Mirror

By Sara Fathima

I'm a lone mirror at the end of a dusty hallway. Every part of me is made of glass, glass that reflects everything in its sight. Filthy glass that glistens under the sun, its shine palpable and rippling in the air around it, dirty glass that houses the devil's family when the sun gives way to the moon.

I love the light, the sun and all that it brings. It brings all sorts of things in its tow, but I don't reflect all of them, I wish I could, but the hallway that I live in doesn't allow me to do so, it commands who and what I reflect, it's dark and foul-smelling tentacles grip my glass tight and play with me. I'm the slave and it's my master.

The hallway is entirely too demanding. It is always a bore to do its bidding but if I don't, I'm afraid that it'll shatter me and all my pieces would lay there in the dirt, forgotten and futile.

It sometimes orders me to reflect the whole object in front of me, orders to reflect all that I see, but other times, I'm only to reflect a specific part of the object, part of what I see. What I reflect is always bright, I never reflect faded colours or broken things. I always reflect the best, all polished and beaming.

I do not know why the hallway needs me, why it needs my ability to reflect and mirror. I try not to think of it much, as the hallway always knows when I'm questioning its intentions, and it wraps its tentacles around me tighter.

The hallway stores every reflection in its walls, tiny specks of different colours in its otherwise black and empty walls. As I've said before, I always work alongside the sun. The moon is my enemy, the tentacles cover me as soon as it rolls into the sky and I see nothing but the dark parts of the hallway through the disruptions and small cracks in the firm grip of the long appendages.

Without my reflections and the sun's rays, the hallway is darker, the shadows longer and sinister, they move and dance from wall to wall, they fight and whisper the devil's words to each other and laugh, their laugh rattles my glass. Whenever they're there, the little flecks of light in the hallway's wall fade into darkness as if to protect themselves from being tainted by their shadowy bodies.

The hallway brings out the reflections from its walls, brings out the flecks of lights, one at a time, never more than one. The little fleck of light grows and grows until its spherical body fills up the hallway and after sometime it bursts, the tiny colourful lights it leaves in its wake float in the hallway, swaying and bumping each other. And in that moment, I feel drunk, drunk on the lights that swim all around me, lights that entrance anything and everything that sees them.

This ensures that the walls of the hallway aren't covered in those tiny reflections, so that there's always room for more and new reflections.

I don't know for how long I've been here, maybe I was born here, I do not remember, I just opened my eyes one day and found myself here, in this hallway with dark tentacles all around me.

After all this time, I've come to realise that I'm mirroring people, sometimes all of a person, sometimes just a part of them, the brightest and finest part of them. Maybe the hallway is trying to be human, maybe it longs to be flesh and bone, and be filled with warm red liquid that gives it life. Who doesn't want to be human? Who doesn't want to be able to love and hurt and ache and feel in the ways humans do, profoundly and wholly?

I've wished to be human many times, under the shadows and the flying lights, even if it's just to escape the holds of this hallway, I've always wanted to be something more than reflections of people, I've wanted to be one of them, wished replace my glass with skin and my wooden frame with bones. But I can simply never be one, that's how it works, so I cannot, for the life of me fathom why the hallway is trying so hard to be a self conscious being? Surely, it knows as much as I, maybe even more that such dreams shall only ever be dreams, wisps of thought that float away after a second, and are buried deep in the abyss of one's brain.

Lately, something's been wrong, I haven't been reflecting. The little reflections are coming out of the walls and bursting together, the hallway is a mess, so many sparks of different colours floating everywhere, so thick that I cannot see.

It has been so long since the sun came and brought new people with it, the shadows are all I see and reflect. Yes, I'm reflecting the shadows and the specks of light, but they never merge into one, even in my mirror. Even in the blinding shine of those little lights, the shadows never fade, they're always there, dancing to their own tunes, they play the lights no heed and the lights do not seem to care about the parts of walls that do not glow in their presence.

The hallway isn't here anymore, it is here physically, its walls still enclose us but it's not here. I do not feel its presence like I used to, its tentacles do not grip me like they used to, they're just laid on the floor, unmoving and dust falls everywhere, so much dust, like snow, grey chunks all around. The hallway, it’s engulfed in chaos and I'm…. I’m breaking.

My glass is breaking, cracking. lines, separating me into many pieces, slowly making their way all over me, the sound growing louder and louder, it's all I hear. And as my glass starts falling off, as I break into a million pieces, spreading out on the floor, I see it, a dim, fading light reflected by all my pieces, a person, slowly disintegrating into the madness all around them.

By Sara Fathima