The Mirror is here.
She sits on the end of the bed with her legs spread wide and eyes fixed on Janelle. Ice catches the child in the throat and her heart sings with all the valves cut open. Mirror girl smiles like wicked Totoro, showing an army of teeth. She says, singsong, ‘I saw you over at that man’s house. Sittin’ on his bed, chattin’ him up. Did you feel dirty like that, being in someone else’s room? You coulda had some extra hours, maybe some extra fun, with you like a mouse pressed under a horny walrus.’ Mirror laughs behind a hand and the light from outside catches the gold on ‘Daddy’s little’ across her chest. She moves and the letters firedance. Janelle closes the door – sound travels too fast and too far in this house.
‘Embarrassed? Only thing you should be embarrassed by is that voice a yours. You sound so white, girl. Talkin all proper to that nigga. What, don’t ya miss your old voice? Not good enough for you nomore? Don’ worry, I’m taken good care of it. Keepin’ it warm fo’ you.’
Janelle breathes out through her nose and stands very still, trying hard not to make any sudden movements. If Mirror wanted to cause her harm, though, surely she’d have already acted. Yet Janelle doesn’t relax, just stares, just listens to the Mirror in slimy shadow as the other girl rests head to wall and smirks. ‘I see what you done today, goin’ round and tryin’ to fix all the mistakes you and I made in the past. Kinda pathetic, if ya ask me. Do you really think it’ll make a scat o’ difference? Mmm. No way. Uh-Uh. You can deny who you are fo’ as long as you like, but in the end’ – Mirror moves to a kneel and reaches over with a single dark finger, pointing at Janelle’s chest – ‘everythan’ comes back to that sad, sad heart o’ yours.’ Pause. ‘You an evil girl, threw and threw.’
Janelle fights back, quiet, ‘What are you doing here?’ but only ends up sounding pathetic, directionless, all blown about. Mirror stretches her arms behind her neck, yawns, explains, ‘’Member, you gave me Permission. Even if I let you do you, I came to remind you that I got my own way of dealing with our mistakes…’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough. I already been doin’ the hard work, taking all yaw bad thoughts away. That ain’t easy. Oh, but I wanna show you somen. Come here.’ Pat pat, on the bedsheets right beside her. ‘I don’t bite.’
That may be a lie too. Janelle edges forward. Sits near her pillow, keeping as far away as possible from Mirror. The other girl smiles sweetly and shakes her head, sad. Poor thing. ‘Oh, I seen how you spend our money on that dress. Real shame. We had plans to steal it instead. Here’s some good maths: stealing is infinitely cheaper than buying. ’Member? We was gon’ get one of the guys at the club to buy it for us, or get Bax to mess up the store and steal everythan’. We coulda had that dress fo’ free. Stead, you be spending real money on it. I think you slow in the head’ – poke poke, dagger-sharp on Janelle’s forehead – ‘so I got a little trick for you. Just a li’l somethin’ to make sure you and the thing downstairs ain’t got no money woes.’
Mirror crosses her legs under her bum and rises straight, brings out both hands in front of her and brings them together tight, making a chamber. She is a dark, shadow-strewn gargoyle in the shade of an empty church.
‘Well? Come on, do it with me. Come on! That’s it. ’K, what you gon’ do is this: close your eyes. Don’t worry, ain’t gon’ hurt you. Come. There. Tha’s good. Now. Think back. Really think back. ’Member back a while. Back when Momma was sad. Real sad. When you’d come home and find her in tears all smacked up on the couch. A mess. Smack and weed and wine don’t mix, only accordin’ to your momma tho’. And then she be all up in yo’ face with her problems, talking into tha late hours of morning but you didn’t wanna deal cos she made you sleepy for school…So ’member how you used to take extra time on the night shifts. You rather stay at the brothel, lettin’ some old head cum all over your little titties, jacken off the late comers late into the evening, beggin’ Dani to keep you there, beggin’ her to drive you round the block one extra time so you didn’ have to come home to her.
‘And that night, when you slipped in the front door and herd them voices. Daddy was there. You heard ’em arguing, pushing stuff over, him screamin’, “Where is she!” cos he’d come to kill you. He was gon’ kill you. And Momma too. And maybe worse. ’Member how that felt, as you stood at the bottom of the stairs, deciding. Interfere, or flee? You could a stopped him. But you pad upstairs, laying there under your sheets with the pillow over your head and the mobile phone with ten percent baddery left, finger on the call button jus’ in case? You didn’t do a single thing ’cept wet the sheets. You could a stopped all that. You could have calmed him down, calmed her down, made things right…
‘That feeling: help˖less˖ness. That liquid feelin’ of fear, how it started in your heart and flowed out in tears. How it moved all the way from yo’ chest to yo’ arms and into the fingers. Growen hotter and hotter like sand from the desert cookin’ in the sun. And when it reached that space between your palms it ignited like a star. It whispered things to you. It said, “burn everythan down.”
‘You wanted to kill everythan.’
Janelle’s hands rattle like bones on a highway, a birdsong fire between her palms.
‘’Kay, sweetie, open your eyes and slowly slowly open your hands.’
Kay, sweetie. A single teardrop lies between her trembling palms, hot as acid and fresh forged. It glows with an internal force like a glass star. It’s a ruby. Janelle feels the weight of it, the subtle flavor of the curves and biting edges. Two extra hands wrap around Janelle’s. She and Mirror. A soft touch. They hold each other for a moment and Janelle sees Mirror. Really sees. Colors mix.
This is, in fact, the first time that Janelle affords herself to notice a crucial fact about her Mirror. See the color of her skin? Pink on her brown. And as if resolving from a shadow, Mirror reveals her true form.
A swift kiss on the forehead, and Mirror stands to leave. With this as a farewell:
‘You have your way of solvin’ problems. Well so do I. We’ll see just how far you get, then, with your methods, and your voice.’
Janelle sits there on her bed with her heart on fire and watches. Before the mirror now, and Mirror steps clean through the glass. Vanishes in the refraction. White girl into black into shadow and the glass keeps still like it’s the surface of a timeless lake.
Gone. Janelle sets the ruby aside. It won’t burn her hands for it has already burnt her once before. She asks herself an uncomfortable question: just who will be most affected by little Mirror’s methods? She shudders.
Head on the pillow now and the memory of last night comes at her fast like a knife to the throat. She remembers, the panic arrives and the events turn slimy like a bubble caught in an oily sky. Her heart fills with the dead lead of panic and the excess spills over. Carried, shared. Yet the scene plays its course and Janelle cries deep into her pillow.
In the aftermath, as her mind turns to Mirror…
Her little heart beats dry.
Hur-uhh-ha
No no no no no no no no. Not again, no, frozen in this moment in time. His pressure around her, all over her, in every place, in total collapse.
His dick is too large for her little spaces. Remember. First he tries for your cunt but can’t quite get the angle right. Then comes the fist to the back of your head as if it’s your fault. The taste of copper next. Another strike, maybe a little blood. The color stains your hair. Remember. That total collapse, in every place, all over her, his pressure cutting rough up inside her and pushing pushing pushing no no no no no no.
Hand around her hip. Thumb in the mouth. Garbage poking into her belly, scratching her legs…There are two of them. Two monsters. Two men. One man laughs, films, as the other holds up that knife, that knife all ready for the taste of flesh.
The rapist spits on her and Jan feels the wetness cling to her butt cheek. A volume of fear rises in her little belly like a wave pushing back against th
e moon. It overwhelms her, and she feels herself leak and wet herself…
This is what he whispers into her ear: ‘You like my cock up your ass, little slut. Don’t you.’
No. Mirror…mirror, take it away. Take the memory away.
But she doesn’t. She lied to you, girl. Instead, darkness pulls Janelle’s mind apart.
Awake and electric, girl unravels herself from bedsheets and monsters and cries out sharp but no – there is no-one here in the pitch-emptiness of her room. Girl feels the bile flush through her system, shakes, bends, quivers with fear. An acrid smell lingers. Warm, fresh.
She’s wet the bed.
Her heart breaks and she feels like a stupid little child again.
Roll them up: the shameful sheets, the covers, make them into thick spaghetti and gather them into your arms. Send them to the washer. Why? There’s no electricity, you stupid bitch, not until the morning. Oh. Janelle dumps the soiled covers onto the floor and lets her eyes adjust.
Still, she shakes, bends into the darkness of her room as her heart rides shotgun down a dead road, going nowhere much too fast. It’s too cold here. There aren’t any more sheets for the girl to use. Can she throw the contents of her wardrobe on the floor and make a nest for her to sleep on and get raped again by the shadows? Leave, leave this place, get out…
Jan pads bleary eyed, sniffly, slow across the hallway, down the creaky stairs and into the peep of her mother’s room. There lies Corrina in dead sleep. Janelle stays in the sliver of darkness from the doorway and senses the quiet – all overwhelming. Girl waits for a good moment that never comes and breathes, ‘Momma? Can I…?’
Corrina doesn’t stir. So Janelle mouses over to the side of the bed and peels the sheets back with slow, gentle care, parts a corner, slips her filthy body in. Wriggles under the dark until she’s in the spoon warmth of her dear mother. The older woman doesn’t wake, doesn’t move. In the dark, Jan tries to resolve her features, to see something that isn’t the horrible eyes of that man, that monster, that thing that fucked up her life. A smell touches her nose – urine. Your urine, girl. You reek. Cum dumpster, incontinent child – either way, you are a worthless, wretched thing.
Hur-uhh-ha, breathes her mother in the quiet.
Jan breaks. Girl stuffs a finger into her mouth and bites hard to stop herself from leaking, from crying, from letting the panic cut deep inside her.
Mirror…mirror, take it away. Take it away, please, please, no no no…Not again, no, frozen in this moment in time. His pressure around her, all over her, in every place, in total collapse.
Janelle closes her eyes and watches herself being raped on a pile of garbage. But at least she can’t wet herself again, for now. There’s always tomorrow’s sleep. In the aftermath, as her mind turns to Mirror, the demon girl whispers into her ear, ‘We’ll see just how far you get, then, with your methods, and your voice.’
Janelle closes her eyes and wishes the only sensible thing she can think of: she must be better than Mirror. Otherwise…
✽ ✽ ✽
Otherwise, people will die. Won’t they, Mirror?
Deep in the bowels of Stallwind, Mirror rages. Hidden, tucked away on a dark street, the child bangs her fist into the brick wall of a forgotten alley. Over and over and over until the side of her palm draws blood and the ruby rivers trickle down her arm. The excess comes to her heart. The excess that little bitch refuses to take to her heart. Here it is.
Mirror slumps to the ground and scrapes her forehead on the bricks. Cries full and silent into the scrape of the mortar. The tears come, the tears go, but that toxin makes her heart beat too fast and deep. Too deep is the pain in her belly. Too much. The excess is terrifying, this overwhelming and total sense. Panic like the dark and sticky night sticking to her mind and pushing out every other thought. The tears come, but they never really go.
Mirror curls up, knees to chin, and cries so deep.
People will die. Won’t they, Mirror.
That’s exactly what you want.
Fuck those two who did that to you. Fuck their souls everlasting. They deserve what is about to happen to them. She feels the anger and injustice bite down hard and kick her soul into action:
Like this.
She knows where they are, those two who did this to her.
Mirror finds them in a heartbeat. Child takes to the working streetlight on the corner (down by the CBD where the rich shills hang), leans into the cool kiss of the metal, eyes the cars as they slug past. Slow. Windows down. Eyes on her body. All the monsters are out, surfing for flesh, the promise of a sweet child fuck, unregulated, unwatched, unadulterated pleasure. One car takes the bait and pulls up, stops. Mirror smirks and makes for the passenger window. Down it slides. Up her shirt slides as the man inside reaches out, takes her flesh, squeezes her tiny flat breast, plays with the nipple, slaps her belly. Mirror pokes her sandpaper tongue out, runs it over her lip. She sees him then. Recognizes him. The one who filmed her. And deep inside the car, the driver leers. The one who raped her.
Gravely voices: ‘How much?’
‘Something special ‘fo you two.’
‘Get in.’
Get in, little slut. Get in, door shut, central locking, air conditioning, city lights blurring. Her rapist turns over his shoulder and gives her a look.
That look. That same fucking look. That same lustful and dreadful, pitter-patter way his eyes take her up and down. It makes her wet. It does. Why? Oh, come now. You know why. Because she is a slut. She is a dirty dick sucking, cum drinking, semen dumpster. Her pussy practically aches for it. Her clit glistens, cunt sensitive, raw. She is ghetto trash. She is dirt at the bottom of your shoe: a hood rat, off-brand white nigger bitch who deserves no less. She is deserving of no less. And imagine – to service the mayor’s two cronies! What an honor! Consider yourself very lucky, little Mirror. You’re about to be taken good care of. Real good.
They stop in the nightshade of a park, where the ghosts and men dare not tread. Alone. Safe. Cameraman decides he wants a piece tonight; he unzips his pants, the sound rattling unsteady over the dying engine. Rapist decides he wants to play voyeur tonight, decides to pull out his phone, the torchlight blazing as the video starts. Both turn to her from the front seat.
Mirror smiles sweet, eyes on fire with lust. ‘Who wants ta cum first?’
Both shuffle around, uncomfortable, as they try and push seats back and wiggle out of suit-pants. But Mirror makes it easier for them, unbuckling her seatbelt and coming forward into the front seat until her yellow short shorts are brushing up in the face of the driver.
He gives her an incredible look. The flavor of lust she can almost taste as she licks the man on his cheek. She leans in closer. Closer. His hand finds the space between her legs. She doesn’t mind, no. But Mirror whispers cruel into the driver’s ear as she reaches into her panties for the finger-sized blade. Says, quotes back: “You like my cock up your ass, little slut. Don’t you?”
He gives her an incredible look. His throats cascades open. Ruby waterfalls. The second one struggles fast against her, an arm around hers, but she overpowers him and digs the shank deep under his chin, right, left, right, left, like sawing a piece of wood. Faster than a blink, her knife carves across the cartography of his skin.
They don’t die quick. They splutter, they wheeze clouds of bloodmist from their lips, they gargle, useless hands trying to stop the flow. Mirror sits tight on the dick of her rapist and watches with the tip of her tongue out just so, savoring it all. Every moment. My God. The blood. Everywhere, in splatters, in chunky visceral blobs over the dash, her hair, her cloths, her breasts, her skin. She is wet. One slips into Cheyne–Stokes respiration – that’s what it’s called, this type of breathing, the deep and odd growl. Fast. Then nothing. Nothing.
Rapist slumps over the wheel, his weight depressing the horn, until his body slides over, perpendicular. Videographer turns still.
Mirror plucks the phone from her rapist’s fingers and smiles
for the camera. Girl murmurs, honey-sweet, ‘Lez peak under the hood and see what these men are made of…’
Deep, deep smile. Another round of fun is just about to begin!
School, work, schoolwork
Janelle must be better than Mirror, otherwise the monsters win. Janelle must undo her pain with kindness, otherwise Mirror’s destructive version of retribution wins over.
School. Then work. Can she even go back to work? She needs the money. She doesn’t want to die again. Shhhhh…don’t think about it now. Distract yourself with:
Has she ever worn her school uniform properly? Maybe back in elementary school – year two or three. Ever since, strict modifications were always necessitated by rule of social order: skirt length, bows, accessories, extra tops, fancy sneakers from Shanghai (before they got too expensive), or not bothering at all with regulation. Time for change (2008-style). Never before has she tied a tie like this or worn her skirt at just above the knees. Stockings and shoes to match the blue dress, white shirt. New golden hair to run free. Janelle finds a lock and holds it up to her skin. Bedroom mirror: what do you see?
Janelle is lucky. Brown skin and dark blonde bleed nicely; blonde and midnight can look like Barbie’s nightmare if you’re not careful. Janelle puffs her cheeks out. What about her old hair – does she miss it? Blessed by the gods of bland, Janelle had never seen much practice as a tiger tamer. Oh sure, you’d call it nappy in a natural state, and jacked up in her work state. Her hair used to be a pixie’s dream. But now? She looks so different. How do you even manage hair like this? After a shower, it clumps like wet, cheap linguini but if she shakes her head a little, the whole shape changes. It’s more segmented, more fluid. When Janelle takes a brush to the total form she catches new knots and tangles. What the hell. Maybe it’s like what Mirror said – white girl voice, white girl hair, an appearance borrowed and pasted over her heart, like an ‘upgrade’, like a ‘pure, washed version’ of the wretched black thing.
After Hope Dies Page 5
