Monstrosity

Episode 2 (part 1)

8 hours later...

You woke up after what seemed like 4 hours. It was already nighttime, with the winter air filling your room. Hastily heading to the bathroom you took a quick shower to calm yourself down, hoping to forget what you witnessed earlier today.

As you cleaned the steamy mirror in front of you, revealing your refreshed body with a towel wrapped around it, you squirted some face wash into your palm. But when you looked into the mirror again, you saw yourself. A second you. With eyes so deeply black, they looked like two empty voids. Your clone had an evil smile etched on her face, standing at the far back of the bathroom.

"What the fuck?" you murmured, looking at it through the mirror and rubbing your eyes.

"You know it was your fault, right?" she said and your heart dropped. You knew what she was talking about. You often thought apropos of your grandparents' deaths, reflecting on the circumstances and the impact they had on your life. The thoughts usually concluded with you blaming yourself. Thinking that if you had been there for them, to save them, if you hadn't gone to your friend's birthday party that night, things would've been different—happy—today. You exhaled a shaky sigh.

"No," you mouthed. "No, it's not my fault," you said, trying to convince yourself instead of the monster in your bathroom.

"Come on, [Y/N]. You know it is," she said, walking closer to you.

"It's not."

"But that's what you think about all the time. If you really knew it wasn't your fault, then why would you take the blame?" She asked, now exactly behind you, so you couldn't see her image in the mirror anymore. You turned around to face her, your body shaking with terror. A disturbing smile grazed her face yet again. Could this be another one of your nightmares? It felt so real, more than any of the dreams you've had since the past week.

"Go away. I know it's not my fault," you sternly replied, but somehow the evil you knew you were bluffing. The smile on her face only grew, turning into a horrifying grin.

"Oh, come now, tell me what you desire," she asked.

'To get back my grandparents,' you thought.

"Is it to get back your grandparents? I can do that." She moved her face so close to yours that the evil exuding from her filled your senses.

Although you knew getting them back wasn't possible, you couldn't figure out whether she was lying or not. Your mind flashed images of you with your grandparents, from the day you were born to the night you came back to a burning house, from the memories that could've only been forgotten but stored in your subconscious to the ones you had replayed in your head over and over for the past three months. You thought about what you desired. Was it getting your grandparents back? When your mind answered a 'no', you felt as relieved as you felt betrayed by yourself. Up until now, what you had wanted was your grandparents, but suddenly, when the situation started feeling like 'do or die', your mind told you the truth. You realized all you had been doing was clinging to them and the pain, not letting yourself catch a break, and tiring yourself with self-blame and self-hatred. What you truly desired was freedom from the miseries you had been mentally putting yourself through.

It was a dream.

You woke up trembling, expecting to find yourself on the cold ground where you had passed out, but instead, you were in your bed, tucked under the cozy and warm blankets. 'Hyun-Su must have put me here,' you thought. Feeling your clothes, you realized they were wet. You looked down and saw them drenched with sweat and blood. Blood that had dripped out of your nose while you had been asleep. Again.