The reflection

What happens when the thing that haunts your nightmares is you?

I was ten when I realized that the person I was staring at in the mirror wasn't me. Sure, it looked like me and it matched my movements like a reflection should, but it wasn't me. I could tell.

It all started a little earlier than that, if I'm honest with myself. At first, they were little things I dismissed as tricks of the eye (being a child, obviously that's what I would think). My reflection would blink out of sync with me, or it's stare would linger too long when I had long since looked away. Little things like that. Obviously not something worth noticing.

And then it got worse.

Sometimes, when I was near something that reflected my face, I could hear things. These noises never had a specific source and they almost seemed to be coming from inside my mind, like a record. Creepy laughter, rustling sounds like dry leaves skidding over pavement, thumping noises that sounded eerily similar to footsteps, these were some of the things I had the privilege of hearing on damn near a daily basis. The whispers were the worst. Low, gutteral, raspy voices echoed harsh, empty words in my ears. It sounded like the owner of the voice's throat was torn open or something. They ripped through my skull and made it hard to think or breathe. It was so painful I usually blacked out when that happened, and my parents sometimes worried that I wouldn't wake up. I was quite the spectacle in elementary school, as you can believe. I even earned the nickname "Drop Dead Fred" which was both an insult to my blackouts and a mockery of the Reflection. It was not imaginary, nor was it my friend.

My parents tried taking me to doctors, but they never could find anything wrong with my body. For some reason though, they always blamed my blackouts on dehydration or lack of exercise. When I finally got the courage to tell them that it was the Reflection that did this, they took me to a different kind of doctor. A psychiatrist. I spent many hours after that trying to convince them that it wasn't all in my head (which, ironically, most of it was when it came to the noises), and that the Reflection was as real as them or I. That just made them more determined to seek help from this "head doctor".

Mr. Lorman was nice enough but the words that came out of his mouth made me want to hurt him.

"Obviously, this is a deeply embedded psychosis stemming from your childhood...." Shut up...

"Imaginary friends and other similar delusions are often a by-product of loneliness or depression....." Shut up, shut up...

"Sometimes, children will act out, seeking attention..." Shut up, shut up, SHuT Up...

I remember just how much I wanted to hurt him. The violence that I felt was not entirely my own, now that i think about it. I was so angry that if someone had thought to check my temperature I would've probably had a fever. I wasn't delusional. I was certainly not acting out as some half-assed attempt for attention. This. Was. Real. I was genuinely afraid. I took down the mirror hanging in my room and I refused to open my eyes when I went into our bathroom. I generally kept my head down, eyes on the ground when I went out with my parents. I kept my bangs over my face to shield my eyes from things like windows or any kind of reflective surface. I couldn't shied myself from everything, obviously, and I started to live life fearing when those voices would pop up in my head. This is how I was growing up, and my parents noticed. When they realized that my "delusion" wasn't going away they turned to the next best thing: drugs.

Oh, I fought them tooth and nail over that. I didn't want to become a mindless zombie shuffling from one day to the next. They assured me that that wasn't going to happen, though, and against my wishes I was put on some sort of medication with a name so long it wrapped around the bottle in daunting black font. Despite what my parents said, the pills made me groggy and listless. I found myself falling asleep in class, at home, on the bus. I was constantly tired. The whispers had stopped though. The quiet was unnerving for awhile, and then it was almost a relief.

That was right about where the nightmares began.

At first, they were mild. General, almost stereotypical nightmares like being chased plagued my mind whenever I fell asleep. They got worse as time went on. Soon, I was dreaming about watching my family getting brutally murdered and butchered by a faceless person with a serrated knife. Then this person turned around to reveal that it was me standing in front of a mirror and that I had been the one to kill them. I'd always wake up standing in front of the area where my mirror used to hang before I took it down. It was like the Reflection was teasing me, toying with the fact that it was getting stronger and there was nothing I could do about it.

I started blacking out more often and I often woke up in places I didn't remember being in in the first place. My mood started changing and it could go from good to bad like the flick of a switch. I didn't know why. I lost my friends and started alienating myself from my family. It wasn't my doing, it was the Reflection's.

I was scared. I'm still scared.

You may have been wondering why I'm typing all this out. It's because I'm terrified. Absolutely, positively, hair-standing-on-end terrified.

It won. The Reflection won. After nearly half of my life, the damn thing got me. It took control of my body and manipulated me like a puppet. I can still feel the cold handle of the knife and hear the sounds of my parents' gurgling for air when I-no...IT slashed their throats. I can feel the stickiness of the blood as it ran down my body. I wish I could cry....But i'm trapped in this screen, where It dumped me after it took over my body completely.

Hopefully someone finds this when they come looking for the bodies. Be careful. This is It's way of moving from person to person and claiming more victims. The teenager crying in the living room isn't me!

I can already feel the urge...the urge to take someone else's will, take their body, take their soul. It'll overcome me soon, drown out the only free will I have in this backwards place.

Be wary of your reflection...it may not truly be you staring back.

Please...