There's a magic mirror in my bedroom. I
swear there is. You believe me, don't you? You have to, because no
one else seems to.
I have told my husband, Rob, about it
innumerable times. In the beginning he used to laugh at me, then he
started ignoring me and now-a-days he seems to get angry – oh so
angry – he starts screaming at the top of his voice.
I feel almost as scared as I do when I
look into the magic mirror – well almost, because nothing could
compare to the terror I feel in its presence. Not even when Rob
accuses me of slowly going insane while turning him insane too. He
keeps yelling at me not to look into the mirror. He threatened to
smash it one time, I slowly reminded him that breaking a mirror
amounted to seven years of bad luck.
He did not. I am not sure why.
I don't think he believes in
superstition – but I guess its a matter of not pushing your bad
luck further. So I keep looking into the mirror, trying to break its
hold over me – trying to find things I want to find, not the things
it insists on showing me, the things that terrify me beyond measure.
I don't know when I started to realize
that there was something wrong with the mirror in the room. One day
it was a simple but elaborately designed little thing that fit
perfectly in our huge room placed in a way that it was visible from
every nook of the room and also from outside.
I hardly paid any attention to it
except when I had to snatch a quick look at myself before stepping
out of the room. Maybe that's what angered it, I am not sure. But one
day, as I did my routine of looking into it while stepping out of the
room, I found a stranger staring back at me. Scared out of my wits, I
just ran from there not trusting myself to give it another glance.
Soon the incident was forgotten and
tucked away into the inner recesses of the brain where so many other
unpleasant scenarios are left in the hope that they would be lost
forever. In a perfect world things lost on purpose will never be
recovered, but unfortunately, the world we live in is so far from
perfect.
I was just sitting on my bed, I don't
quite remember doing what, when I caught a movement in the mirror. I
looked up to see a figure making its way towards our room. I watched
transfigured, as the image of the man crept closer and closer towards
our room. I could not tear my eyes away from the mirror no matter how
hard I tried. The figure loomed larger, I could see it more clearly.
It was snapping and snarling like a
wolf circling its prey , but what terrified me most was the look in
those inhuman eyes. It was a look of pure hatred and disgust. I
closed my eyes tightly, burying my face in my hands.
“Are you alright?” I heard Rob's
voice come from the doorway.
I could not bear to open my eyes. Yes,
the haunting of the mirror had started and was gaining ground. I
could not quite shake the feeling off completely after that no matter
how hard I tried. I would try my best not to look into the magic
mirror, but it was a difficult thing to ignore. My eyes would
involuntarily turn towards it and whenever they did, it would show me
the most grotesque things ever.
I tried to hide it from my family
first. I had to make sure I was not going crazy, because I knew that
would be the first thing everyone would accuse me of if I even
alluded to it – that I was thinking it all up and it was just a
figment of my imagination. But the more I tried to keep it under
wraps, the more difficult it became for me to conceal. It was not
like I was seeking for things to happen. The mirror controlled what I
saw and slowly it began to control how I reacted.
I can't ever forget the day that
everything came into the open. It was the day Rob was due to return
home from an official trip out of town. It was early in the morning
and I had overslept by about a couple of hours. I tried to get up,
but I felt extremely groggy and sick. I called out to Samantha hoping
against hope that she had not yet left yet.
I heaved a sigh of relief when I heard
footsteps making their way to my room. I don't remember what happened
next, but the next time I opened my eyes, my gaze fell directly on
the mirror. I saw what I assumed to be Samantha's back slightly
bending towards me. I opened my mouth to say something before I
froze, catching the gleam of a knife in her hand.
She was lunging for me and before she
could bring the knife down I leaped out of the bed and ran downstairs
– screaming. I opened the front door trying to make it to the
neighbor’s house. I was about to ring their doorbell when a hand
fell on my shoulder. I passed out.
When I came to my senses, I found
myself in my bed and it as dark – really dark. I was sweating
profusely and I could hear my breath – in and out, in and out. I
wanted to call out to someone to come help me but the image from the
morning held me in its grip.
What if Samantha responded to my call
again? What if she came in with the knife in her hand? Why was she
trying to kill me? My throat felt parched. I needed a drink of water.
I saw a glass of water on the nightstand and reached for it. My hand
wobbled and the glass broke with a crash to the ground. I closed my
eyes. I did not want to look into the mirror – I was exhausted, I
could not handle any more of its magic.
The next few months are a blur, but
basically everyone came to know that there was a magic mirror in my
room. Not that they believed in it, they seemed to blame me squarely
for that.
Rob suggested moving the “darn thing”
out of the room and I thought that was a very good idea until he
started to take it out. The 'darn thing' was so securely fastened to
the wall that no matter how hard he tried, it did not budge. He sat
down exhausted and I turned my face towards it to see how much he had
progressed.
I saw the stranger I had seen the first
time the magic in the mirror had revealed itself to me. This time, I
kept looking and I found her smiling – seemed like she was mocking
us, mocking me, mocking Rob. I willed her to stop, she started
laughing. It was eerie just watching her laugh, not being able to
hear her.
I had to stop it, I had to make her go
and leave me in peace.
“STOP!” I screamed out.
“Good Lord! As if mocking and
laughing at me is not enough, you have to also try to give me a heart
attack...!”
I looked at him. I could not understand
what he was saying. He seems to be mistaking her mocking with mine. I
had to tell him that it was not me who was doing that. I had to let
him know that the magic in the mirror was doing that.
“No..no..it's not me. It's her who's
mocking you...us..” I cried.
“Who?” he asked.
I pointed to the mirror. Slowly he
kept all his tools away. I watched him as he turned towards me and in
a voice that made me freeze to my bone said,
“The issue is not with the mirror or
the room. The issue is with you.” and walked out.
I started to say something to stop him
but nothing came out. I looked at the mirror. The stranger was
laughing her head off. She was pointing at me and making gestures
that indicated that I was mad.
Had Rob really insinuated that I was
crazy? The same Rob, who not a long time ago had declared his undying
love for me. Who used to profess that the only reason he would open
his eyes every day was because he knew he would see me sleeping next
to me. What had happened to all that?
The thick and long hair he used to
caress fell in wisps all around my forehead. The lips he used to kiss
so passionately were so colorless that they mingled with the paleness
of my face. The face that he would hold in his hands, close, very
close and just stare at it saying it was the most beautiful thing in
the world.
I glanced in the mirror, fully
expecting the stranger to be lurking there but instead what I saw
horrified me even more. There was nothing there – absolutely
nothing – it was like I did not exist. I have never been so scared
in my life ever. I needed someone to be around. I needed to talk to
someone. I needed to feel alive, give myself proof that I existed.
Mom!
“Why do you keep looking into the
mirror while talking to me?”
“I just want to make sure that I can
see myself in the mirror”
My mom looked towards it.
“I can see you fine. You are as
pretty as you always have been – my beautiful little princess! ”
Yes, everything was fine. My image
appeared crisp and clear, right next to my mother's. She was sitting
there in all her stately finery. White pearls clasping her neck and
hanging from her ears. Her gray hair with streaks of golden brown
that she had refused to color all her life. The crocheted white shawl
wrapped slightly across her shoulders. Her eyebrows carefully plucked
to form an arch that I had tried all my life to reproduce but could
never quite get it right.
“Thanks Mom!” I said squeezing her
hand.
“I am always here for you darling,
always here...” she said squeezing back my hand as I drifted off to
sleep.
When I got up she was gone but her
shawl lay wrapped around me. I felt rested and refreshed after a
very long time.
As had become the norm, I instantly
looked towards the mirror and I found an image of a little girl. She
was wearing a snow white costume and had her head down looking at
what presumably seemed to be big basket. Ringlets of hair kept
falling around her face and she kept pushing it back.
I strained my neck to get a good look
at her face but could not get a clear picture. I watched her for a
while as she kept looking down looking for something in her basket.
“Look at me, little girl. Look at
me!” I whispered to her.
“Who are you little one...who are
you?” My voice grew louder.
“SHOW ME YOUR FACE!” I finally
screamed.
She looked up. Her eyes were moist, she
had a look of terror in them. As soon as her gaze fell on me, she let
go off the basket, got up and extending her hands with a smile
playing on her lips as tears streamed over he cheeks she said
something that tore through my soul -
“Mommy! Help me! Help me Mommy!”
Yes it was her. My worst fears were
true. She had waited for me to help her. She had been hoping that I
would rescue her. Instead I had pushed her into a death trap.
“I am sorry darling. I am so
sorry...” I wept like a baby as her image faded away.
“Come back sweetheart. Please come
back to your Mommy. I promise I will help you. I promise I will
shield you from everything. Just come back to Mommy, my love.”
“Just how long do you plan to keep
this going?” his icy tone interrupted my monologue.
Once again his head in the mirror was
replaced with that of a wolf's. But this time around the image did
not inspire fear in me instead it inspired loathing.
He walked in and I lunged for his face.
He jerked back but not before I had gotten to him first. He screamed
out in pain
“What did you do that for? Bitch!”
he screamed as he looked towards the mirror.
Now I could see his human face – the
face that he put on to fool the world. A face that he used to fool a
silly young woman into thinking that he was the man destined to be
the love of her life.
(to be continued...)
