The Mirror Creature is a Fraud

The human mind is one of the strangest things of all

He lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He let his head loll to the side and glanced at his bedside table. 3:17 am. He returned his gaze to the ceiling for a few more moments, before getting up and walking to the bathroom. He turned on the lights, and just stared at his reflection. He gazed blankly and his feminine hips, his unbound chest, his petite frame. He watched his form, hideous in his eyes until his sight blurred, blinking his vision back. He returned to his room, and laid in his bed, uncovered on his side. He stared at the wall until time lost its way.

He sat up in his bed, sore and confused. After minutes that felt like decades, he cracked his back, neck, and fingers and pawed around his bed. He found his vape, a small berry ice flavored one, and he took a hit. He held it for a few seconds, took another, inhaled through his nose and held it, breathing only when the vapor was all but gone. He sat in his bed a while more, before getting up to look in the mirror again. He stood and stared until his eyes watered, then returned to his bed. He sat on his phone for hours upon hours. He repeated this cycle over and over, time after time. A blurred silent montage of sit, stare, stand, stare, over and over for hours. The sun rose and fell with the hours and he did not stop. As night fell, he began seeing things in the corners of his eyes. Blurs. Shadows. There for just a moment, creeping and slithering around him. Trying to consume him without being seen. They grew closer and closer, threatening to devour him until the second he tried to glimpse them. But still, the cycle pursued.

The night melded into day once again, and he found it much too bright. It killed the shadows, but he didn't seem to mind them. The sun was bright and hot, illuminating the room far too brightly and bringing it to an uncomfortably warm temperature. He searched his room for curtains. Minutes became hours as he grew increasingly frantic, tearing his room up in search of something to kill that god awful light. Eventually, after hours of searching, he'd taped trash bags over the windows. He got up to resume his routine of staring at his hideous abomination of a reflection and glided into the hall, only to find it just as unreasonably hot and warm. He meticulously covered each window with trash bags, taping them generously to the wall. He went through forty trash bags and five rolls of duct tape, just to cover each window completely. Once the house was pitch black, he went around and lit every candle, lighting the place an eerie hue.

He stalked back to the bathroom, having taken to leaving the lights on. The room was illuminated only by the four light bulbs above the bathroom mirror. One had died, and the others were all tinged and dirty, illuminating the already white and old room a soft, ugly green. He stared at the mirror once more, gazing through the hideous abomination that he saw as his female anatomy. The dark began creeping around him again, edging his vision and coating him. He let it, allowed its wispy black tendrils to wrap around him.He stared blankly through the man in the mirror still, dazed and disgusted.

There was a loud pop and a tinkling shatter. His hands flew to his face as he flinched and crouched, bracing himself for whatever impact, only to realize it was simply a light bulb. The dark and sick blackness was gone, disappeared as it did when he looked at it. He sulked back to his room, his routine never ceasing. Days stolen, hours disappeared, minutes gobbled by the dim and desolate routine. He returned to the mirror, and this time, began scrutinizing the thing he saw. He watched it dimly, a small silent voice pointing out the hideous details. The horrendous, matted hair, cut choppy and short. Unbrushed, unwashed indefinitely. The face. Too feminine. Far too feminine. The ugly little mustache, the small, bulbous nose, the deep-set, dull, and tired eyes. God, the eyes. Mud-brown pools with no shine, dark mountains below, deprived of sleep so long the thing had forgotten. The small shoulders, profoundly soft collar bones, and scrawny arms. Somewhere along the line, he'd put on his binder. It was better, but only truly served to coat the creature in the mirror in an extra level of revulsion. The thin, weightless, frame, the delicate effeminate hips, shrouded in baggy cloth. The thing was an imposter. A creature parading like a man. It was horrid. The inky darkness came crawling back, and this time, he didn't see it. It crawled over him, burrowing into his skin as he watched the creature in the mirror. Accompanying it though, was a creature. Not as disgustingly fake as the one he so often stared at, but more ethereally hideous. It was dark, a charred black, crusted as if in magma. It was tall, lanky and disjointed, and smelled of rot. Rot, char, and.. Peony blossoms. It stalked closer, slinking and gangly through the inky darkness. He didn't see it at first, but he smelt it. As soon as he blinked, it was gone.

He paced his room rapidly, circular and silent laps. The monster of the last trip had startled him, but he would return as usual. The cycle worsened over time. He was driven into a state of manic psychosis, pacing, staring, panicking,and repeating. It blurred and melded in the darkness, days fading and sense of time becoming less and less certain. The candles had burnt out long ago, he hadn't eaten or slept to the best of his ability. He drank and ate nothing, passed out occasionally only to wake with a start and return to the process. Not even gods can be certain how long this progressed. At last, the creature got to him. He turned to face it, turning his back on the disfigured fraud in the mirror, but the strange horror behind him was not the one held still by his gaze, and much less the one he had to worry about.

A woman pounded rapidly on the blue apartment door, shouting and screaming for him. She found the key under the mat and unlocked the door, bursting into the apartment. She crept apprehensively through the dark and eerie house, gazing at each window with unease as she examined the trash bag covering, and noting the gagging yet flowery scent but unable to pin it . She trekked towards his room, opening the door only to find the room trashed. The rest of the house was oddly clean though. This room smelled the exact same, yet no stronger. She still couldn't place it. He wasn't there though. She hurried timidly to the bathroom, and set a hand over the door knob. She noted the smell coming strongly from the other side, and was finally able to name it. She stood for what seemed like a millennia before opening the door, dropping to her knees numbly at the sight of her mauled son before her, arms and legs coated with bloody gashes, the bottle meant to contain his antidepressants lay empty beside him as he lay limp in a lake of blood on the dingy floor, foaming at the mouth. He was what smelled like rot and peony blossoms.

The human mind is one of the strangest things of all