The Definition Of Insanity

Prologue

"You thought this was real?" The voice carried over the silence. "What?" The girl tried to ask, but her voice faded. Her scene changed to a half-lit hallway. There were no lights, no paintings, and no decorations on the plain walls. She advanced forwards, moving slowly, like something was going to suddenly change. Nothing happened. She turned around, only to see a mirror directly behind her. As if she hadn't moved. Am I moving? She walked towards it. Why can't I hear my footsteps? She looked down, but saw nothing. No floor, No feet, no legs.

Her body was lifted up. She was dragged towards the mirror. She felt the impact, but it didn't hurt. She felt only cold. She couldn't breathe. Why can't I breathe? Why is it so cold? Is she dying? Is this death? Air hit her chest, trying to force itself into her lungs. The scene changed again. She was in her bed. Was it her bed? Her breath came out in bursts. When did she start breathing again?  Ok. Ok. This is fine. That was a dream. I'm awake now. She heard something, a familiar voice, she realized. "You thought this was real?"

Once again, what she was seeing changed. The hallway appeared. She attempted to walk  forward, but didn't move. She started to run , trying desperately to reach the end; she didn't want to go through the mirror again. But she didn't get closer. So she spun around, and walked to the cursed reflection she still couldn't see. She put her hand to it. How can I feel as if I'm touching something, even though I can't see my hands? Her hand went through. Through the glass, through the cold, through the stillness, and through the devilish lack of oxygen.

She saw no way out, so she turned back to the hallway. She tried to go forward, and again, her body was pulled towards the glass. She was pulled through, and instantly felt the infernal cold that almost felt like it was burning. Her movements became erratic in her panic, and her chest started to hurt. When she was finally back in the bed, she inhaled the air greedily. "Hey! I know this isn't real!" she screamed out hopelessly. She got no answer, so she tried to move off the bed, maybe get to the door. But she wasn't in the room. She was in the hallway.

He sat back. Watching. The girl kept going. Every time she went back she was met with the hallway. She immediately went for the mirror. And every time she came back out she'd try to talk to him. He didn't know why she kept going. He didn't know what to do. All of the people before usually only lasted the second time around. So why? Why did she keep going? Why did she keep trying to breathe when she couldn't? Why did she keep freezing herself in the mirror? Why won't she just give up like everyone else did? It was just making it harder for both of them. He didn't know her name.  He didn't know anything about her. Why was this so difficult? So he just kept watching, waiting, waiting for her to break. It had to happen. Everyone broke at some point.

He continued this. For hours maybe. For however long she'd been at this. But time didn't work the same way here. So there really was no telling how long it'd been.  Appear in the hallway, go through the mirror, suffocate, bed, hallway. Rinse and Repeat. He wondered if she was already broken. Wasn't that insanity? To do something over and over again, expecting a different outcome? Isn't that what she was doing? She kept going, over, and over, and over again. Through the mirror. Through the cold. Through the stillness. But nothing ever changed.

No sheets were different in the bed, no walls were slightly scuffed in the hall, and nothing new happened when she went through the mirror. So he watched. He watched as she repeatedly broke the mirror by going through it, as she repeatedly tried to talk to him in the bedroom, and how she hadn't even tried to go to the end of the hallway since the first. And finally, finally, he watched as this time, she didn't appear in the bedroom, or the hall, or the mirror. She was gone. And not a single thing changed.

This time, when she gasped for air, she wasn't in the bedroom. She didn't know where she was. This isn't the hallway. What are these buildings? Why is everything so bright? And why are they leaning like that? What are those banging sounds? Why does I feel heavier? When she noticed this last feeling, she looked down.

A gasp escaped her lips as she looked at her legs. Why can I see my legs? Does this mean this is real? Why are they cut up like that?  She poked a shard sticking out of her leg. It fell out, and she flinched at the reflection. She picked it up and tilted it to her face. Do I have a reflection? This has to be real! I can see myself!

She touched her free hand to her face, and quickly jerked it away at the stinging feeling. She looked at her hand. The blood staining her fingers didn't look natural to her. Nothing about her looked natural. Surely white hair wasn't normal. She brought her hand up, and touched her hair. It went barely past her shoulders. The blood on her fingers stained it. She looked at the shard again, now taking note of the pieces of glass in her face. These must be from jumping through the mirror. She began to slowly pick the glass out.

She was suddenly jerked out of her thoughts when she was made aware of a sound behind her. She tilted the shard towards her back. She was amazed to find one small crow fluttering behind her. She reached out towards it, but it quickly flew away.

She looked back around at her surroundings. The buildings were distorted, almost like they were being sucked up towards something. The banging sounds only got louder as she walked towards the street. The street? Was she in an alleyway? She looked around, studying the crowds of people around. They were all dressed in many colors, and were so different. She sat down. To get her bearings. At least that's what her brain said, but she didn't know if that's really why she stayed.

She heard yelling from a window above her. The window was closed, so whatever was being said was muffled. Suddenly, the window shattered and a person came flying out. "Asami-!" She heard the name shouted from the now broken window.  She couldn't tell why, but she felt the need to follow the person.

A flash of bright ginger came crashing out of the window. She was caught off guard, when the person was covered in something silver. The silver moved, and morphed into two wings on the ginger haired person. She watched as the person, now identifiable as a girl, went straight down, towards a small crowd of people on the street. They began screaming, but she looked like she was trying not to laugh.  She spun in the air, and evened out. She landed barely outside the alley, and leaned against the wall.

Do I know her? Is that why I want to go to her? If I talked to her, would she know me? Could she tell me my name? She began creeping forwards, careful to not be seen by any of the vendors in the stalls,  towards the girl leaning on the wall. Just as she was about to reach out, the door beside her swung open.

She yanked her arm back. She slunk back into the shadows of the alley. Two boys came out the door, the older one looking annoyed. He was taller than the girl, maybe about a foot. He had similar colored hair, except it seemed darker, like it had rusted.  He began berating the younger girl, about her recklessness.

"Asami! You can't just jump out of windows like that. What if someone was under you? The glass could have hurt them!"

The girl waved him off though, and walked towards the street. The other boy followed her, talking excitedly about something. He was talking so fast, it would have been almost impossible to understand him.

The crowds seemed to part as the group of three moved. Asami stopped at a food stall, and seemed to immediately get locked in a conversation with the vendor. She smiled and laughed and the young girl in the alley wanted nothing more than to run up, talk to her. But she stayed where she was, hidden in the shadow of the buildings. She didn't recognize the languages the people were speaking, and she was much too cowardly to go out to them.

She was abruptly made aware of the fact that she had lost sight of Asami. She scanned over the heads of the people, looking for the bright colored hair that would stand out. But it wasn't anywhere to be found.

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Well technically there's a second part to this that I've half written. But for now I'll just leave this as a short story.