By Kailani Farkas
My heart slammed against my rib cage. I stood perplexed thinking about what had just happened. The trees laughed hardest, moved side to side at a nervous pace. I had to open up my senses, to sound, to smell, and listen carefully to my instinct. Crunching branches hit my ears from behind, deep into the woods I ran. I ran like never before. The adrenaline flew through my veins and my rasping throat gasped for air. My tears poured heavily down my cheeks. Blind, I fell to the ground, head between my knees, hearing their voices just made it harder for me to escape. The path at my feet faded as I gave it my back. Melancholy, darkness and agony were all around. My broken soul laid happily in a tomb of sorrow. Nothing was left to fill my void. Still, there isn't. I was gradually being defeated by darkness, which was taking me God knows where...
I stood next to Daisy when she was taken away. We were looking at a foreshadowing mirror. Unexplainably, a loud and dreadful yell came out of her mouth. It felt as if her soul left her body, and seconds later, her body dropped dead on the floor. The glass shattered and the glittering fragments danced with the light. Even now, the sound of it preys on my mind. Hopeless cries were heard and my parents came into the room. They goggled at the broken mirror, glared silently at Daisy, or what was left of her, a pale white corpse, and I gazed in disbelief.
“You- you killed her!”, my mother yelled.
“I didn't! She just- dr- dr- dropped dead...” I stammered while I cried my heart out.
“Go to your room! Leave this to us”, my father roared, staring at the body like an eyesore.
They thought they could handle it themselves. They thought wrong. I toed the line and kept silent, listening, hearing, waiting for a sign from my parents, dubiously from my sister. None came. I left my pitchblack room and walked through the corridor, now coated in blood-red. Stains of death led to the bathroom and the door squeakily opened and my mother’s eyes met mine and she looked above the sink and I heard the second scream followed by the second shatter. It was my mother, her yell as deadly as Daisy’s. Father ran down the stairs, trying to reach the wall phone at his faintest. As he dialed a number, the power went out. Not a minute had passed and my father screamed as well, a deeper voice crashed, cracked, broke, slammed, shattered, snapped, burst as well as the glass in front of him. It hit me the hardest. As I left the cabin I had nowhere to go.
Then I heard it, Darkness tiptoed to where I was, I could feel my muscles tensing and my arms getting rigid. The profusion of horror got to me and I evaded from the shocking feeling of bitterness. I ran towards a never-ending trail. The baleful and malign trees were intimidating, they looked down at me and I looked up at them. And when I looked back to the eerie path I saw multiple shadows, replicas of my silhouette, only that this time it was not me. Looking glasses, framed by strands of bronze enclosed me. I did not see myself. One glimpse of a cold deadly body, necrotic skin, poor and heavy eyes was all it took for me to sicken. One had stolen my image, darkness branched to my soul. The mirrors surrounding me showed an empty, innocent and abandoned figure.
Shortage of breath was the first sign, my lungs were imprisoned by metal bands. And next, came the rising panic, my head started to daze around, looking at the dozens of perished figures. Was that what they had seen of themselves before the screaming? One mirror started to crack, the glittering fragments flew once more…