Un-a-frayed

This story is by Jaxan Coy ~ judges feedback welcome and was part of our 2023 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

It slithered onto my porch from my housemaid’s arms, my worst fear wrapped in a package. Panic gripped me, my eyes closed, and I wished the box away. Reopening my eyes, a groan escaped me. The package was still there. 

 “Acknowledge your terror,” my therapist said. Yes, Dr. Hale, I’ll try to treat it like it’s just another package. 

 My fingers mutinied, struggling to unwrap the purchase. Sweat mixed with terror, rolling down, escaping to my armpits. 

 Face your fears or accept your shackles, Mary. But you can’t have both. 

 Shackles I knew, forged with blanketed windows, and empty spaces in my house where any mirror should be. The last two years I spent alone in self pity and darkness, except for Dr. Hale’s weekly hour sessions, and my housemaid coming to clean once a week. She also did all my grocery shopping.

 As an orphan, I knew alone. When I was three years old, my parents died, and I went to live with my grandmother. The worst came the day my Grandmother Corliss passed away. I was only ten years old. Grandmother was late for breakfast, and I launched an investigation. Grandmother smelled of cedar, and I could always find her by following my nose. I discovered her slumped in the chair of her vanity gazing into the mirror. But my real undoing, the reason for today’s unreasonable fears? Her reflection in the mirror was gray, gnarled; her mouth, drooling, pulled into a tight pucker. The light in her usually bright blue, laughing eyes was starting to wane, and they shifted, meeting mine. She garbled something as I gazed into the mirror, her brilliant blue slowly replaced by a milky white that ate them up.

 I secretly blamed myself for not checking on her sooner. Maybe she could’ve been saved. There were moments I wished it had been me instead, sparing myself today’s inevitable nightmares. And living with my Aunt and Uncle Frasier afterward. 

 Mirrors. People’s reflections in mirrors were always lurking, hiding something, their eyes penetrating. Inevitably, though, it was my eyes. They were my Grandmother’s.

 Yep. I’d inherited her bright blue eyes. Is it any wonder they seemed impossible for me to gaze into? I had no idea that this would consume my soul.

 For my part, there’s a heightened awareness of the absurdity. However, one must admit mirrors are frightening, mysterious. If you broke one? That’s when you knew you had problems. Yep, seven years of bad luck is a terrible forecast. But if you’re afraid of your own reflection? There’s a special word for 16 years of that. C-r-a-z-y. Yeah. Dr. Hale used a different word for it than public scrutiny did. It was called Eisoptrophobia, or an extreme, unhealthy fear of reflections and mirrors. Just my luck. 

 Life took a downward turn. Sixteen years later, I found myself wringing my hands in front of this package.

 Just open it and be done with it, Mary! 

 Numb fingers opened the box, quickly covering my dread with a towel.

 Right now, imagine the mirror’s only a picture. Put it up. Keep it covered. Or live in pain just as you did yesterday. 

 Trembling, I hung it.

 A loud bang echoed from the mirror, then a long sort of a pli-i-ink.

 Oh no! How would I know if it was broken unless I checked?

 If fear didn’t smell before, it most certainly did now. I’d need a bath.

 It’s covered, Mary, but you know what’s under that towel. I dare you! Rip the towel off like an old bandaid! 

 My hands reacted, launching the towel, and exposing my nightmare. The mirror was fractured in a hundred pieces, but still intact. 

 My strange faces gazed back at me. Not one of them recognized me. How could they? It had been 16 years.

 Look, Mary! Grandmother is staring at you with thousands of blinking eyes! 

 No. The eyes were my own. The hairs standing straight on my neck wanted to run before my feet could peel themselves from the floor. My eyes adjusted to the dim, broken labyrinth of Grandmother’s home.

 “Mary, are you there?”

 My eyes widened as they glimpsed Grandmother Corliss walking through the maze of hallways, turning down different corridors, just out of reach. The faint scent of cedar teased the air. 

 “Mary. Where are you?” Her voice reverberated, like it bounced around inside of a tin box. 

 Bolting, I tripped. Then paused.

 Embrace your shackles, Mary, or face your fears. 

 Shakily, I navigated my way back to peek at the mirror. 

 Grandmother’s voice rang out again.

 “Don’t be scared, Mary. It’s me, Grandmother! Please, come to the mirror!” 

 She stood, splintered and beckoning, the vibrant life back in her eyes. Wiping my tears, I peered at Grandmother’s fractured hallways in the mirror’s dead-end corridors. It was her. 

 “Grandmother? Grandmother?”

 “Mary! Can you hear me? Come to the sound of my voice!”

 “Yes, but the mirror is broken, like a labyrinth. Which way do I go?”

 “It’s broken? Is it still intact?”

 “Yes.”

 Eventually, she rounded my corridor in full frame, unfractured. Almost in disbelief, she touched my arm, whispering. 

 “Mary! I thought I’d never see you again!”

 “Grandmother? But, you can’t be real-”

 “But I am! I’ve been trying to reach you since the day I died! In your world, if the mirror is fractured but intact, it’s good luck. But for the dead it means much more. It’s a portal, and we can walk in it. I’ve shattered three different mirrors over the years trying to rescue you from your misery, two of them right in front of you. Do you recollect that?”

 Memory jarred me. Two times since Grandmother died, while sidestepping my reflection, the mirror just randomly shattered.

 “Yes, I remember that! It scared the wits out of me!”

 She pulled me close like she did when I was a child. My sweat mingled with the scent of cedar.

 “I’m so sorry I failed until now! This took a lot of careful doing, so unless there’s a problem, don’t throw this mirror away.”

 “A problem, Grandmother?”

 She hushed me quietly. “Careful, honey. The dead will hear you! Please listen to me. Don’t ever enter the mirror without me calling you first. The mirror must be hidden. Remember, if the mirror is fractured, not shattered, it becomes a portal to travel between the worlds. Some dead are envious of the living, and may try to steal our portal. You must stay out unless I come to fetch you! You understand why I had to risk it, don’t you, to save you from yourself? Why are you living this way, Mary?”

 “Fear.”

 Inside, the mirror felt frigid, and it smelled of raw terror wrapped in darkness. My whole body shook.

 “But I’m tired of being frayed. I can’t live like this anymore.”

 “You’ve done a brave thing, darling!” Grandmother paused, worriedly looking behind her, covering her mouth. 

 Owls hooted, and millions of fractured crickets in the mirror played their fiddles. But the night’s symphony was hushed by a new sound; thousands of excited whispers. Millions of white eyes appeared behind my grandmother in the fractured mirror.

 “Run, Mary! Run!”

 From the edge of the mirror, with one foot in the land of the living, and one in the world of the dead, I fought beside Grandmother Corliss, but they overwhelmed her. Hoards and hands grabbed, ripping at me, their bright, white eyes accusing me for being alive. Clinging to the mirror’s doorway, kicking, fighting, I somehow made my stand until the flicker of lights that meant the dawn.  

 “Mary, they can’t take you now unless you fall asleep. Stay awake, child!”

 With the daybreak, the weary dead slunk back to their place. I, Mary, had beaten back the dead in the mirror. There was no more fear.

 Grandmother wiped my wounded face. “I’m so sorry, child. You’re bloody!”

 My feet still stood between the dead and the living at the edge of the portal. Here I decided to stay. With Grandmother Corliss. 

 When my maid came that week, I was nowhere to be found. She unknowingly dragged the mirror to the basement with me inside of it. Befitting the times, my house was left just as it was in case I came back.

 My, how the stories about me flew. 

 My house has since fallen around me these last 233 years, but I’m still here inside the mirror. Awake. Watching. I won’t let you forget me that easily! No. 

 Mirrors. Mysterious and maybe even frightening, but these days they bring me a crooked smile. Neither dead nor alive, I can walk any mirror. Perhaps you’ve seen me, the fleeting image in the mirror out of the corner of your eye? 

 Shhh. Listen! Four little girls are calling my name from a bathroom mirror.

 “Bloody Mary! Bloody Mary! Bloody Mary!”

 Any questions before I run to find them, perhaps, to pull them into my mirror? Just call my name. I’m obliged to answer. Finally! Un-a-frayed.