Goulash Spring 2022

Shards The tears dripped down my cheeks, hot and sticky, as I looked at my reflection. Everything about us was the same down to the small freckle on our right cheek that showed darker in the Summer. Everything, but our eyes. Hers were angry and accentuated by a disturbing grin. I wasn’t smiling.

I tried to stand up, to tear myself from whatever I was seeing, but I couldn’t move. My left hand suddenly jolted up to the mirror as did my reflection, a second before myself. Silence hung in the cold air of my room as I tried to pull my hand from the mirror, but it wouldn’t budge, as if it had been glued to the slick surface.

My eyes looked around to realize that my reflection’s eyes didn’t move, they were trained on me as she smiled that same creepy smile. Then a chip rang through the still cold air. I focused on my hand as I had felt a vibration. Another chip sounded, and I saw a crack begin to break out from my hand on the mirror, growing in size with every breath I took. The mirror appeared to shatter along with reality.

The walls around me seemed to crack along with the mirror and my vision went cloudy. Reality began to tear itself away from me as darkness and glass surrounded me. I could hear shattering and a laugh pulse through my ears while the sensation of falling overwhelmed me. Wind filled my hair as movement returned to my limbs. I looked around me only to see the darkness again with the glass that threatened to slice my skin. I screamed, but couldn’t hear anything except for the wind.

It felt like I was falling for hours before color flooded my vision, and the hard floor hit my body, stopping it flat in space. I groaned as I slowly shook myself up. I blinked several times before my eyes started to make sense of my surroundings. I rubbed my head before looking at my walls, which were not broken anymore, except they seemed to be reversed. The words on my tapestry were all backwards, and my bed was on the other side of the room.

My eyes finally landed on the mirror that was miraculously fine. Not a crack in sight on its shiny surface. Then I saw myself; I looked a bit shaken in my reflection. I must be dreaming, I thought as my reflection did the unthinkable. She stood up and smiled at me before exiting the room leaving me confused and terrified on the floor.

Sarah Newmann 39