The Girl in the Mirror

by Philip J. Gould

  Wrapping a bathrobe around herself and fastening it about the waist with the rope belt, the girl – now eleven years of age in appearance – left her bedroom in the apartment and wandered the short distance to the lounge/dining room, Flopsy dangling by one ear at her side.

  George was sitting at the table nursing a cup of coffee (steaming), a tabloid newspaper spread open in front of him. The clock on the wall showed the time was 1:08 a.m. Her father was seldom asleep − the pitfalls of a double life and an unhealthy dedication to his work.

  Looking up from the newspaper, George studied his daughter as she set herself in a chair opposite him.

  “Can’t you sleep?” he asked.

  Sophie shook her head. Flopsy was on the table in front of her.

  “The nightmare?” George enquired.

  Sophie nodded her head. “The same dream as before.”

  “Have you had your meds?” The drug Sophie was on wasn’t something to aid sleep or prescribed in response to any lingering trauma from the laboratory fire. It wasn’t a conventional medicine found in the local pharmacy or one easily obtained, but one which George had designed specifically to counter the side effects of an unusual defect that Sophie had been born with.

  “Yes, dad,” Sophie replied nonchalantly.

  “You know what will happen if you don’t take it, don’t you?”

  “I wish you’d quit treating me like a child,” she grumbled.

  George chuckled. “You are a child!”

  “If you don’t believe me… here…” Sophie stood up and crossed the room to enter the kitchen adjoining it, moving directly to the fridge. From the bottom shelf she removed a small glass vial containing an ochre-coloured liquid from a tray tightly packed with thirty-five others. Behind the tray were half a dozen other trays stacked neatly together in two piles. Sophie closed the fridge and reached for a jet injector, a small gun-like contraption in which she slotted the small glass vial into the base of.

  “Sophie… you don’t need to if you’ve already had your dose.”

  Ignoring him, Sophie pressed the tip of the device against her arm and depressed the trigger. Powered by compressed air, the jet injector penetrated the epidermis and administered the drug. She closed her eyes to the sudden effects of her medicine − a slight dizziness and a mild tingling sensation in her fingers and toes – but the feelings were gone almost as quickly as they had come.

  “There, satisfied?” Sophie ejected the spent glass vial, dropped it into a small bin that was nearly full with used glass vials, and tossed the jet injector back to where she’d found it – between the microwave and an electric kettle. She collected Flopsy from the table and snorted aloud, “Hmpff.”

  “Sophie…” The name hung in the air as the girl walked out of the kitchen.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” she said, turning her back to her father, returning to her bedroom.

  “Sophie!” He hated quarrels with his daughter. He guessed it came with the territory, though hadn’t expected the angst to come for a few more years yet. “I suppose this is just another side effect I’ll have to get used to,” he grumbled before returning his attention back to the tabloid newspaper.

  Chapter Two

  ...Sophie

  The apartment was located in the well-to-do area of Chelsea on the other side of London from where Kaplan Ratcliff had its laboratory building, and just short of thirty miles from where George Jennings had moved his family to a secret hideout in the less-desirable location of Stanford-le-Hope.

  The fire that had swept through the biochemistry research facility not only took the lives of eleven of his colleagues, it all but destroyed five years’ worth of research and intelligence data, setting Project CHAMELEON back to its infancy – the saboteur doing a wonderful job in stalling, if not thwarting, the company in its directive of producing its first genetically engineered human being. Every scrap of evidence, every single person involved, was gone – either dead, missing or presumed dead. The stuff of science fiction to remain locked within the realms of imagination – except of course, for whatever details were retained within George’s head, his laptop and his personal files kept under lock and key; additionally, you couldn’t ignore live specimen number one, who George had named Sophie.

  That was four months even earlier, though from the girl’s appearance it could have been several years before; against natural order and disregarding millions of years’ of evolution, Sophie had aged considerably. No longer a bouncy, flouncy child of five or six, Sophie had the body and face of a ten-year-old. Despite her façade, she still had childlike tendencies, her young brain developing at a slower rate than her physical build – the only hindrance being George’s inability to provide learning material to sustain her ravenous mind rather than any innate birth defects.

  George marvelled at the way his daughter absorbed information like a sponge, often devouring whole books within a matter of hours − even ones written for an older audience or for academics. No subject too difficult, too laborious or too boring. George provided books ranging in topic; from natural history to modern warfare, from biology to cookery, subtly feeding her with knowledge that could one day save her life.

  It was whilst reading a book about torture – not the usual subject for a ten-year-old girl – that Sophie stopped mid-flow, and placed the book down onto her lap, facedown, open at the page she was reading.

  “Dad,” she said, a strained look on her face. “When can I see mum?”

  George was at the dining table typing up notes and theories on a laptop that was open in front of him. He stopped typing, his fingers still poised over the qwerty keyboard, and turned his attention to the girl sitting on the sofa. Absently, he swiped the spectacles off the bridge of his nose and laid them next to the laptop.

  “Sophie, we’ve been through this before. Your mother will see you on your birthday.”

  “But why can’t we live with her? Doesn’t she love me?”

  George couldn’t tell her the truth. He smiled reassuringly and answered: “Of course she loves you, silly. It’s just too dangerous for you right now.” George waved his hand in the air, searching for a plausible explanation. “It’s complicated. You’re spec-”

  “Special,” she finished for him. “I know, I know. Freaking Frankenstein, more like.”

  “You’re nothing like Frankenstein,” George rebuked. He recalled his wife using the same metaphor before she was born. “Anyway, if anyone was like Frankenstein, it would be me – he was the mad scientist who created the monster, don’t you know.”

  “A’you saying I’m a monster?” Sophie was imitating shock but had a playful smile on her lips that caused a slight dimple in her left cheek.

  “Go back to your reading,” George admonished, picking up his spectacles, not taking the bait, returning to work.

  Sophie continued to smile to herself for a moment longer before allowing it to slip and the memory of what she called her first ‘ethereal’ moment came to mind – or at least the first occasion she could remember noticing the most extraordinary feature of the genetic alteration that had been made to her DNA.

  Shortly after arriving at the apartment, perhaps one or maybe two weeks after, George was called away to his ‘other’ family – she referred to her mother and the three children who were her siblings as ‘the others’ – forgetting to administer Sophie’s evening injection (it was the event that culminated in George showing her how to inject herself) before leaving.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can. There’s meats and cheeses in the fridge and plenty of salad. You know what to do,” George had said this as he hastened out of the apartment.

  Not knowing what the side effect was to missing out on her daily meds, Sophie sat in the living room watching television – an activity she enjoyed unhealthily. She’d never missed an injection b
efore so she was not unduly worried. Nickelodeon played throughout the evening, which George allowed her to watch until the alarm went (preset to go off at 8:00 p.m.). It was only just after six and SpongeBob SquarePants played out on the giant screen attached to the wall when the strange phenomenon occurred.

  Totally engrossed in the farcical antics of SpongeBob, Sandy Cheeks, Patrick Star and the various other characters that dwelled in the undersea city of Bikini Bottom, Sophie failed to notice the abnormality that began at her extremities (first the fingers and then her toes), and began spreading slowly up her limbs, so slowly in fact that its progress was barely noticeable and totally ignored by the ten-year-old.

  It wasn’t until she absently went to bat a strand of her long blonde hair away from her eyes that she became aware of the oddity that was occurring to her.

  Is this real?

  She held her hands up to her face, palm-facing and blinked, turning her hands from back to front, initially wide-eyed in wonder, oblivious to the significance of the metamorphosis taking place – not just in front of her, but actually to her – and then the wonderment of the moment evaporated almost as surely as the rest of her limbs. Looking down at her body she jerked up onto invisible legs and watched as the last part of her upper arms vanished and whatever it was that was occurring gradually made the rest of her disappear until all that was left was her head, floating like a balloon in the air.

  Then that, she knew, was gone – crossing her eyes slightly she could see that the end of her nose was no longer there.

  “Oh, oh, oh, oh…” she started to hyperventilate. “What’s going on?” Am I dreaming this?

  Sophie went to the bathroom and turned the light on using the pull string. An energy saver bulb flickered on and filled the small room with brilliant white. She looked at the mirror above the sink and sighed with relief.

  Her image stared back at her. She looked how she remembered. A two-year-old trapped in a ten-year-olds’ body. Her physical age was just a guess really, based on the denominator printed in the labels of her clothing. Her long hair, which fell down straight and ended somewhere at the centre of her back, still appeared in front of her when she twisted her body. Her eyes, like twin-oceans, threatened to drill holes into her as she glared at the image reflecting back.

  Running the taps, she half-filled the washbasin with water and went to wash her face. As she went to dip her hands into the water, she stopped with a gasp that turned into a whimper.

  Although her reflection was there in the mirror, the origin of that reflection was still no longer visible. It was then that the scream, loud in pitch and long in its intensity, erupted from her lips, unbidden and seemingly endless.

  “Are you okay?” George had looked up from his laptop to see his daughter’s far-away look.

  She shook the lingering memory out of her head. It was as haunting as the recurring dream that still plagued her sleep.

  “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” She allowed her thoughts to wander back to the day she discovered her unique talent.

  George had returned from ‘the others’ the morning after the peculiar thing had occurred, finding his daughter sobbing in the corner of her bedroom. To say finding wasn’t actually correct; he hadn’t seen her there in the corner as he’d entered the room, but instead heard her whimpering, scared and feeling utterly alone. “Oh Soph… I’m so sorry,” he’d said, and he looked like he meant it.

  “What’s happening to me?” she’d cried: “Why can’t I see myself? Am I… am I a ghost?”

  George had tried to reassure her with a smile; failing as he’d looked completely past her. “No, you’re not a ghost. Ghosts aren’t real.”

  “Then what am I?” she sobbed.

  George didn’t know what to say. He shook his head slowly from side to side, searching for something comforting to say, settling on the decision to tell his daughter the truth.

  “I will tell you everything,” he said. “But first, I think you ought to take your medicine.”

  The staccato fire as George’s fingers struck the keyboard interrupted the tail end of her memory, and she allowed it to disintegrate like smoke from an extinguished candle. Feigning a loud yawn, she stood up, put aside her book atop a pile of others on a coffee table and walked over to the dining table.

  “I’m off to bed,” she said, planting a kiss on her father’s forehead.

  “Night Soph… Don’t forget your meds.”

  “Dad! Trust me!” A phrase she found herself often repeating, it was as though he didn’t trust her at all. She walked into the kitchen, crossed to the fridge and opened the door.

  “Oh, so you don’t freak out,” George called loud enough to be heard in the kitchen, “I may be gone when you get up in the morning. Just some things I need to do.”

  “The ‘others’?” she sneered.

  “They are as much a part of my life as you are, Sophie,” he admonished.

  “I just wish I could get to see them.”

  Sophie held the glass vial of ochre liquid in her hand, the jet injector in her other. She studied them both for a fraction of a moment. Peering out of the kitchen into the dining room, she could see the shadow of her father hunched over the laptop and hear the tat-tat-tat as he pounded away at the keyboard. Without loading the gun-like injector she depressed the trigger; a quick burst of compressed air sounded – loud enough for her father to hear. Feigning the sound of disposing the empty glass vial (by rattling the small bin that was half-full of other empties), she pocketed the unused serum and scooted off to bed.

  From the sanctuary of her bedroom she waited for the consequences of missing her evening dose of the immunotoxin to take effect.

  George often left Sophie on her own − not an ideal scenario, but one borne out of necessity rather than free will. No one would understand her circumstances, or the work that he did. It wasn’t cruel locking her in the apartment to fend for herself; it was a state that she’d been conditioned to since the day she’d learnt to walk. The situation was simple. George spent half his time with Sophie and the other half of his time with his wife and three kids: Meredith, Stanley and Charlie. His life was split in two and spent in a sort of dysfunctional rota system. Usually he would spend three nights at one place, and three nights at the other, alternating between the two where he would spend his days – that way he saw all his family for at least part of everyday.

  George had set his alarm two hours early that day so that he could be on the road and out of the city before congestion started. The journey to his wife took a little over an hour on a good day. This would be a good day as he was going to be out early beating the traffic.

  Sophie had heard her father’s alarm and had dressed quietly in T-shirt and jogging bottoms. It was only the third time she had missed an injection. The first time was by accident. The second − and this occasion − were by intention. As expected, the ‘not taking’ of her medication had the desired result. The fact that whatever she wore disappeared as soon as it came into contact with her skin, although perplexing, was a useful by-product of her strange genetic disorder. She didn’t understand how it worked, or why, but it saved the indecency (and the chill) of walking about in the great wide world naked as the day she was born.

  Unseen, she crept out of her bedroom on tiptoe carrying a pair of trainers and snuck out of the apartment. Although at 5:30 a.m. the sun had risen early, its rays not quite warm enough to lessen the chill that was in the air. A short distance from the apartment, Sophie saw the Peugeot 207 parked up. Using the spare key she unlocked the car, climbed into the back seat and depressed the central locking button to secure it behind her. She crouched down as low as she could, afraid that her father would see her despite being invisible.

  A short while later, George unlocked the car and climbed in. He tossed his jacket onto the passenger seat next to him and took
a moment to assess his image in the rear-view mirror, sweeping a hand through his hair before attempting to make it neat with a bit of spit which he daubed on a few loose strands. Once satisfied, he started the engine and began the journey to his alternative life – a life that was slightly less complicated but still with its trials and shortcomings.

  Just under one hour later, the Peugeot pulled into the driveway of a four bed detached modern home. The building had a mock-Tudor style with half-timbering and red brick façade and side-gables that supported a steeply pitched roof. Tall, narrow windows completed the aesthetic, black framed and leaded. As the car stopped in front of the garage adjoining the building, Sophie took a glance.

  It wasn’t what she’d been expecting.

  But what had she been expecting?

  Having had little or no exposure to the outside world, this building, this home, was her first real look at life. Her eyes were wide in amazement at the garden, in awe at the flowers that bordered the driveway; rhododendrons, bright and pink; lavender, purplish-blue, accompanied by its sweet fragrance; bushes of rose – red, yellow, white and pink. Never had she seen so much natural colour. Without realising she gasped aloud.

  George heard the noise and, having released his seatbelt, whirled around to see where the sound had come from.

  Only empty seats faced him.

  “That’s odd…” he started, but a small figure jumped up at the driver’s side door and slapped two sticky hands against its window.

  “D-a-a-d-d-d-d-e-e-e-e-e-e!” Charlie was still chewing half a mouthful of toast that had been coated thick with strawberry jam – the sides of his mouth and chin testament to that, red with a glutinous gel with flecks of crumbs giving him a slight goateed look.