Who Are You?
Entry by: zoanne
4th December 2014
Who are you?
*************
The words are written on the bathroom mirror. I did not write them. They appeared in the darkness, between one pull of the light switch and the next. The writing is neat, and I can read it forwards so, if my suspicions are correct, it has been deliberately written backwards for my convenience. I consider this courtesy rather sweet.
We gather our cuffs across the heels of our hands and rub. The words vanish on her side of the glass. We gaze at each other in silence, with trouble in our eyes. Monica leaves, and I appear to do the same.
*************
Experiments in terror, thinks Monica. We used to play that at school. We played it so often that we found the winning formula, the ultimate everyday terror, and try as we might we could never beat it. Imagine: you are looking in the mirror, and suddenly you see your reflection blink. How could you ever live a normal life after that? Even if it only happened once, your world would change completely, and forever.
Monica feels uncomfortable in front of mirrors these days. She’s been aware of this for several weeks, although she can’t say exactly when it started. When she looks in the mirror everything is normal to begin with, then suddenly she is hit by several sensations. There is a rush of light and a wild sense of the expansion of space, as though her vision has suddenly zoomed out and can see everything brighter, vaster, and infinitely more real than before. There’s a crispness to the air so sharp it is almost brittle, and scents blossom and burst around her from nowhere she can identify - petrol, ivy, starch, marmalade. Finally, the highest arch of the air begins to shimmer, and the light solidifies into music so beautiful her ears can scarcely bear to hear it. Just when she feels weightless, about to be absorbed into the singing of angels, she slams back into her body and is left staring at her reflection, in a dull and normal mirror.
Except, for a moment, her reflection no longer looks normal. The girl behind the glass seems to be staring back at her with a vivid, independent intelligence. Imagine you are looking in a mirror… Monica shudders and turns away.
Who are you?
*************
She is asking me the wrong question. They all do. When they experience those first horrible, beautiful stirrings of the truth, they run to their reflections with accusation and entreaty. They’ll accept anything - hallucinations, hypnosis, ghosts, sickness, any sort of haunting - as long as they can dive back inside themselves and know that they are still human. As long as it can be someone else’s fault. Who better than mine?
*************
Monica reads about mirrors. She is driven by instinct, and her instinct craves information. This should be a clue, but Monica doesn’t want to listen to clues. She wants to block her ears and eyes to her own situation, and try to find herself in history books and stories. It doesn’t help, of course. She closes her eyes, and the darkness dances with the women of Babylon, cradling smooth cones of obsidian, gazing into the dark base while the mirror plunges down to a point between their hands, a bottomless well of blackly shining stone. She hears the rustle of the silks that wrap precious metal mirrors from China, swaying through the desert on the camels that tread the Silk Road. She sees Egyptian women burnish bronze plates, and paint their eyelids gently in the shadowy reflection. She smells the salt of Venice, and the burning hiss of plate glass poured and setting. She feels the drag and float of dustcloths flung up in Victorian households, lest the mirrors trap the souls of the newly dead. Behind them all, her breath hums with the chanting of magicians and inhales the incense that ripples in misty strands over the ancient scrying glass.
At home, she stares at her reflection in her own familiar mirror, tight-lipped and desperate.
Who are you?
*************
Narcissus did the same. They call him vain, but I saw his face and I tell you he was frightened. - Who are you? - Who are you? he called into dark water, until the sacred disease caught him and he could not protect himself from falling, arching and flailing until he lay submerged and still.
She asks me if she is going mad. I mouth the question in sympathy, gesture for gesture, breath for breath. Madness is not something I understand. Sacred is not something I understand. Real is not something I understand. Monica thinks her dreams are less real than her breakfast. She thinks the stinking, gibbering woman in the doorway is mad, while she herself is sane. She thinks communion wine is sacred and puddle-water is beneath her notice. Monica divides the world in all sorts of ways, and soon these boundaries will come tumbling down. Her body will suffer. She has the sacred disease, the falling sickness, and it grabs its ministers violently. She may die, like Narcissus, the first time it seizes her. She asks me again if she is going mad. Of course you are, I silently reply. A few thousand years ago, you’d have been a priestess or a shaman. Here, now, it’s just a malfunction in your brain's neural system, but no less sacred for all that.
*************
*************
I blink.
*************
Monica is flooded with the world. It is made of liquid light, and it is singing. It pours into her from all directions, finding the soft parts of her body and entering them like keys into locks, opening all parts of her at the same time. The crown of her skull becomes soft again, like a baby, and purple opera chords funnel into it from divine heights. Bright, crystal fireworks fly around her lips until her breath becomes a cloud of sparks. Beneath the tender insteps of her feet a brutal force writhes up, and she is standing on the shoulders of a great, red bull as big as the earth. Its power hits her in the stomach, and she gasps, and is filled with fire. Her arms jerk out to the sides, and she feels the stretch of the horizons pulling her arms around the curve of the world, and deeper into the curves of space. In the orbs of her eyes, the stars light up, and she becomes the living geometry of the universe. The angels have been summoned, and they start to sing.
Monica’s eyes roll back in her head, and she falls hard against the towel rail. The convulsion starts in her arms, and runs through her spine and legs. Her body becomes rigid, and she arches up from the floor and crashes down again. Her lips are smacking and twitching, and drools of saliva mixed with blood run from the corner of her mouth. She soils herself, and when she comes to this will be the thing that frightens her most. She’ll phone her mother, and then she won’t move from the bathroom floor, even to wash herself, because her body is no longer a safe vehicle. They’ll go to hospital together, and Monica will get stitches for the gash in her head, and a diagnosis. She and her mother will cry together for a long time, and Monica will move back home for a few months while she gets used to the medication.
When she looks at her pale reflection in her old, childhood bathroom, she’ll touch the glass uncertainly. She no longer trusts her reflection, but she can’t say exactly when it started.
Who are you?
*************
Who are you?
*************
*************
The words are written on the bathroom mirror. I did not write them. They appeared in the darkness, between one pull of the light switch and the next. The writing is neat, and I can read it forwards so, if my suspicions are correct, it has been deliberately written backwards for my convenience. I consider this courtesy rather sweet.
We gather our cuffs across the heels of our hands and rub. The words vanish on her side of the glass. We gaze at each other in silence, with trouble in our eyes. Monica leaves, and I appear to do the same.
*************
Experiments in terror, thinks Monica. We used to play that at school. We played it so often that we found the winning formula, the ultimate everyday terror, and try as we might we could never beat it. Imagine: you are looking in the mirror, and suddenly you see your reflection blink. How could you ever live a normal life after that? Even if it only happened once, your world would change completely, and forever.
Monica feels uncomfortable in front of mirrors these days. She’s been aware of this for several weeks, although she can’t say exactly when it started. When she looks in the mirror everything is normal to begin with, then suddenly she is hit by several sensations. There is a rush of light and a wild sense of the expansion of space, as though her vision has suddenly zoomed out and can see everything brighter, vaster, and infinitely more real than before. There’s a crispness to the air so sharp it is almost brittle, and scents blossom and burst around her from nowhere she can identify - petrol, ivy, starch, marmalade. Finally, the highest arch of the air begins to shimmer, and the light solidifies into music so beautiful her ears can scarcely bear to hear it. Just when she feels weightless, about to be absorbed into the singing of angels, she slams back into her body and is left staring at her reflection, in a dull and normal mirror.
Except, for a moment, her reflection no longer looks normal. The girl behind the glass seems to be staring back at her with a vivid, independent intelligence. Imagine you are looking in a mirror… Monica shudders and turns away.
Who are you?
*************
She is asking me the wrong question. They all do. When they experience those first horrible, beautiful stirrings of the truth, they run to their reflections with accusation and entreaty. They’ll accept anything - hallucinations, hypnosis, ghosts, sickness, any sort of haunting - as long as they can dive back inside themselves and know that they are still human. As long as it can be someone else’s fault. Who better than mine?
*************
Monica reads about mirrors. She is driven by instinct, and her instinct craves information. This should be a clue, but Monica doesn’t want to listen to clues. She wants to block her ears and eyes to her own situation, and try to find herself in history books and stories. It doesn’t help, of course. She closes her eyes, and the darkness dances with the women of Babylon, cradling smooth cones of obsidian, gazing into the dark base while the mirror plunges down to a point between their hands, a bottomless well of blackly shining stone. She hears the rustle of the silks that wrap precious metal mirrors from China, swaying through the desert on the camels that tread the Silk Road. She sees Egyptian women burnish bronze plates, and paint their eyelids gently in the shadowy reflection. She smells the salt of Venice, and the burning hiss of plate glass poured and setting. She feels the drag and float of dustcloths flung up in Victorian households, lest the mirrors trap the souls of the newly dead. Behind them all, her breath hums with the chanting of magicians and inhales the incense that ripples in misty strands over the ancient scrying glass.
At home, she stares at her reflection in her own familiar mirror, tight-lipped and desperate.
Who are you?
*************
Narcissus did the same. They call him vain, but I saw his face and I tell you he was frightened. - Who are you? - Who are you? he called into dark water, until the sacred disease caught him and he could not protect himself from falling, arching and flailing until he lay submerged and still.
She asks me if she is going mad. I mouth the question in sympathy, gesture for gesture, breath for breath. Madness is not something I understand. Sacred is not something I understand. Real is not something I understand. Monica thinks her dreams are less real than her breakfast. She thinks the stinking, gibbering woman in the doorway is mad, while she herself is sane. She thinks communion wine is sacred and puddle-water is beneath her notice. Monica divides the world in all sorts of ways, and soon these boundaries will come tumbling down. Her body will suffer. She has the sacred disease, the falling sickness, and it grabs its ministers violently. She may die, like Narcissus, the first time it seizes her. She asks me again if she is going mad. Of course you are, I silently reply. A few thousand years ago, you’d have been a priestess or a shaman. Here, now, it’s just a malfunction in your brain's neural system, but no less sacred for all that.
*************
*************
I blink.
*************
Monica is flooded with the world. It is made of liquid light, and it is singing. It pours into her from all directions, finding the soft parts of her body and entering them like keys into locks, opening all parts of her at the same time. The crown of her skull becomes soft again, like a baby, and purple opera chords funnel into it from divine heights. Bright, crystal fireworks fly around her lips until her breath becomes a cloud of sparks. Beneath the tender insteps of her feet a brutal force writhes up, and she is standing on the shoulders of a great, red bull as big as the earth. Its power hits her in the stomach, and she gasps, and is filled with fire. Her arms jerk out to the sides, and she feels the stretch of the horizons pulling her arms around the curve of the world, and deeper into the curves of space. In the orbs of her eyes, the stars light up, and she becomes the living geometry of the universe. The angels have been summoned, and they start to sing.
Monica’s eyes roll back in her head, and she falls hard against the towel rail. The convulsion starts in her arms, and runs through her spine and legs. Her body becomes rigid, and she arches up from the floor and crashes down again. Her lips are smacking and twitching, and drools of saliva mixed with blood run from the corner of her mouth. She soils herself, and when she comes to this will be the thing that frightens her most. She’ll phone her mother, and then she won’t move from the bathroom floor, even to wash herself, because her body is no longer a safe vehicle. They’ll go to hospital together, and Monica will get stitches for the gash in her head, and a diagnosis. She and her mother will cry together for a long time, and Monica will move back home for a few months while she gets used to the medication.
When she looks at her pale reflection in her old, childhood bathroom, she’ll touch the glass uncertainly. She no longer trusts her reflection, but she can’t say exactly when it started.
Who are you?
*************
Who are you?
*************
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