Mirrors

Last week, I woke up the worst of feelings. My stomach was churning and I could feel my scratchy throat about to heave up another remorseful level of my stomach acid. I could have sworn my insides were baking beneath a nonexistent sun, and the stripes of my curtains seemed to create zigzags in my brain. This made me ever so tired and nauseated, and I instantly felt my body give in to yet another moment of puking. That morning, I could have sworn that there was nothing worse than the stomach flu or the after effects of some bad cabbage soup. That morning, I could have sworn that my life was as awful and impossible as reality could provide for. Of course, I was wrong.

As I write to you now, my love, I can feel my fingers shaking and I'm wondering why my face feels like sandpaper, but I guess I'll never know. My imagination runs wild at the thought of skin corroding right upon my face and bubbling with pustules that I'll never able to see.

That morning as I laid on my bed, I heard a noise and I rolled over. My cat waddled to the side of my mattress and jumped down, landing on all fours just as skillfully as he always had. His potential was greater than anything mine could ever be, even when I was strong and healthy. Even as I felt the power sparking through the muscles of my upper arms as I flipped across the beams in that gym I used to go to,-do you recall?- and even when I grabbed onto the rings with sturdy fingers to support my weight, I knew that my cat could always beat me at balancing. But that morning, he was spooked by something he had never seen before- a certain beam of red light that shot directly through my front door and the holler of a hoarse and angry, demanding voice that pulsed through the hall to me. My cat fell beneath my bed and yet I still reached the door somehow without so much as a cry at the red light.

The voice directed me to allow him to enter my home, and as I crept closer, I wondered why on earth a man at my door could demand anything of me. Again, I puked up what I had hoped would be the last of my sickness, and I opened the door for the man who was now showing me his governmental badge.

"What is you want, sir?" I had said, wiping the throw-up from my lips with my sleeve. "I am very sick, sir," I said as he padded me with both hands, a gun sticking out from the back of his thick belt. "Sir, I swear, I have no clue what I have done wrong. And if you have no search warrant, then you have no right, sir." I pleaded, tossing a glance back at my cat who was still quivering underneath my bed, perpetually afraid of the flashing lights from outside of the house. My cat had never shown fear this way before; he was a rebel without a cause.

"We need no search warrant, Mr. Corsial. But it's okay, I assure you. We are from the government," the man said in a husky voice that pissed me off as it ran through me. He motioned behind him, leading a whole crew of men in black t-shirts to enter my quaint little home like they owned the place.

"Remember," the husky man said, projecting his voice. "Anything reflective, anything at all. Out!" he yelled. I stepped forward, confused.

"What the hell do you think you're taking from me, a*****e?" I said, challenging the authoritative man. You would have, too, sweetheart. I was very angry, you see.

"I'm afraid I'm going to ask you to be quiet, Mr. Corisial. Or I will have no choice but to restrain you," the man stated harshly, touching the handcuffs in his back pocket with his thumb.

I stepped forward a second time, but this time in a faster fashion. I took exactly two and a half steps, intending to follow the line of men as they began to march into my bedroom. Before I took my third step, my face hit the tile floor and I was cuffed instantly. Before I could even name off my own name, I was silenced nearly at gunpoint. But it was you I thought of, my love.

I laid on the ground until all of the men mumbled to the man in charge that they had the items they had been looking for.

My brain searched and searched but to no avail, like the rubix cube that sat in the bottom of my closet from my last flirtatious girlfriend. I had never been able to solve it, although I tried time and time again in a pathetic manner when I was stressed out. Eventually, the man in charge relieved me of the pressure upon my neck from his gun, and I watched every mirror and reflective object that had ever entered my home be taken from my environment. Each man had at least one object in each hand, and every shiny thing I owned was removed at once.

"Goodbye, Mr. Corsial," the man in charge stated, removing the handcuffs from my hands as I wiggled my fingers to defrost them from feeling so numb. "Remember, sir. It's for your own good," he smiled, tickled pink by my angry expression.

"How dare you come in here and-" I yelled at the top of my lungs, but the door was already slammed shut and each man had disappeared as fast as they had entered. I stood up, realizing that my illness has disappeared and confusion and disorientation had replaced the sensation. Still, I threw up on my kitchen floor all the same.