If you haven’t read parts 1 or 2, read them first!
I kneeled for what seemed like hours with Agatha’s sanguineous cries taunting me as they echoed all around. It sounded as if I were trapped in a tight cave rather than an endless white void. With this, the seeds of my madness were sown, though the torture had only just begun.
The secrets of the mirror dimension revealed themselves one by one. First, I discovered I couldn’t sleep or even approach a semblance of unconsciousness, yet my body still grew weary. It wasn’t the warm sleepiness I’d feel as a child when my parents would carry my half-conscious body up to bed after a long road trip. It was instead the insurmountable dread that typically accompanied an insomniatic bout; a specter of frustration, fear, and hopelessness that burrowed itself deep into my frail shell. Reflexively, I reached out for Agatha’s comforting presence, hoping that maybe this time she’d be there to say, in her characteristic lilt, “It’s okay, baby. Just go back to sleep.”
Next, I discovered that food was now irrelevant to the survival of my flesh. Despite this, I still felt a deep, gnawing hunger in my gurgling guts. At first, I sought momentary relief by shutting my eyes and vividly recalling the most spectacular meals of my life, most of which were joyously shared with Agatha. It seemed the mirror dimension could not abide this, and, before long, my cherished memories of both food and love’s tender embrace were consumed. I was left without an inkling of what it was like to stroke Agatha’s hand or even eat a dry cracker.
The mirror dimension was stripping off my identity in layers, like paint from an old house. Soon, the only image I could hold in my mind’s eye was of Agatha’s crumpled body, her crimson blood slowly seeping into the frigid stone crevices of Waverly Manor’s basement floor. I was forced to relive this hallucinatory nightmare whenever I closed my eyes.
While I initially spent time concocting numerous, futile escape plans, the hope that fueled my machinations dwindled as my sense of time became more perverted. Without any point of reference for my puny, monkey-brain to latch on to, time became an incomprehensible illusion, years passing with the nonchalance of a sleepy summer afternoon. Yet my body showed no signs of aging.
I’d like to say it took me a while to try killing myself, finally, but truthfully, it was pretty early on. Given I was without the proper resources to facilitate my end, I tried to off myself in a whole manner of creative ways, ranging from the more dignified option of strangling myself with a noose fashioned out of my own pants, to the more barbaric tactic of tearing at my veins with sharpened nails and teeth until I bled out like a devastated animal. No matter the method, after a few seconds of death, my body repaired itself, bones and ligaments clumsily rearranging themselves back into their proper location, and, unfortunately, resurrecting me. The few blissful moments of nonexistence that preceded my return to the mirror realm became the only solace that dreadful place afforded me.
Eventually, I resigned myself to oblivion and plaintively receded inwards, like a snail without a shell. Still, somewhere deep down in my subconscious, I held onto the core memory of the love I shared with Agatha. That’s what I credit to my return from complete insanity, once the time came.
*Creaaakkkkkkk*
It was the basement door. I lay motionless, fearing another disconsolate hallucination. Then, the sound of a human voice graced my ears for the first time in what I would discover later had been about fifty years. A single, honey-covered syllable slid from the godly space between their lips: “Huh.”
They continued muttering to themselves, “Nothing in here either, I guess.”
They began to walk away, and their footsteps nearly receded entirely before I finally recovered from the shock and sprang into action. The canvas sheet still covered the mirror portal, so my visitor couldn’t see or hear my cries through the magic glass. I took a deep breath and realized what I had to do.
*Tap, tap, tap*
The footsteps halted.
*TAP, TAP, TAP*
A pause.
*TAP, TAP, TAP*
The footsteps approached!
*TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP TAP, TAP*
Silence.
Silence.
Silen–
Suddenly, they slid the canvas sheet from the mirror, and I was face-to-face with my potential savior, a dim light in this endless nightmare, a divine intervention, my lone hope of rescue from this terrible hellscape, the human manifestation of salvation: a pimply young boy who seemed to be about sixteen or seventeen.
My shape snapped to mirror his. I leaped in joy and wildly beckoned for him to approach. His and my face coincidentally manifested the same expression: utter shock.
Mine was from seeing another human for the first time in half a century.
He came from witnessing his reflection shift on its own accord in a lurid violation of the natural order of the universe he’d become familiar with over his sixteen-ish years.
The boy was frozen, dumbstruck. It was my move. I could think of nothing else to do beyond what felt honest, so I fell to my knees and begged.
“I promise you, I will not hurt you,” I pleaded. “Please.”
The boy could not hear me. Yet, despite his reticence, he trusted me. Either that or his curious mind got the better of him. Regardless, I stretched my palm against the glass membrane between our worlds. He mimicked me, and as our hands met, I was violently ripped through the mirror portal and back into reality.
The sensational chilly stone floor of the Waverly manor’s basement caused me to swell up with thick tears, which soon reached a breaking point and cascaded down my cheeks, soaking the stones beneath me in a salty barrage. I turned back to the mirror and was met with a betrayed look from the boy, who had taken on my appearance through the terrifying magic of the mirror. I gathered a loose stone from the rubble of Mrs. Waverly’s crumbling estate.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the boy who now inhabited my reflection. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this.”
I sent the stone sailing at the mirror, shattering it into a thousand little pieces as it struck. After gathering every single haunted sliver with a broom and dustpan, I ascended the stairs to the grand ballroom, kindled a fire, and fed it heartily until it grew into a roaring inferno.
Meanwhile, I absorbed my surroundings with the wonder of a newborn child. The manor was in a sorry state, worse than the day I had first met Mrs. Waverly so long ago. I sat criss-crossed and kept feeding the rabid flames until they were singeing my legs. I didn’t mind, even as the room filled with the acrid scent of burnt hair. It was nice to feel something new.
I emptied the dustpan I had filled with the shattered mirror into the flames and watched as it fizzled and cracked, spewing unnatural black smoke and sparks. I ensured that every piece had melted, except for one. The final shard was roughly the size of a silver dollar, just large enough for the reflection of a single, straining eyeball to plead for help through it desperately.
I whispered an apology as I carefully wrapped the glass in a small piece of torn canvas. With my magical package ready, I made my way back into town to seek out the man who had wronged me.
It took me less time than I anticipated to orient myself in this future world. Many things were different in 2076, but not in the ways I would have thought.
My first lucky break was discovering that libraries still existed and that they allowed anyone to use their computers, even those who looked as shabby and mentally unwell as I. Social media was even more omnipresent now, so it didn’t take me long to track down the Reflected Man who had appeared in town out of nowhere about fifty years ago. I felt a perverse sense of excitement and pity as I scrolled over his daughter’s blog, which revealed the shrunken visage of a gravely sick and vulnerable man in a white hospital gown.
I snuck into the hospital late that night to avoid being caught by his doting family and friends. As I wandered the bleak, white-tiled hallways, I thought about how remarkable it was that such a bastard was able to reinvent a life for himself after life had been so cruel to him, and he was so cruel to it. I suppose time does heal all wounds, even when it shouldn’t.
I peeked my head into nearly every room of the hospice wing, looking for the Reflected Man. I soon feared that he might have checked out, or, even worse, died. It wasn’t until I searched one of the last doors at the end of the hall that I finally found him. He looked hollow, with a sunken face and wrinkly, piss-colored skin. Chemicals dripped through numerous multi-colored IVs, poisoning his body in a desperate attempt to end the cancer before it ended him.
“Do you remember me?” I asked.
He nodded.
“You didn’t have to kill her,” I said. “You could have just left.”
“I thought it was her,” he said weakly. “The one who had taken so much from me. It hurt so much, I needed to get revenge. I had to –”
“– I understand…” I said, calmly.
I pulled the magic shard of mirror from the cloth bundle and held it out for the dying man to see in all its terrible glory. His own yellow, bloodshot eyeball stared back at him in the reflection.
“…An eye for an eye,” I hissed, plunging the glass shard deep into his eye socket. There was neither a gasp nor a shriek as he vanished back into the mirror dimension. The teenager who had unwittingly rescued me was lying on the gurney in the Reflected Man’s place, whimpering like a wounded animal.
The boy stared up at me, and I saw my terrible shade reflected in his eyes. We said nothing to each other because we had nothing to say. I left the hospital and walked down a long, winding road under the glow of a full moon all through the black, black night.
I made it to the end of the pier on the coast as the sun was rising. The sea was still and glassy, and the dawn sky was clearly reflected off it; a silky mass of blue with a burning orange orb breaching the horizon. I dropped the shard of mirror, sunlight glinting off it as it tumbled before plopping into the water, sending ripples cascading across the heavens. The marsh reeds whispered their secrets as they rustled in the chilly morning breeze. I suddenly felt nostalgic for things that had never happened to me. I left and followed the road back into town.
I sat on a bench in the town square. Life stirred around me as kids awoke, shops flipped their signs to “open,” and busy parents hurried off to work. Springtime birds twittered as a gentle cool breeze whipped around me. I thought about Agatha.
Just then, I heard the babble of a couple of kids walking to school and listened in.
“Dude, don’t be a scaredy cat! What’s the worst thing that could happen? Scared of ghosts? Or just peeing your pants in front of Angela?”
“Yea man, it’s just a rickety house. Those are just dumb stories! We have to go later, it’ll be sick.”
My ears perked up. I walked over to them.
“Listen here, boys, I’ve been around for a long time –” I started.
“– What? Like a gajillion years?” One boy interrupted.
“Heh, sometimes it feels that way,” I chuckled. Then I shifted tone, my face growing downcast and dour, before continuing. “But you’ll be wise to hear my warning here, for it may be your last: stay away from Waverly Manor if you know what’s good for you!” I took a deep breath before thundering, “THOSE WHO ENTER WAVERLY MANOR ONLY FIND THEIR OWN DOOM!!!”
The children yelped, hurriedly scooped up their bikes, and scampered away screaming.
“Dude what the fuck!”
“What a freak!”
“Haha you almost pissed your pants!”
“Did not!”
Their bicycles clicked away as they turned a corner, laughing and jeering at one another.
I smiled and chuckled to myself. Soon enough, it was well into the morning, and I felt the midday heat approaching. I gathered myself and walked over to the general store to see if the AC was still working and maybe look at the job board. I was of working age, after all.
THE END
Millerwiller 