The Mirror

At first, I was quite happy when I noticed the face in the mirror didn’t match my own anymore. I had become very tired of the same face looking back at me day after day. Well, I say the same, obviously, my fifty-three-year-old self looks nothing like my ten-year-old self. My skin was different then, dewy and plump. “Peaches and cream,” my old neighbour used to say. And then there was the accident, well, I like to call it an accident, and my nose was never the same after that either. But there was a sense of continuity, let's say, with the face looking back at me. It felt like me. Until a month ago, when she appeared.

She really couldn’t have been more different. Where I had dark hair (dyed and dry-looking), she had long blonde hair. There was a shine to it, and when I squinted it looked almost like a halo. Where my nose slightly bends to the left these days, with a gnarly bump at the end, hers was small and upturned, the sort of nose you just want to boop. Like my old neighbour Mr Lewis used to do to mine years before, until Mother stepped in.

Her eyes were different too. Mine are large and round, hazel with gold flecks. I used to think they were my best feature until someone told me they were too close together, which meant I couldn’t be trusted. From that moment on, I doubted everything. Her eyes were blue, not sapphire blue, but cornflower blue, my favourite colour. And they were quite far apart, maybe a little too much. Sometimes it looked like she had an eye at each temple rather than where I expected them to be, but mostly they looked just fine.

So when I first saw her, I was happy. It made a nice change. I said, “Hello, stranger, nice to meet you,” and she mouthed the same words back. Her teeth were nicer than mine. I’d lost a few of mine in the accident, and it was an accident, I said it then and I’ll say it now, even though no one believes me.

After that first meeting, I found myself visiting the mirror often, just to make sure she was still there. And she always was. I was grateful for that. But then she began to make some changes, and that’s when it started to go wrong. I could see part of my bed in the mirror and, behind it, the flaking whitewashed wall. At first, the changes she made in her world were quite minor, the brown blanket became a pretty flowery duvet, and she painted the wall pink. I didn’t mind that. But another time I noticed she’d put up a photo of Mother. I shook my head sharply at that, and she shook hers back. I felt like she was mocking me. And that’s when I started to have my suspicions. Her eyes might sit either side of her head, but maybe she wasn’t to be trusted.

And then she did something I don’t think I will ever forgive or forget. She invited someone in. I watched it all through the mirror. She opened the door, which I could just about see, and in he came, large as life, Mr Lewis. I watched as he booped her on the nose and stroked her cheek. “Peaches and cream,” he said. I knew it couldn’t be real. If it was, then the accident was all for nothing. She looked back at me and smiled as she let him put his arms around her. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I smashed the mirror then, I really had no choice. But I could still see what they were doing through the fragments of glass. My too-close-together hazel eyes betrayed me once more. So I started to claw them out once and for all. I really had no choice. None at all. I clawed and clawed until finally the room was dark.