I am certain that at one point the skin beneath my eyes used to match the light-brown of the rest of my body. But, one morning I found a mild pink instead, and yet another morning I found a dark violet resided beneath my two eyes. A dark purple that I imagine belongs to the infinity of space now makes home of the flesh on either side of my nose. Even now in the dark, staring at the mirror that stands before my bed, I can clearly mark where the brown ends and the purple begins.
I cover the skin below my eyes as I slightly shift my head to the left to check the time. I no longer want to look at myself because, in essence, I am the only one to blame for the plums underneath my eyes. I neglect to sleep even though I know I must wake up early; I neglect to sleep even if it means barely-living off of the fumes of five hours of sleep -- if it's a good night, which it rarely is.
I do not want to sleep because I do not want to end the day; once asleep, I do not want to wake up because I do not want to begin a new day.
Seventeen past two ante meridiem, the reflected red numbers glare back at me. Sleep hovers over me, but I can probably avoid it for another three hours. I sigh, and return my vision to my reflected self.
My hands leave my face, and throw the blanket off of my body when in the mirror I notice something moving underneath the covers, but I know the movement is not my doing. I expect hands to throw themselves around my neck, or suction-cupped tentacles to wrap around my torso, or an alien-spider to jump and cling onto my face.
Death follows each scenario my mind paints.
But I just find my bare chest rising and falling rapidly, and my bare toes curled towards the soles of my feet as I await a scare, but there is none. Only I lay in bed, rather stiffly as the fear lies on me, and a naked mattress rests beneath me.
The lack of sleep is getting to me, I exhale, and freeze again when I go to look at myself in the mirror. Cold shivers crawl up my back, and stay, taking away the usual warmth of my body.
Where my reflection should be, I find my blanket instead... or at least it resembles my blanket, my real blanket leans over the edge of the bed. It's as if I threw it over my head, but if I did, I would not be able to see what the mirror reflects because the blanket is of a thick wool. Yet the blanketed form stands in the mirror, and I can see it as clearly as the darkness of night allows.
The cold that holds me down washes away as the strange figure in the mirror drags to the left and sits beside me. Although I cannot physically see it outside of the mirror, I can feel the icy temperature it holds radiating towards me.
I find enough courage to sit up, but that is all I manage to do. As soon as my back hits the wall, my hands clench the mattress, and I stay there, staring forward, eyeing the figure. Feeling incapable of movement, and of breathing normally — my scared heart fills the otherwise silence with its panicked thumping. And my breath rushes past my teeth harshly as if I had just gotten back from a run around the globe.
The blanket the form wears begins to slide away, and I am certain this is the end. My fear escapes me momentarily as I start to picture what may come with the afterlife, but the same thought drags the terror back into my senses.
The false, reflected blanket slides off of the strange figure and somehow aligns itself with how my real blanket actually is, and behind it leaves... me.
The thing wears my face and dons my body. Except where my pupils are open wide, his eyes are closed, yet his head tilts towards me, giving me the impression that he is looking at me from behind his shut eyelids. My mouth mimics a snake and fights to not become a frown, while his is spread into a smile -- my smile. The smile I wear when I am happy; now he wears it and it oozes that sense of friendliness I usually intend with it, along with a new touch of creepy. And his body, my mirrored body, radiates cold, while mine barely gives off heat as fear freezes me over.
"Who-who..." I stumble over my numbed tongue.
He is me, I tell myself, but the thought is unnerving, and makes the hair on my arms stand.
He is me, I try again, and it allows me, although clumsily, to make my question. "Who a-a-are you?"
"I am You," he is quick to respond through his smile.
I expect to hear a hoarse voice, like what I'd expect from a demon of some sort, but just like he uses my face and body, he also uses my voice. The difference being that mine was fear-ridden when I spoke, and his voice is upbeat and carefree. It relieves me somewhat, but it also scares me more, and makes my palms sweat.
"Me?" I bite my tongue to rid the numb that rests over it, and speak through the ting of pain that comes with it.
"Correct," he says cheerfully. Then leans towards me, places his mouth over my ear, loses his smile and breathes," and wrong." Instantly, he is back to the position he was in before: head tilted towards my eyes behind the mirror, and grin plastered above his chin.
Wrong, he said, and his voice faltered, but for such a short time span that I am unsure if I did, or just imagined, that I heard the hoarse voice I had originally in place for him, sift past his teeth.
"I... I..." it's difficult to speak with the fear still pressing down on my shoulders. "I am wrong? Then who-who are you?"
"I am You; I am you." He answers joyfully.
"Then I am not wrong," a sharp dose of anger warms my blood and allows me to say without a stutter, but my frigid fear is quick to put it out. "So... so you are me."
"Correct," he chirps, once again turns to me, and places his lips over my ear. His icy temperature penetrates my skull and threatens to numb my brain. He spits cold words into my ear, "and wrong." Before the scared shiver can exit my body, he is back to smiling at me in the mirror. "I am you. And to others, I am also, You. But they are not you."
He must see the confusion spread across my face because he stands and says, "Come." In the mirror I see him inch forward until he is standing on the floor between the bed and the glass. But physically I see nothing, and the only reassurance I get that it's not all in my head, is that the cold temperature he holds moves along with him.
Fear keeps me frozen stiff in bed, but fear also gets me to move and do as he says because I am unsure of what he might do if I anger him.
"Take this," he grasps a hand mirror, and comes up empty handed as the material glides right through his hand. "And come here."
Maybe he can't touch me either, my mind suggests. He radiates cold meaning that he doesn't just live behind the mirror; if he wanted to, could he do more? I do as he says, hold the mirror at arms' length so both he and I are visible in its reflection and follow him to the window.
"Look," he says, full of cheer, and points out the window. But in the hand mirror I notice his closed eyes stay focused on my own two eyes that burn red because I neglect to shut them for any longer than needed.
"What... what am I looking at?"
Outside I faintly hear my neighbor's creaky front door opening. And I watch him walk out, arms flailing, legs kicking, head twisting... and a joyful smile spreads across his face.
"That is You," he laughs, happily, "that is me, but that is not you."
I look down at the hand mirror to find him, You, with an even wider smile and arms at his chest clapping quietly. "Look!" He screams, excitedly.
My neighbor's wife walks out the door, followed by their two daughters, and they do the same as he. Their arms toss wildly, their legs jump and kick, their heads rotate, and this time I notice that they all also have shut eyes.
"Dance, You! Dance, You! Dance, You!" I find, You, the one wearing my body, jumping up and down. But his shut eyes still stare at me; it's unnerving.
"They are... dancing?" I look again, and I can hardly call what they do dancing. It's more like... I look down at my two selves, then back up... like they are trying to rid of demons that make home of their bodies. "That's you? Your doing?"
"That's You!" He bursts. "Those are your neighbors. They are me; they are You; they are not you." He does not allow me to say anything, when he speaks again. "Come, come!"
My hand burns as if I dipped in into snow and let it sit for too long, and I find that it's because he wraps his fingers around my palm.
"Come," he exclaims, "come, come."
I follow, and he lets go of my hand. My fingers are numb of feeling, and it takes a few tries to get them to flex again.
He does not need to be able to physically hold me... his frigid presence is enough to cause harm. If he really wanted to, he could spread his cold into my heart, and I am certain that I'd eventually fall dead. Much sooner than later – he held my hand for short seconds and that was enough to immobilize it. It sends shivers crawling down my back, and makes my teeth chatter.
"Keys," he says as we reach the front door, "and let's go."
"Wh-wh-where?" My chattering teeth chop up the word. And I worry that I may have angered him.
"To meet You."
It costs my brain a second to remember that 'you' does not mean me.
I open the door to find my brainwashed neighbors dancing on my porch. In the hand mirror I find that You does the same and dances like they do with odd, and forced movements.
"You will drive," he says, "not you," he adds when he notices how I clench down on the keys, "You."
I nod, and hand my keys to my wife's neighbor, who struggles to take a hold of them as they all neglect to or simply cannot cease dancing. And in the meantime I feel a cool breeze brush up on my bare skin.
With fear pushing down on my shoulders, and You's constant cold drifting towards me, I failed to remember that I am wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. Embarrassment slithers onto my cheeks, and I consider running inside to at least get a pair of shorts, but seeing at how ludicrous my neighbor's appear at the moment, I doubt they even are aware of what is happening, let alone capable of noticing my lack of decency. As for any other eyes that may wander across my semi-nude body – I doubt any are awake at this hour to take note of me.
I follow my neighbor's dancing wife to my car while her family stays to dance on their yard, and ponder if I have ever taken the time to know their names. This is the most I have ever spent this close to any of them, and I am almost entirely certain that they have no clue about it.
~
I am unsure what makes my heart panic more: the fact that a dancing woman drives my car rather recklessly, or the uncertainty of where we head to.
"Stop here!" You yells from the back seat a few times as we drive around the city, and I dislike how even now whenever I check any mirror, I find his closed eyes staring at me. He still dons my face, but knowing I don't control it makes my heart punch at my ribs.
In our first stop, I look out the car to find people of different color and sizes playing in a park's playground. They all, like You, have closed eyes and friendly smiles swim across their faces.
"You?" I ask.
"Yes!" he answers and we drive off to our next destination. A hospital, where patients and doctors alike, run around playing tag.
"You?" I ask once more.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" he answers with great amusement.
"How?"
"You jump out of reflections and have fun." He offers no more words as we drive off to our next stop.
I put together that he is not as big of a threat as I initially thought. All he, You, seems to want is to have fun. So he recruits our reflections, our second selves, and seeks thrills in the night. But why is it that I can only see him inside of the mirror? Is it because we wear the same skin? Maybe to others he is visible outside of the mirror... except to me because he is me.
My explanation seems possible, and it clears most of my fear to where my heart beats normally, and my breathing is no longer rough and rapid. I sink back into the car seat, and sigh in relief.
"You, you are a... cool... guy," I barely voice the end of my statement when I find we pull up into an alley. "What-what," fear crawls into my throat again, "what is this, You?"
"This is fun for You!" He exclaims.
As we drive away, I hear a loud bang, bang, bang, followed by a white glow that illuminates the rearview mirror.
I go cold imagining the smiling body drop dead at the hands of another smiling body, who when we arrived, smudged red across his grinning face. Which I imagine came from one of the other five bodies that laid eerily stiff on crooked concrete: wide smiles and red-ringed pupils wide open.
Fear keeps me stiff and silent in my seat as we drive around the city and make a few other stops. I cannot look away when a man jumps dangerously close to the ledge of a tall building, and I cringe when a smack resonates from behind the car as we drive away. A scream exits my throat in the form a silent warm breath when we drive past a woman swallowing glass from a window, which I imagine she herself broke because her forehead is stained a crimson hue. And I look away when we stop near a family's backyard where they carelessly dance around a growing flame.
"Woo!" You cheers. "Have fun, You!" He and my neighbor's wife pump up other shut-eyed, wide-smiled bodies who engage in many different behaviors, some safe, some not, as we drive past them on the way back to my house.
"I had fun. You had fun. Did you have fun?" He stares back at me from the hand mirror as we walk back into my bedroom. He wears my face, and a smile that would seem friendly if I did not know the reason for it.
Five in the morning, the clock reads, and I fight back exhaustion because I fear being unconscious around him. "That-that... that was not fun."
He says nothing, and only smiles at me, as he again finds a seat beside me in my bed.
I do not know what I fear more, him accepting to find amusement in cruel behaviors, or him staring at me in silence because I cannot know his thoughts.
"I had fun. You had fun," he says gleefully, and leans towards me; his cold spreads down my back. "Tonight you rest," he whispers directly into my hearing. He has no physical tongue, but the cold is a good enough replacement as is seeps deep into my ear. "Tomorrow you sleep," he disappears into me, dragging his cold into my body, but his voice continues, "and I use your body so you and You can have fun."