I wake on the floor of a dimly lit room, dressed in a shapeless grey sacklike garment that stops just above my knees. No shoes, and my hair is tangled and dirty, as if I haven’t washed it in days. The room is empty and featureless save for one metal chair, one table, and one me. I shakily get to my feet and steady myself against the wall, my head spinning and bright colors dancing across my vision in swirling fireworks as I will myself not to pass out. After a moment the dizziness fades, and I can think clearly. I give the room a quick glance, taking stock of my surroundings. There are no windows and no doors, and the light is coming from a single incandescent bulb in the ceiling. Quite simply, the room is a box, about 30 feet by 30 feet. The walls, floor, and ceiling are mirrors. Giant mirrors, reflecting each other and casting an eerie tunnel of reflections. I notice a speaker is embedded into the ceiling, directly above the table. A chill crawls up my spine as I get the sinking feeling I’m being watched, though I see no cameras to indicate the possibility. I take a step toward the table and chair, circling it as I analyze the situation to stifle the panic rising in my chest. With no other option, I gingerly lower myself onto the chair.
My bare legs make contact with the cold steel, and a dulcet-toned voice comes clearly from the speaker overhead. Female, with a slight Southern accent. She sounds young, without a trace of the hoarseness that comes with age. She speaks slowly and deliberately with a smooth, lilting cadence, as if speaking to a young child. Condescending.
“You will follow my instructions, and you will not speak unless prompted. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes,” came my stuttered, hoarse reply. I swallow reflexively, my throat dry and scratchy like hot sandpaper. My heart is pounding so loud I’m sure it’s vibrating the mirrored walls. A whirl of cold wind spirals through the room as a tube drops from the ceiling toward the table from a panel that has slid aside in the seemingly solid surface of the ceiling. It deposits a stack of papers six inches thick, and a handful of pens before retracting, the panel sliding back into place.
“You will complete every assignment on the table, and slide them into the slot in the wall.” Without further elaboration or instruction, the mic clicked off, leaving a heavy silence. I glance to the north wall, spotting a slot where there hadn’t been one before. I turn back to the desk, and read the top sheet. It’s unintelligible gibberish, like someone let their cat run across the keyboard and printed out the nonsense it produced. Every paper following was similar, with lines where an answer is supposed to be written. From behind me I hear a faint whisper, and I whirl around to face the source of the voice. Nothing. The room remained empty except for me and the stack of impossible assignments on my desk, and the pale reflections in the mirrors. For a moment it looks like one of the reflections is smirking, a smug, mocking “I’ve already beaten you” look. As soon as the smirk had come, it vanishes, leaving my own confused, terrified face to stare back at me.
I begin the assignments, writing a random combination of letters and numbers that I can only assume the sheet is asking for. I don’t understand the assignment, and I’m afraid to ask what it means, so I do the best I can, hoping it will satisfy the voice that commands me. Occasionally I glance into the mirror, watching myself slowly descend into madness. I don’t sleep much, as every time I doze off the voice from the speaker snaps me back to attention. I haven’t eaten either, and the hunger has grown to a constant stabbing pain. After the first week, the whispering starts, a constant presence. It sounds like it’s coming from everywhere at once, from inside my head, even. I can’t make out the words a first, but it slowly grows louder, and I pick out a few words. “Useless...pathetic...a waste...shameful...” I slide the first twenty sheets into the slot in the wall, and the voice comes back over the speaker, furious. “NO, NO, NO!!! I MADE THIS ASSIGNMENT PERFECTLY CLEAR, AND YOU GIVE ME THIS!!! YOU’RE STUPID, LAZY, DISGUSTING!!!!!” I’m shaken to the core by the scolding tone in her voice, and the whole room shudders with the force of her words. A click, and she’s gone again. I curl up on the floor and start to cry in despair, certain that I will die here, surrounded by my own reflection. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, and with no way to distinguish between night and day, and no clock to tell what time it is, I can’t be sure. It feels like years.
A flash of movement catches my eye, and I glance up. All of my reflections have a wicked grin on their faces, no longer following my own movements, as if they’re completely separate entities. The whispering gets louder, a hundred voices strong. They spit the words “fat, lazy, useless, pathetic, weak, miserable, disgusting,” as their voices grow deeper and more distorted. My heart races as I spin in frantic circles to catch their serpentine motions toward me. They stand like a jeering crowd, circling around me and closing in until I see nothing but a dozen versions of my own face, grotesque and warped beyond recognition. The sounds grow to shrieks, overlapping into a discordant, cacophonous roar. I cover my ears and curl up into a fetal position in a desperate attempt to block out the voices. I’m hyperventilating, unable to move or scream or think of anything besides how helpless I am in that single instant. In that one drop of eternity I feel so incredibly small and powerless, and for a moment I think the voices might be right.
Suddenly a deafening silence fills the room. All of the reflections have stopped screaming. The ring around me breaks, and another reflection steps into the gap, and through the mirror. I stare at my double in utter confusion, circling back against the wall as she steps toward me. She stops once we’re on opposite sides of the table, and then she speaks.
“How do you not understand this simple task, this one job I’ve asked you to do?”
“What do you mean? Nothing on this page makes sense, and I don’t know what else I could possibly do with it.”
“Oh don’t play dumb, you know exactly what this is asking for. You’re the kid that everyone always said you’d do great things. You’re the smart one, the studious one, the academic. Now all you do is let people down. Everyone is disappointed in you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
As she continues, I recognize her voice. She was the one who spoke to me over the intercom.
“And now all you do is disappoint everyone. You’re a disgrace to your school, your family, and yourself. You deserve nothing. You will amount to nothing. You are nothing.”
She’s backed me into a corner now. I glance to the mirrors and notice that neither of us cast a reflection. All my other doubles are gone, having poured all their malice and hatred into the one solid entity before me. She throws a quick left hook at my temple, sending stars exploding across my vision and throwing me off balance. My head connects with the wall, and I black out for a split second. I hit the floor, and she’s still standing over me. She delivers three sharp kicks to my ribs before I sweep her leg out from under her, sending her tumbling backwards. I scurry along the wall, clutching my surely cracked ribs and fighting off unconsciousness as I struggle to my feet. I turn to face her a moment too late. She grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks me backward, sending me sprawling onto my back. She plants one leather-booted foot on my chest, and I’m pinned like a butterfly.
Her eyes bore through me, immobilizing me with a look full of what I can only describe as vast, unending hatred. I could see her mind, how she imagined slamming her boot down onto my chest, shattering my ribs and watching me choke to death on my own blood. She doesn’t just want me dead, she wants me to suffer. She wants to strangle me with her bare hands, and see the light leave my eyes. She really and truly hates me. It rolls off her in waves, making the air bristle and snap, charged with the sheer force of her hatred. I lay there, wincing with every breath and struggling to fight back the black that advances on the edge of my vision, and she spits on me, looking down with disgust. She drags me by my hair back to the chair, leaving me to crawl into it. As she steps back into the mirror, she says three words to me.
“I hate you.”
I reply simply, “I hate me too.” She returns to the mirrors, leaving me in an empty room, with my one reflection on the wall. She slings insults as I try to ignore her, filling out the assignments on the table in the same gibberish I had begun them in, knowing it wasn’t what she wanted but far beyond caring. Every time I finish a sizeable portion of the stack, the tube comes back with a stack twice its size. I keep writing, my hand cramping and my head throbbing and that voice taunting me, but knowing that I can’t stop. Knowing that I have people who expect me to do these things, knowing that I’ll die here if I don’t do it. So on and on I go, as the days bleed into years. The papers keep coming, and I keep going. It is endless; it is monotonous. My double is a constant companion, whether she’s in the mirror ranting and raving about my inadequacies, or whether she steps out to slam my head against the wall, she’s always here with me. But since this is all just a dream, that means I get to wake up, right? I get to leave this mirrored hellscape behind, right? The impossible papers, the pain, the hatred and loathing I feel for myself every single day, they all go away when I wake up? That’s the funny thing.
When I open my eyes, it doesn’t end.
