Anonymous Reflection

Nightmare

                I woke up with a start, a nightmare echoing in me like the foreboding rumble before an avalanche. It wasn’t the first time I had the dream. It was a dream in which I was walking down a dark street that was as wide as my shoulders and the gray walls on either side of me stretched up infinitely into a colorless sky. I could not look behind me, and I could only see a few feet in front of me because of a thick fog. I would stumble and injure my knee, and my blood was also colorless.  Then I would look up and two perfectly round eyes would be penetrating through the fog with white light. I would desperately back away from them with a fear that I could not rationalize, but a wall would stop my retreat from behind and I would be forced to gaze into the blankness that gazed right back.  Then the blood from my knee would come right off of my skin and into the air and it would move toward the eyes until it disappeared into the fog. And then it would come faster and in greater quantities. I could feel myself shriveling as my life was sucked away by these blankly apathetic eyes. Then I would awaken.

                But this time, I remembered a hand. Where I had stumbled, when I looked up, there was a hand reaching out to me. When I grabbed it and it helped me to my feet, I could feel how cold it was. The eyes were there, staring at me as always. But this time, there was a figure silhouetted against the eyes; a body clad in rags. This character had no eyes, but rather, emptiness where sight would otherwise be present. We both stood, unable to back away from the lights that I knew would do what they had always done at this point. But the person before me wrapped one of his many rags around my leg and hid the blood and then took my arm and pulled me toward the gazing orbs. For reasons I could not explain, I made no resistance against this cold-handed anonymous figure. We went into the fog which had many times before retreated no matter how close I approached. We entered the clouded realm, and the lights became larger and larger until we both stood at an eye, just inches away from it. The space between the walls in the street had expanded and the area seemed much greater as we stepped forward. Then we both stepped into the brilliant voids. The intensity of unknown light was the trigger which brought me back to consciousness.

                I sat on the edge of my bed, trying to figure out why the dream was different. I could not understand what had altered the circumstances that had occurred for weeks without change.  Searching for some psychological significance, I sat for the greater part of an hour. Finally, unable to reason anything of it, I walked into my bathroom to shower. But as I looked in the mirror, I realized that I looked different. My initial conclusion was that I had a rough night and probably looked like I hadn’t slept well. But my face was blurred and my clothes looked old and worn; like rags. This was strange, but dismissible as exhaustion from the dream. I wasn’t alarmed until I noticed that there was nothing where my eyes should be.

                I looked exactly like the figure from the dream, which was terrifying in itself, but in addition to that, my reflection was not reflecting my own actions. I was in mid-flinch and backed against the wall, but it was standing and staring. It was watching me. I was frozen in moments of horror that extended surrealistically beyond time. But soon enough, I realized that I there could be no reason to fear the very thing that had stepped into a recurring nightmare and led me to overcome it. This realization, however, was not from me, despite the fact that it occurred in my mind. These thoughts were not mine; they belonged to something else. And, as far as I could assume, so did this reflection.

                This is here to help me, the thought entered my head. But, again, it was not mine. It was similar to being spoken to by someone else, which led me to conclude that this reflection which was not me was the object that was speaking into my thoughts. I am correct in assuming so, it thought in me. I was confused and could feel instinctual fear pumping in my ears. This thing could obviously communicate and existed contained within my mind, and that was the most terrifying place to be vulnerable.