Reflection

Chapter 1

As the sun sinks below the horizon, it splashes the sky with hues of red and lilac like paint on a canvas. The silver moon ascends to it's place in the black expanse, a sharp contrast to the other side of the sky. One alive and thriving, the other dead and soulless but both with a beauty that was incomparable to anything else. Unfortunately, beauty made everything a competition and, right now, it seemed that the black was winning. Would that always be the case? Everything that had happened so far had been to prevent what was soon to come. I couldn't believe that every safeguard had been broken, every precaution taken useless. It was over.
•
I woke to hear the sharp shrill of my alarm clock, piercing my ears unmercifully. I turned it off immediately, praying that I had been the only one to hear it. Light filtered into my bedroom through the wooden blinds and hit the ivory walls to create a beautiful pattern. I yawned tiredly and clambered out of my queen sized bed, pushing my soft duvet off of my body.
I walked to the window and pulled the blinds up to reveal a beautiful dawn. A beautiful baby pink intertwined with what looked like a cadmium gold in the sky, twisting and turning, churning out more colours and light. I smiled softly at the sight before turning away.
I had roughly an hour before my mother woke up, meaning that I had one hour of freedom but I would have to be quiet. It was not even a challenge anymore to act like a silent lioness stalking my prey before the daylight hours. I had never been caught and I never planned to be. If I was caught only once, my mother would reschedule her whole day so that she could wake up before me and monitor everything. It had taken me hours to think up the routine that would actually work. Five minutes in my room, forty five minutes of free time and ten minutes to go back to bed, just to be safe.
I tiptoed to my closet and opened it carefully, succeeding in not making a sound. At the bottom of my closet was the shoebox that I always kept my white Adidas trainers in. I slipped my hand into the left shoe and pulled out a small, compact mirror with a Celtic symbol traced onto the front in jet black ink. The woman in the shop had told me that the symbol was for protection and secrecy, which I found both fitting and ironic.
I flipped the mirror open and gazed at the girl staring back at me. She had ebony hair and pale skin. Her eyes were icy blue but something about them were also warm and welcoming. It was strange but everyone who saw the girl's face understood it. Freckles were scattered across the girl's face and her lips were a soft, pink rosebud. It was still shocking that I could see this girl in my own home, when it had been forbidden to my for so long.
My mother was obsessed with mirrors and reflections. She believed they made people selfish or that they were too much of a risk of bad luck if they were ever chipped or cracked. Whatever her reasoning was, my mother had forbade me to use or look at mirrors in my own home. It was unavoidable at school, I think even my mother knew that, but she gave me a lecture every morning.
She would take my hand before I left the car and hold it with both of hers. I always put it down to superstitious nonsense.
It had taken a lot of courage and opportunity to get myself this mirror and owning it made me feel empowered, like I had unlocked a superpower. Something compelled me to stare at the mirror and attempt to take in every detail, memorise it perfectly so that I would never be able to forget even the tiniest spot.
It was at this moment that my reflection smiled. It wasn't a gentle smile or a kind smile. It was sly, almost cunning but that wasn't even the weirdest thing. I hadn't smiled. So why had my reflection?
I dropped the mirror in shock and it smashed onto the floor, scattering the shards and, more importantly, creating a noise that would wake the dead.
Panicking, I grabbed the biggest shard and shoved it into the pocket of my dressing gown. My heart pounding, I scooped the rest of the shards under the wardrobe.
I could hear my mother's urgent footsteps hitting the wooden flooring, each second becoming quicker and quicker and quicker. I ran to my bed and submerged myself under the comfortable duvet but it did nothing to soothe my fears. What if Mum found out? It was then that I realised my biggest mistake. I hadn't closed the blinds.
It was too late to get out of bed now, it sounded like Mum was only mere footsteps away from my room. I could do nothing. Screaming internally, I clutched the shard of mirror that I had left tightly, holding it like it was the only thing stopping me from falling off of a steep cliff and into a dark abyss.
My bedroom door opened with a creak and I clenched my eyes shut, praying and praying for the unlikely scenario where my mother would think nothing was wrong and simply go back to bed. She didn't. She stood in the doorway for what felt like hours, her shadow towering threateningly on the floor. I could almost feel her cold eyes resting on my 'sleeping' form.
Finally, she left and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. That was when the pain hit me. I pulled out my left hand into the light where I could see it and saw that I was bleeding profusely. I had clearly clutched the shard too hard. I held my hand to my chest and tried to control my breathing. Without the adrenaline, it was easy hearing my hand's demands for it's pain to be felt. It stung my hand, like an angry jellyfish, and continued to pump out my scarlet lifeblood. I could do nothing to soothe the pain or stop the bleeding because I knew, somehow I knew, that my mother wasn't really gone. She was still roaming, still watching, always watching. I would never truly escape her gaze.
•
I didn't sleep again but I kept my eyes closed, fearing the worst. It was the longest half an hour of my life. Then came the moment when I felt someone shake me awake gently. I opened my eyes and saw my mother. She was far less scary in daylight. Her skin had a bronze glow and her hair fell flawlessly at her shoulders in dark brown twists. She never suffered from bed head. At forty two, my mum was doing very well.
Unfortunately, after a single conversation with her you would realise that her outside and inside were very different. She was cold and detached, obsessive and controlling. I said this to my friends but then they would say exactly the same about their mothers. To them, I was just another teenager complaint about my annoying mother. I guess that was true, in a way.
"Time to wake up, sweetie," Mum said quietly, sending chills down my spine.
A quiet composure was always scarier than obvious anger. I faked a yawn and sat up, my eyes darting around the room. They widened slightly when I saw the blinds. They were closed. But how? Mum hadn't come into my room at any point, I would have heard her. Or maybe she did and I just didn't notice? How ignorant was I?
"I just wanted to ask you if you had heard anything earlier, around an hour ago?" She asked me, her voice sickly sweet.
"Umm, no. Why, what happened?" I lied, my heart beating so loudly that it sounded like an entire orchestra of drums playing at the same time.
"Oh. Well, I heard a smash and thought it might have been you but I came in and you were still asleep and your blinds were closed," Mum told me, "Maybe I was just dreaming."
"Maybe."
Mum left the room so I could get ready and a million thoughts ran through my mind at once like a stampede. I could barely identify with what I was thinking. The blinds had been shut when Mum had come in? Was she lying, to see how I would react? That still didn't explain how the blinds were closed in the first place. Had there been someone else in the room?! No, no, that was crazy. One, I would have seen them when I woke up. Two, why would there be someone else in my room? It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
Now that I could roam the house, I went to the bathroom immediately and inspected my hand. From the looks of it, the bleeding had stopped but the cut was surrounded by layers and layers of dried brown blood. Ugh. Groaning, I ran my hand under the tap and winced as I washed off the blood. When it was clean, I could see that the cut strangely resembled the symbol that had been on the mirror. Weird.
I washed my face and brushed my teeth whilst I was in the bathroom and then had a shower. The warm water on my face calmed me slightly but the ebbing pain in my hand when the water hit it refused to let me forget what had happened. After I had dried off, I went back to my room, still kind of creeped out. I was paranoid that someone was watching me and that I was not alone. I shook the feeling off and started to get dressed in my school uniform. The uniform was a short sleeved white blouse and a navy skirt. I hated it, the rules were ridiculous and the skirt had to be longer than our knees. Of course, no one followed that rule but it was annoying nonetheless.
I pulled my hair into a side braid and pulled on my school shoes, shiny black brogues. Although I was wearing tights, the brogues still felt nice and smooth against my feet. Tights really were a useless barrier and the ones that Mum let me wear were excessively thin. It was like they were not even there.
I grabbed a sandwich for breakfast before pulling on my black blazer and scribbling out a note for Mum in my slanted cursive on a yellow post it note.
Going to walk to school today and get some fresh air. See you later ~D
I stuck the note to the fridge using a flower magnet and left the house quietly, knowing that Mum would be mad that I had gone to school by myself.
As I walked, I finished my sandwich and fished around in my handbag for my iPhone. I stared at myself in the reverse camera mode to make sure I looked okay. It was really weird that Mum didn't let me have mirrors but let me have a phone with reverse camera.
It was kind of pathetic that I only bought the mirror as a form of rebellion against her and that I didn't even need it. I just wanted to try and get back at her in some way.
It didn't take me long to get to school as it was only a few streets away. It was a miserable building. The windows were covered in grime and dust and the building itself was dirty grey had cracks in the roof. A permanent cloud hovered above the building, like a rain cloud over an unlucky character in a cartoon.
I hated that it was an all girls school. It was immensely boring and I had next to no confidence when talking to guys out of school.
I was putting my phone in my blazer pocket (they were not allowed to be used in school hours) when I felt something else in it. I pulled it out and realised that it was the mirror shard from earlier, still stained with blood. I could have sworn that I hadn't taken it out of my other pocket. I threw the shard up in the air and it landed several feet to my left in front of me. There. It was gone. No more evidence of what had happened. Mum would never know.