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Reflection
A young girl stood in a lifeless room holding only three different mirrors aligned in a row. Breathing lightly she smiled, excited for the journey to the gold door situated on the other side of the room. She stepped slowly, rolling her feet from heel to toe toward the first mirror. With each step she aged, and matured. With each step her smile faded generously, relaxing her naive face to one of defeat.
A young woman stepped in front of the first mirror, and gasped at the reflection held before her. The thing that stared back at her was disgusting--corpulent, with disorganized locks of putrid hair. The reflection screamed scorching water into her ears, waves of one sentence consisting of three words, each syllable a rubber mallet pounding her head sending painful vibrations to her weak heart.
This is you.
The words frightened her profoundly, flowing through every vessel, every vain in her frail, petite body. Repeatedly cycling and swirling through her brain like a warm fall wind. Wind she longed to feel again against her skin, wind which lay beyond the gold door be held at the end of the stagnant room.
She began to believe the reflection.
Tears trickled down her solemn face, she couldn’t, and she wouldn’t leave if that was her true reflection. She rested in place nailed to the floor below her, blood flowing out of her uncovered feet representing happiness, draining her body arid. Each time she shed a tear a day pasted, each day that pasted she spent nailed, listening to the reflection who shrieked at her.
The second mirror began to gradually angle itself toward her, abrading, marking the floor as it moved producing a high pitched blare whose waves took her breath aback into her body.
This mirror illustrated a reflection opposite to that of the first. The image was precariously thin, faultless, with the most astonishing tresses and skin. Although unappealing to most the reflection exhibited a beauty far greater than that of the first, one acceptable to the young woman. With desperation she tore her feet from the nails in which held her ventral to the first mirror, only to dash to the second. She reached out her arm and hand using her forefinger to lightly contact the mirror, the mirror which at that moment shattered. Involuntarily, eerily, and absentmindedly she moved hopelessly towards the third mirror located close, roughly next to the gold door at the conclusion of the room.
When she gazed in, she saw no reflection.
She fell to her knees.
Weeping hard, her tears disregarded gravity, flouting aloft, her head pursuing their travels.
Unexpectedly, she felt a gentle hand rested upon her shoulder. Standing above her was a man.
He was tall, hair blacker than the night sky, mystifying and dark, but tender. He protruded a sense of reassuring, his green eyes a force of comfort she hadn’t experienced since the little girl whom had stepped into the room so long ago.
His manner called her to stand, and so she did.
His lips moved, producing soothing words inviting confidence in consolation, words sending patches to her worn heart.
The words he spoke, "Why are you crying?”
She set still, a beat head trying to fall stayed arid starring into his eyes.
His presence awed her, the words she spoke stumbled over her quivering lips and released like dry ice. She answered him unhurriedly, “I do not know who I am, nor what I look like. The mirror nearest the beginning door told me I was repulsive, the reflection in the second, one I wanted to be true was false and shattered, in this one I am nothing.”
He smiled a warm adoring smile. He placed his arms around her waist in a closed clasp facing the mirror without a reflection.
“Close your eyes.” he told her. She obeyed, closing her heavy eyes focusing only on their breathing in the otherwise silent room. They stood for a seemingness of hours until he broke the silence with a whisper, "Open your eyes". She opened her eyes, faced toward the mirror, expecting nothing, but what she saw was a woman.
What she saw...was her.
She was beautiful.
Embracing her was the man smiling at her through the mirror. Her voice broke to a murmur,
"How?"
He closed his eyes, his breathing; in a moment sucked away her scars and bruises replacing them with a force of happiness.
"I didn’t do anything."
He turned his face toward her, his eyes mirrors of the reflection she had just encountered in the last mirror, the reflection of herself.
"I showed you but a glimpse of who you are, the choice to continue this reflection is yours."
As the words left his mouth he faded, leaving her once again alone in the room. The room though now spoke a different tone, a tone of past, a tone of victory.
She looked around and laughed a laugh so powerful the waves within it crushed the first mirror, silencing the blaring, dissipating the three words.
A mature woman resided in front of a gold door at the end of a room holding a single mirror. She reached into her pocket and drew out a small gold key placed within it, positioned it into the lock and opened the door, out of the door blasted a warm fall wind throughout her body. She exited the room, happy.
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