30 Day Writing Prompts

3

3. Mirror, mirror

A young woman stands directly in front of a full length mirror. There's a large crack at the bottom where it was kicked a long time ago in one of her typical teenage temper-tantrums. The shattered glass distorts her wounded legs, a single long crack travelling up over half of the mirror, ending at about elbow-height.

No one is home. The whole house sits in an uncomfortable silence, too used to the playful yelling of the woman's younger siblings and the constant arguments their parents would have in the evening, somehow thinking that their four children wouldn't hear the shouting and the crying if they were in a sleep deep enough.

She curls her toes under her feet and rocks on her heels, turning her gaze away from the doorway and re-focussing it on the mirror.

"You aren't the only thing that's broken," she murmurs, raising her left foot and poking the glass where it had been shattered. A few minuscule shards of glass crumble from the mirror casing to the floor.

Wobbling a little, she places her foot back on the floor, regaining her balance. Taking one shaky step forward, the young woman begins to closely examine herself in the mirror. She looks vulnerable, more like a child and less like an almost nineteen year old young woman. Young woman. Something her mother has always called her. She begins to slowly strip out of her clothes, wincing at every movement of her body that strains something just a little too much; cringing when the cloth, soft but somehow too rough, brushes against the open wounds and blooming bruises. She can never been gentle enough. Standing, shivering in front of the mirror, she feels sick just staring at her own body. Unnaturally thin. She remembers when all the girls in her year at school would accuse her of being anorexic. It's funny, really. You're never skinny enough until they decide you're too skinny. On her legs, several large, beige bruises are dotted up and down the once smooth and untainted skin. Tiny, almost unnoticeable cuts are scattered all over them. Her feet, sore and blistered from running too hard on concrete bare footed. Pain surges through her body just standing on her own two feet. As she begins closely looking further up her body, she can feel herself getting anxious. They aren't here with her any more to watch and prod their fingers into places they don't belong, but just the idea of it makes her breathing uneven and her heart beat faster. Large cuts start from her inner thighs and draw right up to her hips. They aren't even and precise. Cuts far too messy and far too painful to even comprehend. Memories of the blood and the almost paralysing agony she felt as they tormented her flashed through her mind quickly, almost causing the young woman to fall to the floor.

She remains standing, though. Her knees buckle beneath her weight and she feels faint as if she could pass out at any moment. Stepping forward again, the young woman is now as close to the mirror as she can get, her toes touching the bottom of the mirror, feeling the microscopic shards of glass getting comfy under her skin. Her stomach and arms are forever imprinted with bruises the shape of fingers that held on to her too tight, as if clinging on for dear life. Sure, the bruises will fade in a number of days or maybe weeks  but the memories of them will never truly go away. Whenever she looks at herself in the mirror, she'll always see those handprints marked on her like some sort of branding. Hands that should have never graced her skin in the first place, yet, they always found themselves running down the closing wounds on her hips or dipping just a little too close to a place where things that didn't belong had already been. Further up her body, she chose to not even bother unclipping her bra and examine her breasts. Even with deep breaths and a steady breathing pattern, she wasn't ready to look at them. Once something she was almost proud of, now drew a look of disgust on her face. Just above her breasts, however, where clean and precise cuts. They weren't deep, luckily. The word would scar up and soon be unnoticeable, but like the bruises on her stomach and arms, it would always be there. Whore. She'd never have the confidence to wear anything other than a turtleneck ever again. Closing her eyes a little, the young woman begins to trace the letters. Small flakes of dried up, crusted blood fall away at her touch. She struggles not to cry, the sensation of the small knife being dragged up, down, and across her upper chest without her being able to see what was going on. They weren't deep like the wounds on her hips, but they stung, and the emotional trauma made the suffering worse.

Tears begin running down her face.

"You lasted so long without tears," she chokes out, sobbing slightly as she speaks to her reflection much like a lunatic.

The tears still run down her cheeks but she's cried so much that no sound comes from her throat and now, they don't really feel like they mean anything at all.

Her neck. It looks mangled. Bruises have completely shadowed it, some purple, others a beige tone and the most noticeable ones so dark that they are almost black. The young woman chokes out another sob, crumbling to her knees for a moment. It hurts to kneel as well, straining the unpleasant gashes on her hips but she can't stay on her feet for much longer. She doesn't weigh too much, but the weight of her body is pulling her down. It's almost as if she's carrying bricks on her shoulders. The weight of the world. No- the weight of the world can't even describe the torture and trauma she experienced. Something bigger than that. The weight of a million universes all tangled together, pushing their problems into each other. That's what it's like.

Maybe her neck looks bad, and her chest may look worse. The gashes in her hips and the bruises that cover more than half of her body looks agonising. But her face has to be the worst. Nothing can compare.

She's exposed. Completely and utterly exposed. She will never be able to hide the scars that stain her face, nor will she be able to forget them. Those children you see in advertisements for abuse, that's what she looks like. Her lip wobbles, threatening more tears. But crying really doesn't do anything, does it? All it does is make her weaker, losing the defence that keeps her alive.

Slowly and carefully, like she's never done it a million times before, the young woman- the shell of a young woman -gets to her feet. They ache so badly, creaking and cracking uncomfortably like she hasn't walked in the past decade. Her eyes are so dull, reflecting pain and abandonment. Once vibrant blue eyes you could get lost in like an ocean have been reduced to cloudy blue orbs of despair. The suffering and torment she experienced has left a permanently grim expression on her face. Her nose has been broken out of place and juts out at the bridge in a disgusting way that makes her cringe, wrinkling the skin just between her eyes. Two slashes on the left side of her face run down from just under her eye to almost the corner of her mouth, as if the person who did it made an attempt at cutting a Chelsea smile onto her but failed drastically. Her lips part in an 'o' shape. They're puffy. She's been punched once or twice, giving her a painfully obvious black eye that almost makes her want to grin. Instead, she frowns.

"I used to be so- so beautiful," she whispers, unsure of whether this is her talking to herself or her reflection. They're both the same people, but are they?

Taking a few steps back from the mirror, she turns around trying to get a good look at her back. It's difficult and the strain make her yell out in pain as she twists her neck in order to get a better look, but she can see enough. Many different cuts of all shapes, sizes, and length cover the majority of her back, a few bruises here and there.

Ugly.

Bending over slightly, she grabs a huge shard of glass from the mirror, sort of amazed that it hasn't fallen from the frame yet. It probably won't go back in, but does it really matter?

Holding the large shard of glass to her face, she lets tears drop on to it, disfiguring her already mutilated face. Immediately, she drops it onto the floor, hitting the carpet with a soft thud and splitting into five separate pieces. She collects them and discards them into a bin, before grabbing a blanket from the drawer under her bed. The young woman throws the blanket over the mirrors frame, completely covering it.

"No more!" She cries out, staring at the white ceiling, wondering if a God shook slightly at in his seat at her yells.
Sliding down the wall and onto the floor again, she buries her face in her hands.

"No more mirrors,"