Still Reflections
First there were dozens, and then there were none. He floated on the fear, not knowing if he had ever existed or if he had been the reflection, and his host had walked away. He knew he shouldn’t have pulled his hand from this father’s and roamed and wondered what it was like to live behind a mirror, to exist as only an reflection–now he knew as the world was snuffed out. He had tried screaming but the sound did not come, and what was the world without sound or sight? Only fear. Had he ever had the warm bed with the soft flannel sheets and a mother who would read Curious George twice if he asked? Had she ever existed?
Perhaps, but not here.
And what horrors these thoughts induced, as he twisted and ebbed in the darkness; perhaps the reflection had found some way to replace him and even now was walking into the bright sunlight holding his father’s hand. Perhaps they would go together to see the hairy Wolf Boy and the mountainous Fat Lady… he reached out; the world was perfectly smooth as his fingers touched cool glass.
Alone, in the hungry darkness, alone stuck between raven feathers in a world with no sun. He tried to speak again but the words didn’t come, only the hollow echo of glass shattering and the splinters of pain between his fingers, only the scalding grip of the shadows as they took him by the wrist.
“We have a name that can be never spoken,” they hissed. “We are breath with no soul, soul with no flesh. We are your humanity, their dark dreams, their twisted thoughts. Your repulsion is our perfume, your fear is our fodder–you inhale our used breath. When one of us dies, one of you is born.”
He tried to pull away as they lit the world and he saw himself, indeed gripping his father’s hand, being pulled through the maze. They chased him, mimicking every move as twisted reflections flailed in the darkness.
“We have the light sometimes,” the voice said. “And they have the darkness.”
He saw through the glass to his father, who bellowed out in fear and broke yet another mirror as red blood dripped down his arm. The shadows dragged him along, continuing to cruelly masquerade as their prey, toying with them, teasing the fear from their flesh like a lover might tease the object of his lust.
“Two seasons, my child,” the voice said and slammed him to the cold glass that bent but did not break. “We have two seasons here, the Now and the Gone.”
He whimpered now, even as the sunlight spilled over him and his father, and they stumbled with the shards of mirror stuck into their arms and between their fingers. And the sharp yells of the barker came quiet and the other patrons gasped. A doctor fought his way through, braving the crowds and their blood. For a brief instant he saw the horror in their eyes, then he yelled for clean water and rags to tie up their wounds. He dismissed their terror quite readily for such was part of his trade. The doctor bandaged their trembling limbs as the crowds gawked and gasped and the smell of sweat and popcorn hung heavily in the afternoon air.