Broken Mirrors, Fractured Minds

by Carmilla Voiez

  In front of me, coughing hysterically, stands a blonde-haired little girl. She holds a one eyed teddy in her left hand. Her face is turning blue. Without thinking, I drop the basket. It lands with a clatter, and everything spills out.

  I rush to her, turn her around and start slapping her back with force. She continues to choke, no matter what I do. Hot tears scorch my cheekbones. Surely someone can hear her; why isn’t anyone helping?

  Her head turns like an owl, and I stagger backwards. My foot catches on a discarded banner and I slip, landing hard on my backside.

  The child’s eyes are beady and black. Her smile is twisted. The deformity takes a step forward.

  Screaming, I scramble to my feet and run. The child’s laughter plagues me. I throw myself around the corner of the next aisle, dodging stacks of Chuggington trains.

  A range of plush toys lies ahead. By the time I notice them, it’s too late. I fly into them headlong. Their collective weight is suffocating. The faux hair of plump horses causes me to sneeze, violently.

  The deformity’s laughter continues.

  I start to pull myself out of the toys, but there is a sharp tug on my hair. A tight grip pulls me backwards. All I can see is the darkness of the toy avalanche. I reach up to tear the hand away and my fingers tangle in long matted fur.

  “Huggles Bear wants to hug you!” A crackling mechanical voice whirs. I shriek, kicking out as best as I can.

  “Help me! Somebody please!”

  I struggle against the grip, until my roots sting. I scream as I feel my hair coming away, and the mechanical whir grows fainter. I scrabble forwards, through the artificial fur, until I hit the cold floor. I scramble, insect-like, scraping my knee and tearing my jeans. Pulling myself to my feet, I glance behind me.

  There is no one to be seen.

  Intense pain grips my heart. My knees buckle and I collapse onto the floor.

  “Mummy…”

  Through my tears, I see the deformed child. It crouches in front of me, head tilted to one side. Her eyes hold no sign of life. Her hair is a mass of bloody knots.

  I croak at her.

  She smiles, a forked tongue poking out. Her giggle sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Huggles Bear stands behind her, his paw resting on her shoulder. Its one dangling eye shines in the glare of artificial lighting.

  “Huggles Bear wants to hug you.” This time the voice is softer, as if the battery is dying.

  The girl creeps forward until she is an inch or so away from me. She reaches out with torn fingernails and touches my cheek.

  I shiver.

  “Mummy…” she whispers once more.

  The world shifts and slides. I clench my eyes tightly as the girl’s touch fades. I fall forwards into the unknown, down the proverbial rabbit hole. I begin to wonder where I will land, what I will see next.

  I roll in mid-air and crash down atop a mattress. Protruding springs stick in my back; covers are drawn over me; they tuck themselves in at my side, the way my mother used to do when I was young.

  Cautiously, I open my eyes. My husband’s snores infiltrate my ears as he lays beside me, his face pressed into the pillow.

  I have been having this dream for weeks now. I feel a lump in my throat where a sleeping tablet had become lodged weeks before. They were having no effect, whatsoever.

  I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The wooden floor is cold against the soles of my feet. I glance at James, watching him sleep, before reaching for the pale and tattered dressing gown that lies discarded on the floor.

  Fastening it at my waist, I pad from the room. I stand in the hallway. A faint glow from the streetlamp slides through the drawn blinds.

  All is silent.

  I shiver as air curls around my ankles, like a cat demanding attention.

  I take a step along the hallway. A high pitched cry stops me in my tracks. I turn, trying to locate the source of the noise, but nobody is there.

  It comes again, this time in front of me. Clenching my eyes shut again, I swipe the air with the back of my hand, expecting it to collide with something – anything – but I hit nothing.

  “I’m going mad,” I whisper.

  Shaking my head, the cry comes again. This time, I locate the source. It is downstairs.

  Nervously, I make my way down the stairs, my hand tight around the bannister. What is going on? What the hell is going on?

  My jaw drops as I take in the sight that stands at the front door. My throat constricts. Bile threatens to rise.

  Melody! Her blonde hair is matted with dried blood, whilst her pigtails are slowly coming loose from their pink ribbons. Her once bright eyes are glazed, hollow and unfocused. Her nose is broken. Teeth are missing from her once beautiful smile.

  Her skin is painted with bruises of varying hues. Deep red scars mar her arms, and her throat. The pink and white party dress I distinctly remember buying is covered in filth and thick globules of mud. The ruffles at the bottom hang in torn strips, reminiscent of medical bandages.

  “Melody!” I drop to my knees.

  My daughter smiles, a simple reminder of her former self. “I’m home, Mummy.”

  I reach for my daughter; the daughter who was snatched from her own birthday party at the tender age of seven. Melody stretches bloody fingernails towards me. I imagine her scratching her way out of some God awful situation. My arms cave in around thin air as she fades away into nothingness. A scream wrenches forth from my throat, tearing my vocal cords.

  Fingers enclose around my shoulders, small clipped nails that dig in and create half-moon shaped bruises. James shakes me. I spin on the flooring and cling to him, as tears roll along my cheekbones.

  “I think we need to go back to the doctors,” he says softly, running a hand through my hair.

  I remain quiet. The memory of my daughter’s cry rings in my ears.

  Darkness envelopes me, and I jolt forwards, falling once more. No longer knelt on the cold wooden floor of my hallway or shielding my eyes against florescent lighting of an overpriced toy store, I see the red rose-patterned wallpaper of my bedroom. My hands grip the headboard. Tears stain my cheeks. Rain patters against the window. A sliver of moonlight nudges through the curtains. James lies in bed next to me. He’s also lost, but in a dreamless sleep. Black hair falls in his face, and spots of drool decorate the pillow.

  I wriggle out of bed, trying not to disturb him, and pad into the adjacent pale blue bathroom. Rinsing my face with water, I peek in the mirror. What stares back isn’t what I want to see. Not now. Anything but this.

  Melody is a teenager. Her, once long, hair cut to just above her shoulders, a jagged fringe falling into her eyes. Streaks of vibrant purple highlights have been expertly applied. She leans in close, and begins to draw on heavy black eyeliner. James will tell her she looks like a panda; that she belongs in a zoo. I will reminisce about my own teenage years.

  She glides on a thin coat of red lipstick. It is too harsh for her delicate features, but she hasn’t listened to me before and she won’t now. Deftly, she adjusts her nose ring; the piercing I forbade her from getting; the piercing her father took her to get. She swaps the small silver stud to a black ring.

  She turns her back on me, checking the studs that read ‘Mystic’ on the back of her jacket. We spent hours attaching them. She said they had to be perfect; it was, after all, her first concert.

  She blows a kiss at the mirror, as her face swirls and repositions itself. Her hair is wet, a tangled mess. Her eyes blank, make-up smeared, leather jacket gone, and the Black Veil Brides t-shirt we bought her at Christmas is ripped at the neck and sleeves. Her nose bleeds heavily from where her piercing has been torn away.

  I scream until my lungs are fit to burst and slam my hands into the mirror so hard that it shatters. Shards stick into the sides of my hand. Blood oozes from the cuts.

  From what I can see, my reflection is normal. Sleepless nights have taken their toll, and I look like a zombie. I run a hand over the shrinking bump
in my stomach. My faded pyjama top smothers it, and my belly button protrudes ever so slightly. Blood mars it now. I sink to the floor, one hand curved around what remains of the bump, the other gripping the side of the sink. I let my tears fall, my heart breaking with each one.

  “Annmarie?”

  James stands in the doorway, in his baggy pyjama bottoms. I shake my head, turning away from him, ashamed of what I have done, but it doesn’t help. He crouches beside me, arms wide open.

  I give in and fall against his chest. He wraps his arms around me, and removes the shards as quietly and as gently as possible. I know I will have to see a nurse, have stitches. As he works, I stroke the outlines of his chest tattoos. Usually it soothes me, but tonight it fails.

  “James… I… I miss her so much…” I sob.

  “I know you do sweetheart. I miss her too.”

  Stroking the bump, James sniffs back tears.

  Neither of us will forget the day I took a tumble headlong down the stairs. I’ve never felt such excruciating pain before. The trip to the hospital was a noxious blur. When we came home later the next day, James put me straight to bed. He took care of all the arrangements. All I could do was stand in Melody’s bedroom in my pyjamas, staring at the yellow and white walls, clutching James’ childhood teddy bear to my chest.

  Padded Cell

  by Sonja N. York

  The door swings open to blinding white light.

  His head, a void, sits upon surgical shoulders,

  Enter now his face, cuts my air, a rubex so familiar.

  A letter from my mother is placed

  On a table, his long fingers curl the edge.

  We are alone, together, in my palace.

  I believe,

  No, I do not.

  Why is he confusing me?

  I’m insane to believe.

  That’s why I’ve been here so long,

  Because he sees the truth

  In me.

  He reads the letter aloud:

  Our dearest daughter, imagines

  Otherworldly things. I can’t,

  Take her away. She is sick,

  No proof to the contrary,

  Take care of her, doctor.

  You want proof mother?

  He’s here, before me.

  Pointless.

  It’s time for my medicine.

  Resist into four-corners,

  Or be still.

  If I was sane, I mouth delusions to his algorithms,

  But I am not sane and I am not alone.

  He whispers: no one can know

  My true self but you.

  Why me I ask?

  Why like this?

  He says I’m free to leave today,

  And he’ll wipe my memory.

  Or…

  I shake my head.

  Insane suits me.

  Rainier Dreams

  by Marten Hoyle

  Ashes…ashes…ashes…

  On the star swept summit of the true Olympus, which the eyes of mortals cannot see, whether for sport or for jest, the Gods in their kingdom cast misery and death upon creation. Myriads unto myriads of demises all align, waiting for the chance to be born as a man’s greatest fear brought to life. For me, that most unsettling of trepidations is the natural disaster.

  I have always been comforted by my mortality. I know that I must die some day for a number of reasons: to make room for the next generation and finally know, for sure, if something lies in wait in the Great Beyond. Will my father be there? Will my suffering finally end?

  It is not death itself, but the manner in which the Gods may choose to execute me, that floods my nights with dread. While none of life’s tragedies truly end, we never fully move on from those we have lost, the earth moves on quickly, having done herself the service of destroying the pests upon her surface. The organism upon which we dwell, this great orb of the cosmos filled with antibodies of its own, destroys all virus cells arrogant enough to think themselves in some way a threat to her magnificence.

  No! The Earth is a greater power; one which we may never fully understand beyond the assurance of our infinite smallness. Every man’s candle seems so bright to the individual, but is a mere, weak flicker for her breath to extinguish without a moment’s thought.

  My terror of Earth’s hazards was not a learned behavior. I am told that I slept through a (mild) earthquake once, when I was a little boy on vacation in Vancouver. But the fear, seemingly born with me, haunts every one of my earliest memories. The first moment in this life which I recall with clarity is of gazing on the swift, muddy current of the Falls River in Helm, Washington. In the summer time, when all the ice and snow melted, the river overflowed. Nothing which entered its murky, tenebrous rush could hope to escape. Signs depicting swimmers with a red line crossed through them read: STAY OUT STAY ALIVE in red capitals all along the immersed banks. Ah! One day (I shriek to think of it) I stood high above the current with my mother's loving arms wrapped ‘round my shoulders as she called my father’s name.

  Rooted by terror, I stood strangely tranquilized; so afraid, incapable of feeling it physically from within. Trepidation, voyeuristic spirit and sensation, who so greedily dine on woe, separated from my nerves and flesh. With web-choked, cadaverous fingers he took me by the shoulders. His breath, the fetid exhalation of Hell Hounds, burned my neck whilst he enfolded me in his rancid garb of the wild, bloody-eyed and dead faces who scream eternal under the power of his touch. Helpless in a soul-dead sphere outside the dimensions, I stood still while the world turned about me and watched the spaces between objects: from the sun’s rays, showering between pine needles on the farther bank, the gaps between cars, every tear my sisters shed as they stood behind me begging our father to come back, the frilly grass around the base of every flower, and the regions which stretched between each pebble on the ground, and the appearing and disappearing shadow of our swing set in the back yard, as they filled with monsters and fiends that crawled into the full light of day to inhale the intoxicating essence of my fear. For sauntering carefully down the bright, sandy slope to the water's edge, my father descended with the purpose of removing four mattresses. Naked and mildewed remnants of the spring time's homeless who resided on the banks, building fires, drinking cheap liquor and singing songs in rough and flat tones until the water rose and drove them to a new home. They reminded me of enlarged squares of Raman noodles with their slightly tan color, and the yellow cushioning which projected from the old, torn fabric. To these objects, my father crept in the fashion of a stalking predator, fearless and ready to strike, ignoring the high-pitched, lugubrious pleas of my sisters for him to rise back to safety. One by one, with his heavy boot, he kicked the beds into the racing depths. When I look back on this moment, I hear an alien, lurching blup-blup-blup as each pad depressed to the river's depth.

  Then my father, with the duty he had deemed necessary completed, turned from the water and ascended the steep incline, much to the joy of my sisters and a relieved sigh from my mother, reaching the sanctuary of flat land. All terror departed and I looked for the first time upon my father (as I believed nearly every boy does) as an indestructible force: a hero without a cape and costume, with more courage and strength than any living man, and he created me. For the remainder of his years, I stood behind him not only as a son, but a loyal disciple. His will was law, his power unmatched. The nightmare fiends, who sought to destroy me that day, never dared show their faces again; for I need only call upon my true savior to protect me with his light divine, guide me to safety and strike the intimidations dead.

  Of course, it was difficult to accept my father's immortality and Herculean capacities were but a dream. In my nighttime horrors, I found myself standing and speaking in any given location surrounded by those with whom I spent the hours of waking life; out of the blue I became a prostrate form on the surface of the water, incapable of escaping the current, while my sisters screamed my name, helplessly reaching for my fresh, aquatic corpse. In those
nightmare realms, the reality of my father's simple mortality became abominably discernible. Nevertheless, when I feared the gales, hails and winds of winter might carry me away, he with his strength assured me of my safety. When, one day, the sky's blackened slate of clouds shifted to an emerald hue and from its thunderous depths descended a funnel, I stood by his side as he told me to appreciate the power of the shifting winds as we watched the spiraling cone pass. And when I dreaded the end which may come on that day and I expressed my fears of the far-off volcano, he took me by the hand and said to fear not, for 'twas unlikely I would feel the force of nature from our perch in Helm.

  I dreamed often of a far-off mountain erupting. I saw myself, standing on the ledge of the apartment we shared, plumes of ash swirling to meet me. I felt the heavy weight of death descending on my person, but woke always before the Reaper Grim could cast his hand upon me. And always my father assured me. "You're alright, son. You're alright."

  I knew that I was safe...

  ...for he was with me.

  However, life, as my great hero once stated, happens. Helpless, I witnessed my only true Lord and Love drown in the fluids of emphysema. It was I, the one who would dare to follow him into the depths of all darkness without a moment of doubt, who heard the gargle of his struggle for air as I tried in vain to administer CPR. Oh! How I, with such weak and trembling hands, pumped his chest and attempted to force air into his reduced lungs with my warm lips, rosy with life, against the cold, pale flesh of his. Following his passage to Genesis, or whatever else may lie Beyond, I embarked on the road out of Helm.

  Following the most bitter of tragedies, there is no moving on. There is no healing, no closure. One of the things which keeps people locked in the past is because, in the aftermath, when the dust has settled, they attempt to piece their existence back together the way it was. The problem is that nothing can ever be the same again. The puzzle of life alters at every turn. Only the Holy Grail we all seek (something special and different for each individual) remains locked in place, everything else changes. When the world we know comes crashing down a whole new vision must be created. I came to this conclusion following two months of staring at every space my father's form once attended (we laughed under that tree...he always stopped and said he'd like to eat there...I wish he was here now...there is the spot on the floor where his heart stopped...) and came to dread the possibility of becoming ensnared by the past. When I heard voices of my surviving kin, my mother in particular, calling out to me, "Leon! Leon!" I closed my eyes and begged myself to waken from the nightmare. I wondered whether existence was the dream, and dreams (where my father still lived) were the reality. People called for me as if trying to waken me. Was I going mad? Was all this a dream? Wake me! Wake me, voices!