My Echo

The year is 2038, mirrors have been banned for twenty-one years. Twelve years ago today, I was born in this disordered world. Mirrors to me were just a story, but my parents knew that they were real. When I was only five years old, my dad told me about mirrors and how they reflected your emotions and character. Every time I asked him why I had never seen one, he would give me a look. A look of anguish and pain. His eyes would grow big and his face pale, like he had seen a ghost.

He would say to me, "My dearest, echoes are corrupt things that just linger in your darkest dreams. If you should ever come upon finding your echo..." and that was where he would just stop; every time he told the story he would stop and break down as if he had just found out that a relative had just perished.

* * *

Last year, I vaguely remember walking home from school, it was really sunny but there was thunder and dark clouds were crawling in to suffocate the sun. I didn't expect anything to happen, but that was when I saw a gleam coming from an alley to my right side. It was glowing so bright that I assumed it to be a piece of a broken window calling back to the sun. I started to walk towards the light it grew dimmer and dimmer as if trying to hide itself from the storm that was coming. That was when I realized there were no other fragments of the broken window but just this one big piece of... mirror!

Blood rushed through my veins, as I drew nearer and nearer to the shard of a mirror. The same thought was roaring through my head, 'should I look? What if I don't like what I see?' I didn't care.

When I got to it, I closed my eyes for a brief second to calm myself before I observed, as I hunched over to pick it up, my back screamed no! I bent my knees until they clicked and crouched next to the piece. 'How could this be, that a copy of me exists?' What stood there and stared at me emotionless was not what I expected; I didn't imagine myself to have these optimistic, and bright eyes on my heart-shaped face. Or even a fair complexion that glowed with a hint of pink. I thought to myself, 'Is that me?' Who knew that I had bushy hair with a slight greasy glow to it? Well everyone did.

Except me.

The smell of the alley slowly asphyxiated me. The rancid smell of cats and dogs rummaging through rubbish bins for something to eat set my nostrils ablaze with disgust. The putrid smell of the rubbish was flung across the ground as if a tornado had just gone through.

All of a sudden, a drop hit my forehead and trickled down my face. The shower slowly grew faster and harder until it was dark and pouring, it was bucketing so everywhere was wet, as I turned around I noticed a woman hurrying home, who seemed to be crying and a man stumbling after her muttering to himself. I held the mirror above my head and sprinted home as if something or someone was following me.

When I got home I slipped the fragment into my backpack and approached my mum. When she saw me she ran over to me and hugged me until I couldn't breathe, she said to me, "Dear God, where have you been? We were all so worried." As I looked at her face, I realised that she was a woman in the Autumn of her life. Deep wrinkle lines that could not be hidden by the copious amounts of make up, graced her visage. Still, there was strength and wisdom in her emerald eyes and a proud carriage shown in her jutting jaw line. When my mum stopped hugging me, everyone started bombarding me with questions like, "where were you?" and "did anything happen to you?" My response was just a simple, "No, no and no. I'm just going to go to bed." Having said that, the expressions on their faces had no words. I slowly turned around and walked to the stairs. As I walked up the stairs, I felt unsettled, something was troubling me and I did not know what it was. I had a dinner of two sandwiches, but that could not be my problem. It was the stairs! They were gripping me by my shoes. They were squeezing my feet. Then suddenly they let go. I lurched forward and then backward. I nearly fell backwards and could have rolled down them perhaps even to my death. But, why? Didn't they know that I had not come to harm them? Were they so afraid that I was going to send them back to hell?

I did not know why they were trying to stop me from seeing her. I wasn't going betray them. Still, my shoes started to smolder. They were growing warmer. They began sticking to the stairs so that I was having trouble lifting my feet up the stairs. They were pulling me down with growing force. Suddenly, I found myself stuck. I couldn't move. With all my mite, I made it up the next step and the next until I was finally at the top. I got to my room and slammed my door and I locked it so no one would come in. Slowly but surely, I gripped the mirror and pulled it out. But there was something different; my copy wasn't staring at me.

I wasn't even there!

I realized panic had set in but had no idea how to calm myself. My heart was racing and I had trouble breathing, let alone figure out what the next rational move should be. I knew I had to " reboot" my brain. But the only way was to go to bed. I laid down on my pillow and clenched the duvet cover in my hands. How was it possible that my copy is gone?

I couldn't sleep.

As I started to close my eyes, I noticed a black figure in the far corner of my room. It was growing closer and closer. I closed my eyes to tell myself that it wasn't real; when I opened my eyes it was gone. I relaxed, and rolled onto my back.

Above me hung from the roof... was the girl I saw in the mirror.