious to the naked eye instead of the eye of memory. "—You seek me out. Because I was the happiest you ever were. When you were free to terrorize without any guilt, or shame. When you took, and took, and left nothing but trauma and pain in your wake. And that's why no one has ever stayed longer than a year."

She knows the person with pale skin, and kind eyes. And I know the entity that bleeds dark, and stains eternal.

"You do not know me. I am trying. I feel guilt, and shame, because I'm not you. I may have been at a time, but I feel remorse and that— that is the difference. You feel nothing of what you've done, and toss it from memory like a coin into a shallow pool because it's easier. But I don't want easier. I want to feel. I want to remember what I've done."

The anger I had felt since I was so very young cracked and broke, letting in my deep sadness.

And yet... I kept going back. For more and more, while tiny little fists beat at my ribs until she was bruised and moulted in and out, too.

I couldn’t stop.

"I am the soul, after all. You cannot kill that."

"It didn't stop me from trying." I muse, finally looking away from the monster staring through me. I swallowed the flame of anxiety in my throat, hot liquid in my stomach. "So why are you here?"

I hear my laugh, but it's wrong and it hurts. A pause, but she never stops with her chattering teeth and humming. Like it's helping her pain. But I should know, it doesn't. "Remember how they said the absued becomes the abuser? Back in high school, I mean."

I laugh dryly. "Yeah, I remember it all too well."

Chattering. Humming. Haunting. Taunting.

"Ever thought... maybe you're your own abuser?" She says it with a grin. Her words aren't as sure as mine, because all she knows is teasing, and humour. She is stuck in the mirror, watching me in snippets, when I have lived as her. I know her as the amalgamation of all I have hated of myself.

So when I look at her, I feel the cold pricks of the past on my spine, feel the phantom ache in my bones and on my flesh. "I swear, if I could, I would give my life so you could have grown up better. Been better."

She stumbles back, affronted. I shake my head, and leave the bathroom, plunging her into darkness again. But I'll see her again, soon, as I always do. In the reflection of my laptop and phone, in the rearview mirror, in the bottle of a glass with the sheen of my drink. And we will have this conversation again. Sometimes she is angrier. Sometimes I am meaner.

Perhaps we are exactly the same person.