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Mirror You, Mirror Me
We are so rarely seen as we really are. Mirrors only reflect the reversal of our image. Imagine the world in which your reverse self in the mirror inhabits. Allow your mirror self to completely embody the dark side of your nature that you would never actualize in this reality. Don't hold back. Be honest with your darkness. Change your name if necessary. Win goes to whoever excites the animus the most.
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rraven in Fiction

I Mirror You, You Mirror Me.

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.

I am 21 years or older.