The Mirror

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He sat by the waterside one day and skipped rocks across the glass-like surface of the lake. It was as reflective as the mirror he looked at himself in every morning. How he despised that mirror, showing him every single little imperfection and malformation his body had to offer. Many times he had been tempted to shatter that mirror into a million pieces with a rock just like he did to the lake when he skipped one between every skip he would let the lake become as flat and smooth as possible and then he'd skip a stone with all of his strength and shatter the mirror lake. This took away the urge to destroy the mirror although he enjoyed looking at himself in the lake. Every time he looked at himself he looked perfect. It seemed as if he had no blemishes, no scars, his hair was always perfect, and his teeth looked as if they were straight not crooked. He waited for the lake to become flat again and looked at himself in the "mirror". He smiled and was suddenly taken aback. His smile was straight. He pulled up the shaggy hair that hung around his forehead and found that the pimples there were gone. He reached towards the water and was only inches from touching his reflection when a hand burst from the water and wrapped around his tightly. He screamed as he was pulled into the lake but he soon stopped as water filled his lungs. After a minute of no air be passed out. He woke up staring upward through a mirror. On the other side he could see the trees that surrounded the lake and also he could see himself. But it was the perfected self that he had seen in the lakes surface. The doppelgänger leaned down closer to where his upper body filled the picture and he said, "I was tired of seeing nothing but imperfection," and then he walked away leaving the boy panicked. He quickly got up and looked around to see a world not his own. Tall gray trees of stone rose up to meet the clouds and shambling black husks of people roamed under the gloom that seemed as if it hung there perpetually. Among the black husks he saw normal people, people he knew, but they looked so different. They had pimples, and messy hair, and crooked teeth. One ran up to him and said, "Damn. They got you."

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