The Mirror |
In the mirror I spot an unfriendly face. It’s pale, long and covered with freckles, but otherwise mostly looking like Andy Warhol’s long lost daughter’s. Not a cute appearance. Just one of everyone else’s in the crowd that you won’t notice. Unfortunately that’s my own face, staring back at me in the early morning. I hate what I see in that mirror.
I take a look outside my open window. Summer’s early this year. Peaceful. Not like my mind. On the inside my feelings are rioting, rebelling against my father, despising my boyfriend and hating my life. Wonderful. Just perfect. I sigh. Fuck perfection.
Downstairs someone’s laughing. Probably a girl much too young for dear ole daddy but equally willing to please his money. Whore. I hate all of them.
In desperation, clutching the few straws of sanity left I search the cavity behind the full-length mirror and am soon to find a small, plastic bag. My hands are shaking, even though I try to carefully open the bag and with equal cautiousness pour the drugs onto a piece of white paper. Soon I lighten the joint, still with the window open and with full view of the garden.
Mists of serenity immediately cloud my mind as I breathe in the smoke which scarcely had time to leave my dry lips. This is happiness. Not money. Not sex. Not love. In my world there doesn’t exist any love. Barely dullness. The intoxication, which fades with every joint, is the only thing keeping me sane, keeping my mind in the real world, this fucked up world I once was born into.
As I try to reach for a book, which suddenly looks interesting, upon the shelf I stumble. I try to capture myself from falling with my free hand. I feel the cold surface of the mirror against my fingertips. The joint slips trough my fingers but as I reach out to catch it I just keep falling the other way, against the wall. The coldness of the mirror isn’t touching my fingers anymore, instead I can feel it against my shoulder and my hip. I’m falling trough my mirror in my girls room in my home in the world that’s real but wasn’t. Strange feeling.
My room disappears, only to be replaced with darkness.
My head’s still going round and around like a merry-go-round where I’m lying on floor as pitch black as the walls and ceiling.
“Where am I?”
The answer’s merely an echo.
It feels like I’m blind. There’s nothing nowhere to be seen, but when I look down at myself I can clearly see my denim skirt and my green and pink leg warmers. On trembling legs I stand up and start fumbling in the air around me to find an exit. Where the hell am I? There are no smells, no sounds and no light. And yet I can see myself.
Was there anything wrong with the weed? I’m going to kill David for selling it to me.
“Dad!” I cry, but no one’s there to answer me. As always there’s no one willing to help me, to give me attention or stroke my hair.
Suddenly there’s wind. One single sense that’s shattering the illusion of a world between worlds where nothing ever can exist, like the world with the trees and ponds that take you to other worlds from my favourite book-series as a child, Narnia by a certain Mr. Lewis. Wind that’s telling me that I actually am somewhere and not just nowhere. My window’s still open. I must still be in my room. It’s just the weed. I’m in my…
The wind grows stronger for every second passing by. My long, red dyed hair’s whipping my face. It feels like I’m in a cabriolet with no windscreen, like I’m moving in 200 kilometres an hour. I want to scream, but all I can do is gasp for air, which I suddenly seem to be out of. Pictures start to pass me by, or are they on screens which I move by? Wait? Was that me? Before I can find out I’ve moved on.
I get dizzy. I’m confused. I feel sick.
A voice, a new sensation in this in-between-world calls loudly trough this eternal night.
“I sat before my glass one day, and conjured up a vision bare, unlike the aspects glad and gay, that erst were found reflected there”, this voice without body almost sings, but mostly whispers, in my ear. It’s so soft it’s almost not noticeable, but it’s still loud enough to be cutting trough my heart and mind.
The wind stops. Or is it me who’s still again? A light’s blinding me. A mirror appears in front of me. For a moment I see my reflection, the tall, Andy Warholess creature with dilated pupils. The picture of me suddenly changes, is disfigured by a ray of light that soon transforms the image into a familiar scene. The garden doesn’t look like it does now. It was before the pool but after the cherub in stone cracked, approximately about 10 years ago. There’s no quiet, sunny and early summers day but a chilly autumn morning. The scene before me’s cold, mercifully freed from colours by the clouds and rain. Against my skin I can feel the damp, the rawness of the air and the raindrops the meek wind’s carrying to my face.
Not thinking much about it, both relieved and scared, I put one foot on the edge of the mirror. The surface is as cold as the mirror in my room. I take a deep breath and leap out of this dark world of nothing.
I fall for longer than expected, it’s like I’m trapped in slow motion. Finally I land on my knees, but it doesn’t hurt. This trip is getting weirder every second. But now I guess it can’t be worse.
I rise to my feet, and gasp for my breath. There I am. The seven year old me pounding at the back door.
“I remember this”, I whisper. But I don’t seem to listen to myself. The me in past tense just keeps crying and pulling the door knob. I’m locked out. My father’s in the kitchen, but he doesn’t see any of us. The small me with short hair shiver of coldness. Tears like stars fall from her cheeks. What I’m witnessing is the seed of my sorrow. I love that small girl. Not yet tainted, not yet hating, only recently starting to learn about neglect and sadness. I was beautiful back then.
“It’s ok, Eileen”, I try to tell myself, but I won’t listen. I grab the small shoulder to pull the being towards me. She’s solid as a rock, won’t budge under my treatment. Every time I think I might catch a glimpse of her face I see nothing but a blur.
“Her lips were open, not a sound, came trough the parted lines of red. Whate’er it was, the hideous wound, in silence and secret bled, no sigh relieved her speechless woe. She had no voice to speak her dread.”
The loudness of the voice makes me scream. The divine tone seems to explode in my ears, filling me with some strange kind of music and forcing me back down on my knees with my hands against my head. It hurts.
Suddenly the ground beneath me disappears. I fall into a rectangular hole, back into darkness.
I never touch the ground. I’m just falling deeper and deeper. Literary with the blink of an eye I’m surrounded with mirrors. In each and every one of them I look upon myself and my scared face. I’m high. I must be so high but I’m going down. I’m falling past the mirrors, past my reflections. Now they’re replaced with scenarios. Me, age twelve, meeting my broke down mother for the first time. Me, age thirteen, with my first joint right before my first kiss. Age fifteen, in the classroom, the teacher trying to shake of my words while I sit on the desk in the back, laughing loudly because of her despair.
I stop in mid-air. Above one of the mirrors in front of me there’s a wooden sign with crookedly painted letters.
“The vision of a woman, wild, with more than womanly despair. Her hair stood back on either side. A face bereft of loveliness, it had no envy now to hide.”
In the mirror witness myself, no wonder, roaming the streets. The coldness and darkness of that night was nothing against this world in worlds where I now find myself, but it was enough to make me tremble. I meet my own, red eyes. That was the last time I cried. Last time I thought of myself as human.
The mirror crumbles. When I touch it, it falls apart. I reach for the shattered pieces of my long gone life.
Whatever power which let me stop in front of the now broken mirror now released its grip of my slim body. It feels like I’m falling in the speed of light.
With a thud I land on my back after being thrown out of the world between worlds. My eye’s twitching, my muscles are shivering, my back’s aching and the ceiling above me is very familiar. I’m… home?
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| Kommentarer - (Snittbetyg: 5) | | Likeyoudcare - 29 jun 11 - 16:11 | | Asbra, riktigt intressant! | Fribergska - 28 jun 11 - 20:43- Betyg:  | Hemma är där de man älskar är. Bra med orden. Igen. Storyn är för deppig för min smak.
Elände behöver man inte leta upp, det kommer oanmält. :-) |
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