The Reflection

The smell of a dead body is one which you never forget. Roadkill is bad enough, but when you find yourself in the same room as rotting flesh, it's horrifying. What was once a person with endless thoughts and hopes and dreams is now a home for mayflies and maggots. If the scene isn't visually burned into your mind already, the stench which clings to your clothes and invades your nostrils stays with you years after you've left it behind.

The corpse, which was once known as Alicia Vanguard, was one of Dr.Joseph's many "involuntarily sourced" test subjects. Apparently, no one cared enough to remove her remains until I accidentally stumbled upon her while searching for Dr.Long's office.

After many years of being away from that nauseating lab, I thought that I had forgotten the way the remains of Ms.Vanguard appeared. Yet as she stood outside of my bedroom window, I could recall the familiarity of her swollen cheekbone (a tell-tale end stage symptom) and forehead which was now a dull purple from lividity. Her expression now is not relaxed as it was when I found her in that windowless room decades ago. Instead, her mouth is twisted to the right and her eyebrows are tightly drawn together. Our eyes lock and the sun disappears in the distance behind her, but I do not dare move. We are trapped there, and she is positioned behind a thin layer of glass, the same way she was when she first arrived as a test subject.

Eventually, my knees lock beneath me and I am forced to move away from her unchanging glare. The light in the bathroom is dim and the darkness only unsettles me more, but the shock of who I have seen sinks in. Could she have somehow survived? I was the one to discover her lifeless form and my division only dealt with those who wished to be dead; I never felt for her pulse or took her away from that room.

Could she have lived and finally found me?

For so many years, those days of endless work with no results have remained hidden. What would happen now? All along, I was certain that everyone had died, but now...

The logical eyes which reflect back at me in the mirror tell me that this could not be the case, but my shaking hands provide another response. After all of those test subjects, all of those failed cures and vaccines, the one which has been the very source of my corruption is still living and breathing?

My skin is far more wrinkled and my lab coat has since been discarded, so why would she wait until now? When I am no longer a piece of humanity's never ending puzzle, searching for a cure?

I do not want to face my nightmares, not now or ever again, but she is just within my reach and I still need answers. If she was able to survive, could it be that my existence has not been wasted? That perhaps my efforts, no matter how immoral, finally produced something beneficial?

As I walk back into my bedroom, the only sight which greets me is my disheveled bed and flickering television. My former subject is no longer greeting me in the window and I wonder...could it have been some twisted dream?

Perhaps my nightly vodka tonic was finally catching up with my senses...

I remind myself that I am a woman of science and that my past is still my past. It would be impossible for her to have found me. Simply impossible.

I whisper this to myself and retrieve a glass of water from the kitchen. The normality of the action provides me with a sense of relief and I begin to put the strange image behind me when her eyes meet mine again.

If she had been breathing then the air from her lungs would have certainly brushed against my skin. Her face, only inches from my own now, remains twisted and foreboding. I scream and shout at her, demanding to know her intentions, but she gives me no response. My screams of agony bring flashbacks to every dark moment I have failed to repress. Every syringe, every useless antidote, every torturous feeling which I provoked rushes back and I am once again in that unforgiving place.

The world is dark, but I can make out the familiar grey tile and face which refuses to release me from its stare. I am blinded momentarily by a flash of light above us and I recall this very room. The last time I was here, I was on the other side of the one-way mirror, but now...now I am the one strapped to the faded chair.

Ms.Vanguard remains with me, but no one else appears. The only other sign of life is the voice of my long dead co-worker, absentmindedly explaining the experiment, just as he used to.

I begin screaming again and plead with the gruesome face of the woman I predominantly remember only in death. To my surprise, she responds. I feel relief, thinking that she might help me, but she only places her cold fingertips against my cheek.

The pressure of her hand turns my face towards the hazy glass and I can see now: My cheekbone is swollen.
I am in the end-stage of the disease known to many and cured by none.
This virus has now not only consumed my life, but it has now stolen my death.

I carry on screaming until my heart ultimately stops beating. There is a moment where I am just there, no heartbeat, no breathing, and I swear that I can smell that same rotting flesh, just as pungent as I remember.

~

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