The Real Me

Chills ran down my spine as the icy gaze of those frosty eyes connected with mine. My hair rose on my head, my legs felt like they were cut off from the rest of my body, like a sword had cut through my stomach removing my legs, my only possibility of escape.

There are days in all our lives when we feel like we don’t recognize ourselves, but what happened to me was far worse. I came face to face with my worst enemy. Me.

The day that everything changed started like any other. I felt something was off for a while, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I chalked it up to having read too many mystery books, to having indulged in too many scary movies. After all, it was just a strange feeling. A tingling sensation ran down my spine, making my skin crawl.

It was like there was someone who was always watching me.

My rational mind knew that it was impossible, I even checked my tiny home a few times but nothing was amiss, everything seemed normal and yet I couldn’t get rid of that feeling nagging at the back of my mind, whether I was at home, or outside, no place felt safe.

That day, I was determined to stop all the nonsense. I was a grown woman living alone! The last thing I needed was to add to the list of my fears. It was long enough as it was.

“Oh, come on, Marigold, you are always so dramatic,” my brother said, sneering at me. “You should live a little. Go party or something. You can’t spend all your life thinking about things that can go wrong. Be brave instead of being the constant little coward that you are.”

He didn’t understand that it wasn’t always easy for a woman to be out there and do things without fear. Every time I went to a party, I witnessed a woman becoming a victim, even in crowded places where one would expect safety in numbers.

In high school, someone I knew was drugged and almost assaulted; most of the men there dismissed it as unimportant.

At university, someone started groping my friend at a party and she could barely get rid of them.

A random guy on the street once followed me because he wanted my phone number and ‘no’ wasn’t something he understood.

So, no it wasn’t easy for me to be brave in a world that did its best to trip me up, to take advantage of me but in this one instance, I decided I needed to follow my brother’s advice, especially having in mind that I couldn’t see any danger, that it was all in my head.

So, instead of allowing my panic to take over, I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face, hoping to clear up my head. For a second, I was tempted to remain there, staring at my pale face as the water dripped down it, searching my blue eyes for something to boost my confidence and give me strength.

Yet, there was something off.

My eyes felt cold and lifeless, making me wonder if there was something wrong with me. Could I be a psychopath or something? Why was nothing there? All I could see was the empty blue expense that was creeping me out.

If eyes are mirrors of the soul, was I soulless?

Having in mind what happened next, maybe being soulless wouldn’t have been such a bad thing in comparison. It might have been the lesser of two evils.

Anyway, as I was staring into the eyes in the mirror, I could see something moving at the edge of my vision. At least that’s what I thought I saw. We all have those moments where we feel like something is going on in the periphery of our vision, only to turn around and see there is nothing there.

So, that’s what I did. I turned around to check, as paranoid as ever, but I was met with the same old bathroom, what was supposed to be my safe space that suddenly didn’t feel safe.

When I moved my gaze to the mirror, its surface looked different, cleaner somehow. I could have sworn that there was a slight ripple to it, as if I was looking into the water and not the same old mirror that had specks of toothpaste on it no matter how hard I tried to clean it. It was strange but not overly disturbing as I preferred things clean, but it was still unnerving because I could have sworn it wasn’t as spotless moments ago.

I frowned at the small oddity, trying to figure out if something was off with my eyesight or if I forgot I cleaned the mirror with some super cleaner; when I finally saw it. The reflection in the mirror didn’t move to accommodate my newly formed frown. In fact, the lips in the mirror started slowly pulling at the corners into a disturbing smirk I knew wasn’t on my face.

I blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the hallucination. I even rubbed my eyes as if that would somehow change what was before me.

“Finally,” a raspy voice said. “You see me.”

My ears stung from the unnaturalness of the voice invading my safe space. For a moment it felt as if I had gone deaf but then my hearing returned with a vengeance, registering even the low buzzing I had ignored until then thinking it was technology or the neighbors.

“W-w-what?” I stammered to myself, glued to the spot, my eyes going wide while the ones in the mirror squinted judgingly. “W-w-who s-s-said that?”

In my whole life, I had never felt that amount of terror coursing through my veins. My heartbeat pounded so loudly in my ears that I was shocked I could hear anything else, while cold sweat broke out all over my skin.

“Wow, you sure are dense, aren’t you?” the voice said and only then did I notice that my mouth, or at least what looked like my mouth in the mirror, moved every time I heard the voice.

“Wh-who a-a-are you?” I asked, still feeling like a statue cursed to bear whatever the malicious-looking person in the mirror had in mind.

“Isn’t that obvious?” the voice asked, its icy glare piercing through all the layers of who I was.

I didn’t want to anger whatever being was trapped in my mirror, but nothing was obvious to me. It felt like my world was tilting on its axes and I wasn’t sure of anything anymore, of my eyesight, of my sanity, nothing at all.

“N-n-no,” I replied honestly, my fingers twisting and turning the hem of my shirt while my legs still felt like they were made of lead, unable to move even an inch.

“Will you stop with the stuttering, you pathetic little human?” the voice sneered. “How you weaklings even survive everyday life is beyond me.”

I stared wide-eyed at the mirror, not understanding what was happening, what it all meant. However, the reflection showed scrunched-up eyes and snapping teeth. It was impossible to comprehend what was happening.

“I should have known that I would have to spell it out for you,” it said, letting out an exasperated sigh as its eyes reflected hatred and rage, I couldn’t grasp. “I am the real you.”

“The r-r-r-eal m-m-me?” I stuttered out as a droplet of sweat raced down my spine, more perspiration gathering on my brow without me being able to use my hands long enough to wipe it away. “That’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” it said, the confidence in its voice making me sweat even more, fear clouding every other emotion. “But I should have known that someone as simple as you wouldn’t get it.”

At those words, all the memories of those who came before it telling me similar things came rushing back to me. As the image of my ex-boyfriend taunting me flashed before my eyes, rage and stubbornness took a front seat in my mind.

I never wanted to allow anyone to enjoy my suffering, no matter how impossible the situation seemed. Whether I was crazy or I was facing the supernatural or the devil himself, I wasn’t ready to allow it to break me. Nothing would break me. Not again. I swore that the day of the incident that changed my life.

“I am the real you,” the voice whispered, making goosebumps rise on my skin. The person who enjoys the pain of others. The person who calms her anger by watching people being brutally murdered.”

“That’s not t-t-true,” I said, already back to a sputtering mess, my emotions as unstable as they hadn’t been in years, since him. “I-I-I am j-j-just learning to ch-ch-channel my anger into something harmless.”

“But why do you have so much anger? Doesn’t that make you evil?” the voice asked, feeding on my insecurities it knew all too well.

On the intellectual level, I knew that anger was a normal human emotion, but I often wondered if the intensity I was feeling was normal. Was it natural to enjoy horror movies as much as I did? Every little thing made me doubtful. It made me question my innate goodness.

“N-no,” I replied weakly, unable to tear my eyes away from the vast desolation of the dark orbs staring at me. “It makes me human.”

“What about Belinda? Wasn’t that your fault? Was what you did to her also what makes you human?” she asked when I didn’t react the way she hoped.

“What happened to grandma was an accident!” I exclaimed, shocked that she would know about the most painful memories I had, making me wonder if what she was saying could be the truth.

I shook my head, not wanting to believe that the mean entity speaking to me so rudely could have anything to do with me, that it could have any similarities to me.

“Maybe, but if you had been there with her instead of stuck in a library like some nerd, you would have found her in time and she would have been still alive,” the voice said.

“H-how did you know a-a-bout tha-that?” I asked, not wanting to think about the possibility that this cold and heartless being could really be me, any part of me.

The doctors told me that even if I was right there by her side, even if she had the best surgeons there, she wouldn’t have survived, but the guilt still ate at me every day of my life and that evil creature used that against me.

Rage blossomed in my chest once again, stronger than ever, growing so much that I could feel my veins buzzing with energy, my head so full of anger that I couldn’t even think clearly. I was furious at myself for not being there for grandma after her fall and now there was that thing claiming to be the ‘real me’ and it gave me something outside myself to be angry at.

“You killed her! It was you who wasn’t there to help her with the chores. You who didn’t find her on time,” the voice continued to taunt me.

“Shut up, shut up!” I screamed, covering my ears with my hands as tears streamed down my face.

When it refused to stop, not thinking too much about it, I took the first object closest to me and chucked it towards the mirror, glass spraying all over.

The voice and the face that was mine but not really were gone, but I knew it wasn’t permanent. Something told me that breaking the mirror helped it instead of harming it. My instincts were telling me to run and never look back.

Even if it was all just a figment of my imagination, I decided to leave the house. The fresh air was bound to help me at least think about what I should do next and there was no way I could stay somewhere where I no longer felt safe.

“Where can I go?” I murmured to myself as I quickly grabbed the essentials and left what was once my home but what was becoming the beginning of a horror chapter of my life.

I didn’t have many friends, not anymore, and the few I had, I wasn’t sure I could just contact out of the blue and ask for a place to stay. Anida was the one I was sure would be ready to help me out, but she had small children and whatever was happening to me, whether haunting or insanity, I didn’t want to bring it to her doorstep.

At a loss for where to go or what to do, I went to the city library. After all, it was a place that always made me feel safe, plus I could do some research whether in the many books it housed or in the computers they allowed the members to use.

When I reached the library, it was as quiet as I remembered, but I was still jittery, turning left and right at the slightest sound because now I knew that whatever I was feeling in the past, those strange feelings of being watched, they were probably real. Besides, the warmth and comfort I usually felt in the magical world of books was not there anymore, which was disturbing in itself.

Knowing that thing claiming to be the real me kept watching me, that it was always there, made me feel unsafe. If it could enter my home, it could enter any place and the thought was terrifying.

“Could she be me? How do you fight against yourself? What if she is the real me and I am just some weak imposter taking her place?” I wondered quietly. “Even if she isn’t me, even if it’s all just a clever lie to get in my head, how do I fight it?”

I shook my head quickly at those thoughts because it didn’t matter who was real and who was not. It didn’t matter if it was me or not. I wanted to live. I wanted the right to be this me, to be free.

Whatever she was, whatever she wanted, it had nothing to do with me and I wouldn’t let her destroy the little happiness I’ve built over the years.

As I rounded the corner to a new row of books, the large window reflecting the bookshelves behind me caught my attention; and among them, in the shadows, I saw something horrifying. Two Marigolds were standing among the bookshelves, one with a worried expression and mouth wide open in horror, and the other with a gruesome sneer on her face.

“Did you really think that you could escape me?” she asked, growling at me.