Mirror, Mirror
She sees a hideous monster in the mirror.
Mirror, Mirror
By Ruth Sullins
Viv set down the iron. If she’d done it right, she’d have strategically wavy hair, casual but very intentional. She’d done it all while carefully not looking in the glass that hung over the bureau table in her bedroom…
She glanced at it, on accident.
And froze, taking in the image she had tried so hard to avoid.
There, framed in her light-brown hair, was a beast. The face of a creature from a nightmare. The skin stretched tight over jutting bones, sharp teeth hanging heavy over thin animal lips. Eyes…
Terrible eyes, sunken and stretched, dragon pupils.
She’d seen the face there for weeks now. But it still caught her heart in terror, freezing her muscles in horror.
Moving as she moved, blinking as she blinked.
She took a very deep breath, trying to pull herself together. With an effort, she arranged her face into a smile. The sort of smile that she always wore when she went out.
The monster leered. She gasped, turning away, her heart beating. She staggered toward a chair and sank down.
Then she pulled on her soft leather shoes, one at a time, and her impeccably fashionable coat.
The elevator fell smoothly downwards. She emerged into the landscaped walk along the street. The sun was setting. She walked along it, trying to focus on the beauty of the city. She loved this city—the tall, shining windows of the buildings, the occasional passerby, the lights of the cars growing brighter as the evening dimmed.
But she couldn’t. The mirror rattled at the back of her mind, leaving the peace she had once felt at these sights as a washed-out phantom.
She’d lived with it for weeks. Thinking it would fade, that seeing her own face as a monster was a product of fatigue, perhaps, or overwork…
But she had not worked for years. And she was never more than a little tired in the evenings…
She stopped, preoccupied, at the door to the charity office. No—wait—the door was the next one over. This door—
She read the words on the dark glass.
Dr. Munstead, Psychiatrist
She hesitated.
Silly. What was she considering? She hurried past. The bell rang as she opened the next one over.
“Hello, Viv,” the lady smiled, glancing up from the screen.
“I won’t be long,” Viv said. “I heard about the yearly fundraiser. I’m sorry. I brought—well, a little extra.” She handed over the check.
The lady glanced at it, then froze. “Viv—you don’t have to—’’
She smiled. “It’s nothing. Really. I wouldn’t do it if I couldn’t.”
“Alright, then,” Karen beamed at her.
Then, for a moment, something seemed to…happen. In a flash, a brief expression of utter hatred, of disdain, of revulsion seemed to etch itself on Karen’s face. As if for a moment a shining curtain had slipped away there to reveal something terrible and ugly underneath.
She stood rooted to the floor.
The moment was gone. Karen was smiling again. The smile fell, a look of concern replacing it.
“Viv, are you alright?”
She waved her hand in a brief goodbye, emerged onto the sidewalk again.
Worry, almost panic, curled in the pit of her stomach. She found herself facing the the psychiatry office again.
What was going wrong with her?
The door was dark. It reflected, in the late evening and the dimming light, the lights of the cars on the road.
And her own face.
It was a beautiful face, if a bit heavy in the features. Blue eyes, gentle lips, firm, defined cheeks.
But there was something about those eyes that she winced away from, something about the set of the jaw, the tilt of the head, that made her feel—afraid. Afraid of her own face.
She started walking toward home, faster and faster. The evening was almost dark.
Karen had been the clerk at the charity since Viv had moved here, since the war had started.
Crash.
The old woman smashed into her, then fell to the pavement, crying out in surprise. An orange and a scrap of smoked meat scattered around them.
“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry!” Viv cried. She bent down, collecting the items into the bag. “Are you alright?” She held out her hand.
The lady stared at it for a moment, her eyes moving over Viv’s face. She struggled up on her own, snatching her bag of groceries.
“I feel sorry for you,” she snarled. Then she hobbled past, rounding the corner the way Viv had come.
She stood still, shocked by the words. Had the woman—known her?
What was that supposed to mean, anyway? There was nothing in her life that anyone should pity her for—
She stopped.
The woman—she couldn't know—about the beast.
Could she?
A sound she had never heard before suddenly broke through the city. It grew, surging around her. A wail of agony, of pain, of utter, soul-shattering grief.
As if the city itself were crying.
She looked around, startled, at an approaching pedestrian, at the retreating figure of the old woman, at the drivers of the passing cars. They moved along, their heads down.
Was she the only one who heard it?
Surprised, she recognized the man coming up the walk toward her. “Taylor!” She ran up to him. Around her, the wailing seemed to fade. Her cousin! She hadn’t seen him since Christmas six months ago. “What are you doing in town?”
“Coming to see you, of course.” He grabbed her in a hug. “Must be lonely round here, in your rich flat.”
“Tell me why you’re really here,” she said, looking stern.
“For my job.” He sighed, and grinned. “Listen, Viv, I can come by tomorrow, I’m sorry.”
She nodded. He hurried past her, obviously pressed for time. He was gone, like the passing of a shooting star, a brief light that could never press away the feeling of darkness for long. Now, it was gone completely.
The wails of pain drifted over the air.
It was really and truly night.
She hurried without realizing it, and then she was running, softly, on the sidewalk, brushing past the people there. The windows of her building reflected the cheery cars’ lights. The elevator was dark and cold.
She reached her bedroom. Opened the door, looked across the dim room. Her eyes fell on the silver mirror.
She screamed, a single cry, and it seemed to linger in the empty room.
She crossed to the table under the mirror, averting her eyes, fumbling with trembling fingers to free the sparkling pins in her hair. She threw them on the bare, glossy wood of the empty table, fumbling in her closet for her pajamas.
A long wail drifted in through the walls. She crawled into bed, turning away from the mirror.
She could feel it. Imagine it turning fully to face her, imagine the beast jumping free of its silver frame, crawling toward her…
She sat up in a violent motion, breathing hard. The mirror was there, silver in the dark.
She tried to calm herself, tried to steady her shaking breath…
What was that?
On the table—
Below the mirror—
It was no longer empty.
A small, square bundle was a dark shape against the wood.
She stood up, slowly, moving in her pajamas toward the table.
The rim of the moon rose above the buildings in the east, its beams reaching through the shaded window. Dark shapes were suddenly defined in the light.
The square object was a uniform, a military uniform. It was folded neatly.
She touched it, feeling dust on her fingers. She grabbed it, gently, held up the jacket, let the folds fall away.
Something shiny clinked to the floor. She jumped at the noise, then bent and collected the glinting tags. They were warped and discolored, but by the brilliant light of the moon she could read the name easily.
Taylor Gibbons.
Her cousin? But—he was no military man, no soldier. He was—
She looked at the jacket again. It was only then, in the moonlight, that she noticed the hole.
It was the size of a fist, in the chest of the shirt, a brown stain around it.
These were the clothes of a dead man.
She dropped the jacket, feeling panic rising up inside her, her knees weak. She put her hand on the table, catching herself.
And accidentally glanced at the mirror.
She formed a frantic thought and flew to the door. Running barefoot down the hall, into the elevator, sobbing in dry, terrified sobs, pounding the button with her palm. She glided downwards in the darkness, then fell out as the door opened—emerging onto the sidewalk in the dark. The cars were going too fast, their lights like a mist as she ran—a mist that might drift away, their sound like a sound that was a far-off wish—only the crying, the wailing was real, drifting around her, soft and sad, the voice of pain. She tried to block it out as she ran, but could not. The blooming beds of well-tended flowers along the walk were strange forms in the moonlight, bursting into color only as she passed them, like desperate thoughts in a despairing world. She imagined—as she ran—that a thousand hands of the city reached out for her, reached to grab her and sink her into an abyss, hold her in darkness. The hands of a city that had once comforted her. As if it whispered her name! Vivian! You cannot run…
Then she was there, panting, staring at the dark door. The letters, like white bones, stared back at her.
She tried to collect her sobbing breath. She failed, felt the claws of the city on her back, and with a gasp she pushed open the door, slamming it behind her.
She tried again to catch her breath, staring into that void, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She jumped, fright jolting through her body.
A man sat in the middle of the room, behind a dark table. She saw only his outline and the reflected light of his eyes.
“I need help,” she said.
Why did she whisper?
A low sound touched the silence. The man was laughing.
He leaned for something on the wall, switched on a dim light. A cold, white light that allowed her to see without driving away the shadows.
“Sit down,” the man said. He wore—was it a black doctor’s coat?
She sat down, hesitantly.
“What is your problem?” He leaned back, watching her.
“I—when I—look in the mirror,” she whispered, “I see my own face—as a monster. I see a hideous beast.”
He looked down, absently, at the black table, his finger rubbing at a smudge on the edge.
“Does that…bother you?”
What a strange question. She took a breath, calming herself from her panic a few moments ago.
“Yes,” she said.
He was silent.
“The city—’’ she burst out. “I hear crying in the city. Wailing. In my bedroom, there is a uniform—a—a bloody uniform, dog tags with my cousin’s name. I talked to my cousin today—’’
She stopped, almost crying, put a hand to her mouth.
He looked up, then.
“These are recent…hallucinations?”
She nodded, violently. “Yes. Though the beast—the beast has been there for weeks. Every time I look in that mirror—staring back at me. Oh! The horror!” A sob escaped her.
The man met her eyes. She was suddenly struck by what a strange man he was. Calm, a face that could have been any age, though it had lived infinite years.
He looked at her for a long moment, just gazing at her, seeming to gather his thoughts.
“I cannot make them go away,” he said.
She let out a gasp of anguish. “But I cannot—I cannot—live!” She whispered hoarsely. “Please!” She reached impetuously forward, clutched his arm. “Is there anything—anything you can do?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What? Oh, help me!”
“I could make you understand,” he said at last.
“Understand—understand why I see these things?”
“Yes.”
“That—that would help?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Or, perhaps, you will regret it forever.”
She thought desperately. Imagined herself walking out the door, through the wailing city to the dark haunted space that was her grand home—to the hallucinations in her bedroom. Saw specters and horrors emerging where she least expected them, driving her to go steadily more insane—
“It will only get worse,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“I will do anything,” she said, meeting his eyes.
He sat up straighter, nodded sharply. He stood up, scooting his chair back with a clanging sound that made her jump. She looked around. The office was small and bare, the walls of the room sheltered in a shadow where she saw shelves of books, dimly made out collections of bottles or papers. There was a door. The doctor walked through it, and she was alone.
He returned, carrying two black boxes.
He set them on the table, returning to his seat. She looked at them. One was smaller than the other. They were made of plastic, looked vaguely mechanical.
“One of these containers,” the man said, “is empty. The other is not.”
Something urged her, and she reached for the smaller box. She squinted at the tiny label, neatly typewritten in capital letters.
Vivian Gibbons—2506-2508
She dropped the box in surprise.
His voice was a shadow, as if he spoke in her mind.
“There are memories stored inside it,” he said. “Certain memories from the past two years that were removed from your mind.”
She stared at him.
“Memories?” She whispered. “My memories?”
“Yes,” he said.
What was this? She—she was missing memories?
She glanced, swiftly, horrified, toward the other box.
“This one used to contain a series of commands,” he said. “Instructions that were taken from the box and given to your mind four years ago. Detailed criteria on how to build a fake reality—a grand, self-spawning illusion to trick your own mind. An altered reality that filters and blocks certain sights, sounds, and objects—then replaces them with creations of its own. In the end, there is a new world for you to witness.”
“What—what are you saying?” Viv asked. “That—that you—gave me hallucinations?”
“Yes,” he said. “The things that you believe to be hallucinations now are the only things that are real—gaps in the grand illusion that your mind has created. Once the mind escapes, even for a moment, and sees something that should have been erased and replaced—an object that got through the instructions, and therefore contradicts that illusion—it opens the gateway for other discrepancies. That is the reason why you are finding these—fantasies more and more often.”
“Your saying,” she said, her voice terribly soft, “that the beast in the mirror is—is my face?”
He laughed, a short bark. “No. Your beast, Miss Gibbons, is an illusion, of a sort. It is not mine. Your mind created it without instruction. It is, I suspect, unrelated to my work whatsoever.”
His work.
“What—what is false?” She whispered hoarsely. “What?” she shouted, standing up, slamming her hand onto the table. “What does this illusion show me? What things are lies?”
He gazed at her calmly. “That is a question that I could never begin to answer. None but your own mind could answer that.”
“Tell me,” she said, her voice trembling with anger and emotion. “Tell me what you did to me!”
“Everything I did to you,” he said, “you asked of me.”
Her mouth fell open as she stared at him, still standing, leaning on the table, her chest heaving for air.
“Tell me,” she said, her voice suddenly hollow.
“Four years ago,” he said, “You asked me to replace your world. You told me what you wanted. What you wanted to live in order to forget the life you were now living.”
“I gave you what you asked for.” His voice was a liquid black shadow. “I took away the memories that would mar your new world, leaving a hole that would eventually be replaced by the new life. You see almost nothing that is the real world.”
She felt suddenly weak, and clutched at the desk.
“Put them back,” she said. “Put back my memories.”
“I cannot do that,” he said. “Where those memories belong, there are now false experiences. Your mind is under a spell. I cannot put back those memories without taking away the illusion.”
“Do it, then!” she screamed. The scream hung in the tiny room, ringing.
Then the doctor stood, picking up the boxes.
“Follow me, please, Miss Gibbons.” He moved toward the same door, holding it open for her. She passed through, walking in a trance.
More shelves against the walls of the small room, shelves black with the thousands of data containers they held.
In the middle of the room was a chair, surrounded by a strange machine, a structure of black mechanical parts that caught the moonlight through a shaded window.
“Sit here, Miss Gibbons.”
She touched the black leather, eased into the chair.
He touched a dark screen. The machine moved. Heavy, black arms surrounded her head. Then over her arms, over her wrists, locking her down. Tightening, smothering. She gasped in panic.
The machine stopped moving.
The doctor’s face appeared, standing in front of her, his eyes looking carelessly into her soul, speaking in an empty voice.
“Do you wish to stop it, Miss Gibbons? Once you remove this illusion, you will never be able to replace it.”
Did she? Did she wish to live in—in a lie, a lie she had no idea the extent of?
“No,” she whispered. “Let it happen.”
He moved away. The machine surrounded her. She closed her eyes. Then all was still.
A bright light flashed in her head. Inside her head, brilliant, blinding, and painful. It passed, leaving a darkness.
A strange sort of weight, a heaviness on her mind.
She thought, oddly, that she smelled dust or dirt.
She had no more time to wonder, no time, even, to try opening her eyes. The light flashed again. Then it faded. There was no red glare to her eyes.
Was that all?
“It’s over, Miss Gibbons. You will be able to recall your missing memories in less than twenty-four hours. It will take your brain that amount of time to realize it can now recover them.”
Her eyes snapped open. There was the dimness, and the arms of the machines moving away. “I—I won’t recall them now?”
“No,” he said. “Though the fabrication has been completely removed. You see now the world as it is, Miss Gibbons, with only the misperceptions and guises that we naturally create for ourselves.”
She stood up, then felt her head spin. She clutched at the arm of the chair.
“The disorientation is momentary,” the man said.
She did not answer him. She walked, unsteadily, through the door into the office. The table was there, the shadows all around the walls watching her.
She grasped the handle of the dark door and opened it, staggering out into the city’s night.
The first thing she saw was the road.
It was shattered. A great, broken dip, heavy chunks of asphalt piled around it, making way for—
For an enormous black vehicle, crawling through the street.
There were no cars.
And the dust. The dust was from the rubble. The rubble of the buildings across the street, a pile of jagged debris. The dust settled in her nose as she breathed.
What—what was this?
She staggered back, steadying herself against the building.
Far away, someone wailed.
It was not the city.
Another voice joined in, sobbing.
There were footsteps coming down the sidewalk. A man in a black uniform. A vaguely familiar black uniform.
On his arm was a black metal weapon, strapped in place like an extension of the limb. He walked with a fast, confident gate. He did not look at her as he passed.
She reached out, touched his arm. “Please—sir—’’
He turned, looking at her. His face was stern and triumphant, and almost—almost derisive.
“Why are they crying?” She asked, gesturing toward the sound.
“They lost someone,” he said, annoyed. “Trying to keep us out.” He shoved past her.
And then she remembered where she’d seen that uniform, so different than the one she’d seen in the darkness a little time ago…
She started walking through the war-torn city.
The buildings had collapsed, or were missing their fronts.
A woman walked passed, clutching something to her chest. A soldier in black stopped her, ripped the bag free, threw it to the pavement. Rice scattered across the concrete.
Another truck rolled past, throwing exhaust into Viv’s face.
Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed.
She crossed another street, hurrying now. She saw her own building up ahead.
It was tall, the windows clean of dust, and utterly untouched.
She hurried the last few steps past withered, broken bushes, coated in dust. Past two soldiers in black. Past a family, sitting homeless on the sidewalk. Past a begging child Past more soldiers towing a prisoner with a bleeding hand.
This—this was the real world.
Two people in ragged clothing blocking the door to her building, a man and an old woman. She drew forward, almost crying.
The man’s gaze snapped onto hers. Disgust twisted his face.
He spat on her coat.
She recoiled in shock, her hand to her mouth, tears springing into her eyes. “You—you—why?”
The old woman cackled. Viv suddenly remembered her—the same woman she had bumped into last evening.
“You don’t know, do you?” She said, a sneer in her voice. “You sold us out, dearie. You sold this whole city to them, in exchange for money and freedom. You sold the lives of every soldier in our army to save your own.”
Viv stood still.
That was it.
All this time.
“You let them in,” the old woman said softly. “Gave them everything.”
Viv let her breathing steady a little.
Slowly, she walked between them, to the door.
The inside of the elevator was shining gold.
The doors to her rooms were expensive oak.
She entered the bedroom.
Little things were different. Things were a little less shiny, a little less clean.
A little more real.
On the table, under the mirror, was the uniform. Her first memory came back, a memory of her cousin, sent away to hold back the invasion.
But the enemy had been ready. They’d set an ambush.
With her help.
She sat down and pulled her shoes off, placing them in the closet.
Maybe, in an hour or so, she’d see if she could find something to eat. She was hungry. She picked up a hairbrush, ran it through her softly curled hair. Then she stood, straightening her rumpled bedspread.
She did not look in the mirror. She knew what she would see.
Her face, her true face, as she had seen it the past few weeks.
The face of a beast.
This story isn’t one of my favorites—I hope I like the next one better. It was hard to add tension, and hard to explain what I had in mind for the illusion and the mirror. I do like the end, though. My next story will be in January, so Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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This was a tough story. Really interesting concept. so sad and tragic.