I woke up, my eyes wide and a headache pounding through my skull. A hubbub of fireflies danced before my eyes, pops of white light as I blink. I flutter my eyelids, blinking it away. But the pain sticks. Lying on my back, I hear the groans of my muscles and I slowly sit up, the bed joining my muscles in a chorus of pain. Then I hear it. Like a crash of symbols, the strike of lightning, a booming knock resounded throughout the apartment.
I felt an overwhelming sense of deja vu. This only made my discomfort intensify, now joining my headache was a piercing whistling sound, like the scratch of nails on glass. It raised the hair on the back of my neck and quickened my breath. I was now in such a state of panic that I felt my instincts narrow down to their base function, animalistic, primal. Peeling the sheets back slowly from my sticky, swollen skin, revealing my always cut and bruised legs, I swung my legs from the swimming pool of a bed. In shaking legs, I stumbled like a foal, trying to remain as quiet as possible. All the blood drained out of my head, and I had to blink even more to clear my vision, my focus was on the knock, afraid for my life.
I'd always been one to assume the worst. It was 3am, nobody comes to the apartment anyway, I have no friends and my family died years ago, I hadn't ordered a package, so it must be an intruder. Creeping along my beaten floor, I avoid all of the creaking ones and grope the walls for the light switch to the hallway. Nothing is there. I breathe a sigh of relief, sweat sliding down my forehead to my eyes. Wiping it away, my thundering heart stilled again with a second booming knock. This time, it sounded closer.
Leaning on the walls for support to my knocking knees and fevered state. I made my way to the bathroom, the only room in the apartment with a fire escape, it seemed the logical thing to do, to escape. The room spinning, my hands slid down the doorway and found the second switch. I was horrified with what I saw.
Directly in front of me was a mirror. I saw myself in the reflection of course, but with a terrible, unexpected difference. My hand flew to my mouth, a shriek of terror escaping my lips, a trembling came about my limbs. She was porcelain white, not one scratch on her limbs, no bags under her eyes. Her hair looked greased and unwashed, and as I looked closer, her nails were bitten to Stubbs, bleeding at the tips. Kohl black streamed down her face, and she held the most gruesome, twisted expression on her face. Twin to my own, but without her hands to her face. She, instead, began to raise her fist, and what looked like despair crossed her face. She knocked.
It clanged through my brain once again, and I reached towards her, she reached out to me. Or at least tried to, her fingertips touched exactly where mine were, then she started bashing the glass with all she had. It had no effect. Terror rose up my throat, I glanced down to my own arms and frowned. They had cuts and bruises, lots of them, and I looked at my hands, they were crusted with blood. The girl looked at me beseechingly, pleading for something, but I instead felt eternally more and more confused. How was this possible? My head finally pounded so much that I fell to the ground, my hands cradling it in my blood-soaked hair.
A piercing white light snapped all around me. I remembered.
A dark delight pulsed through me. A wicked grin spread across my face, my head now felt so clear, such blessed silence now filled my ears. I stood up on balanced legs, my expression smoothing and I slowly reached up to the mirror. Her mirror. I smiled, a nasty, twisted thing. "Don't make me angry," I said sweetly "Or you'll end up like the rest of your family." With a final wail, the girl disappeared from sight. I looked into the mirror once more.
Nothing remained.
