I closed the comic book and got up from the mattress that enveloped me in memory foam. My feet slid and scooted on the carpet towards the bathroom. The long day was reaching it's end and a sigh of relief released what seemed to be a thousand pounds.
Walking into the bathroom I felt a surge of frost hit me. Living in southern California in the middle of the summer made that nearly impossible. The notified interest had nonchalantly floated away once I had my hands on the toothbrush and had began to scrub the weeks worth of camping distances of my grimy molars.
Looking up, I was hit with distinctions of the room. The door had closed.
"Guess I closed it and forgot."
The wallpaper seemed older...
"I must have just never focused on it so much."
Then it caught me. No excuse came to mind. Just the hope that my instincive memory was faded. I turned to examine the picture of all 11 of my siblings, including me. The picture had been rotated to a crooked upside down and the eriest feature was the fraction containing me. It was cut out. And as I flipped over the photo I came to realize that there were dates etched into the paper, above each head. I read them aloud to myself.
" June 18th , 2007, Jonathan... Huh.
January 31st, 2045 Allen - wait that's not a year yet..." I noticed around nine of my brothers were dated with years that haven't happened yet. I looked at the one with Mathews, my dead brother. Above him was the date, "April 4th, '09, Mathews"
His death date. I checked the date for Jonathan, being the same date of his death. And with every focusing glance I thought I could make out images engraved in the photo. They became more clearer and as I focused in on Mathews, I noticed, above his head, was a car. An unrealistically scratched in car, in which peeked more of my interest because that, of all things, was how he died. A car crash.
I looked near everyone and they were all near an object or a hazard. Kris, a train. Adam, a noose. Styles, a knife. And me...
My wrists were slit. Which I couldn't understand why this would be ( that is if it is based on the guidelines I was deducing to). I was perfectly happy. I had a girlfriend and I was an intern, I had my own house and a cat and a car. Everything was okay with me.
I took the picture off the wall and threw it in the trash can, officially spooked out of my wits. Going back the the sink, I picked up the razor to shave and cautiously, for my humours sake, made sure it found my face rather than my wrist. I put on the shaving cream and carefully cleaned my face of the scruff.
Washing it off I looked up into the mirror. I was bent half over for the sink's sake, sake and yet my reflection stood fully. I felt my blood reach frozen temperatures and stared for a second. I smiled. Not me, but the reflection of me. He just grinned in a way that was more sinister than it's horror.
He then reached for the razor. I knew exactly what was to happen. Quickly I smashed the window, hoping to destroy the terror but quickly found that it was simply glass. The scene carried on as if the mirror was still there. I had no idea what to expect except that I was about to die. In the haste of the scene I crawled on top of the broken glass and through the mirror. The pain shot into my hands and through my knees as I felt the warm blood flow and drip to my palms and fingers. I , the real me, grabbed a pain of glass and shanked the reflection with hope of killing him. He dropped.
"Did... Did I just waste my reflection...???" The confusion was nevertheless blatant but almost overwhelmed the pain as grains of glass dug into my skin. I looked around. The bathroom on the other side of the mirror was the same. I went to the trash can and there was the photo. Brushing out the glass from my bloodied, shaking hand I grabbed the picture and read my date.
0ctober 13, 2017. That was tonight.
"Well good luck with that" I thought.
I crawled through the mirror and went to my room, grabbing a towel and some belts. I tired my arms and dried the blood and took off the belts and went to bed.
The next morning I woke up and stared at my dead body. The glass had cut me too much and I was too dizzy to take care of myself. The only thing I could think was that this was it. I was dead. And that was how it was. Death.
(A note from the author)
They say in your last moments, your life flashes before your eyes. And with so you will find that it was all a joke. All of it. So make sure to make the best out the punchline and do whatever seems fun to you.
