The face in the mirror wasn’t mine; it couldn’t be mine.
The girl that stared back at me was too hollow, too empty to be me. I could feel the emotion that bubbled and boiled inside of me, but this face was void of anything at all. She had streaks clean of dirt that ran down her sunken and bony cheeks, streaks that accented her sickly paleness. Her golden complexion was long gone, replaced by red splotches of acne and deathly white skin that was comparative only to the underbelly of a fish. I doubled over, overtaken by the tears slipping down my cheeks in a steady stream. When I straightened up, the girl was back, now reddened at the cheeks. Wrinkles ran across her eyelids and cheekbones and forehead, lines that signaled not laughter but hopelessness. Dry lines, ones she would never had let take over her young features had she been well. The girl I knew took care of herself, too fearful of others’ thoughts and too hopeful for the future to let her appearance fail as it did now. This girl now had no reason to care, and so she didn’t. Her hair had fallen into a dirty, greasy state. It was streaked with salty tears and other grime, and now appeared to be a dull, melancholy brown. It was hard for me to believe that it had been thick and blonde only a few days ago. It hung straight down, nearly down to my hips. Had it been in its natural state, my hair would have reached only my mid-back.
Most appalling to me, though, were this girl’s eyes. I knew how my eyes were normally, their coffee bean color as familiar to me as anything I’d ever known. Now, they were darkened to a shade not unlike the black of a moonless, starless night. They were haunted and void, and I shivered just looking at them. The whites around the black appeared inflamed, and had a potent crimson tint to them that was quickly turning opaque. They glistened with tears, and each red vein was painfully obvious, even among the crimson that seemed to be taking over the white.
This was not me; it simply couldn’t be. I couldn’t accept it. But the girl’s eyes moved when mine did, darting around like little creeping shadows. Her head shook no when mine did, her mouth forming the word soundlessly as I breathed it. And when I reached up to punch the mirror, her hand moved with mine; that is, up until the mirror and the face of the hollow girl disappeared entirely, lost in a sea of shattered glass.
~*~*~*~
As per usual, I’d like to thank everyone for reading! I’d appreciate any feedback you have for me, anything at all, but most of all I hope you simply liked this, my second blurb for this contest.
This is written from the first-person point of view, but it is not necessarily me. I will say that this is describing a real person, but that is as much as I wish to concede :).
Thanks again for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!
~Raine
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