Chapter 1: Mirrors
It wasn't the nightmare that woke me up, it was the shattering of the mirror on the wall adjacent to my bed. The sound was enough to frighten me awake, but luckily the pouring rain outside obscured it so my parents upstairs wouldn't hear. There were several things that should have disturbed me about the scene, and it wasn't the obvious seven years bad luck cliche. First off, why had a mirror just fractured in the dead of night- I guess the better question is, how? The next wave of anxiety came from the realization that my dream had woken me up. The dream had been reoccurring, but I could never remember it, only that I had it.
But tonight, when the dream had transferred from my subconscious to the physical world, the confusion and terror of it became all to real.
The dream started off as I looked down upon myself in a third person, omniscient point of view. It's an odd sensation, seeing yourself from outside your body. It's an even more peculiar sight when you look into the mirror and see someone that's not you. The dream, then, didn't make sense. Seeing that I was looking down upon myself, I couldn't make out the figure exactly, but it wasn't me. As "I" looked into the mirror, the same person wasn't staring back, it's as simple as that. There wasn't much more to the clouded vision that my subliminal mind has conjured up. The last thing I remember was the reflection screaming, then waking up to the broken mirror.
That's why I was uncomfortable that rainy night at 3 AM. That's why I was too terrified to move, to examine the fractured glass that lay at the foot of my bed. But curiousity got the best of me and overwelemed my fear, causing my hand to reach for the largest glass, almost unvoluntarily.
It was dark in the room, but I could clearly see my reflection. Not only did it show my face, but it took on the blue color of everything in my room. The sight was quite mesmorizing, because the shades of blue plus the darkness made the shard of reflective glass shimmer like an ocean.
Too bad that couldn't take my attention away from the dazed green eyes that stared into my alarmed, blue ones.
The segment of mirror was just large enough to see my face- or rather, her face. Her long, curly brown hair was the exact oposite of my tapered, blond hair. Her teeth were whiter, and her skin darker. We didn't look remotely similar, and I'm positive I had never seen her before, but I suddely knew her better than I had anyone ever before. All of the sudden I knew her favorite color, her crush, all her secrets she had never told anyone, and her feeling towards ever person in the human race. Her name was Madeline, and she lived in Athens, but she was important to me somehow.
