Written by Fantasy Girl
Mirror, mirror: In a silver landscape of ice-covered trees, a mirror stands on its own, out-of-place, lonely.
Image Courtesy of lets-not-be-perfect.blogspot.co.uk
‘A dream is a wish the heart makes!’ that’s what she always told me – my mother that is. She said, ‘we dream of the things we wish for but know will never come true.’ But my dreams do, and they always have done… she just never listened.
A mirror. That’s how it always starts. In a silver landscape of ice-covered trees, a mirror stands on its own, out-of-place, lonely. I walk up to it. It’s just a mirror, right, how much harm can it do?
It changes.
Ripples come from the centre, like when you drop a pebble into a still lake. The reflection, it’s still me, but it’s moving. She smiles at me, her eyes, my eyes, silver like the forest around me; around us. She curls her index finger, slowly and deliberately with a wry smile on her face, beckoning me to follow her, and turns her back and walks away from me, her hand-held out behind her, albeit when your lover is walking behind you. I follow. Just like I always do, but I don’t know why, yet I know how this will end – A terrorist attack, a tsunami, they’ve all come true. So, I follow. But this time it’s different.
I step through the mirror and I’m in my home. My mum and dad sit on the sofa watching crappy morning television before Dad has to go to work. They don’t see me though. Of course they don’t, I’m not really there. It’s just a dream. Something’s not right though. Mum’s too quiet. Dad is sad. The house is… too tidy. The girl – me – whispers my name and I follow her upstairs and into my room.
There’s a tight pain in my chest as I open the door. I know what should be there. My stuff will be all over the floor from getting ready for college that morning. Clothes will be strewn across the bed, my straighteners and makeup will be in a pile in front of my mirror. But no, the pain in my chest gets tighter. The room – my room – it’s empty.
No bed.
No clothes.
No makeup.
No mirror.
No posters.
Nothing.
Just grey walls, fading away into the desolate landscape from which I started.
‘No!’ I say to myself, over and over again. ‘No, no, no!’
The pain in my chest tightens even further. I can’t breathe.
I try to scream. There’s no sound.
I don’t wake up.
Will I ever wake up?
Am I really gone?
Inkblots and Typing Spots 
[…] hoping to see more of it. Like her writing? Make sure you check out notable pieces such as ‘Black Mirror‘ and ‘Maybe She Needs A Bigger […]
[…] Heartbreak was written on behalf of a challenge set by Fantasy Girl’s college English tutor. The challenge was to write about heartbreak through language, structure, and form, without alerting the reader to the reasons for a character’s broken heart. Fantasy Girl chose to focus on one simple image of vines twisting in on itself in wallpaper – presumably, this challenge was set in response to The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Like Fantasy Girl’s writing? Make sure you check out Commune and Black Mirror. […]