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[Redpyramidhead]

Hi Everyone. The Mirror returns in a new revised and edited (with some additions) form with a continuation, as well.

This is Continued from last FIVE posts... go back and read the last 5 in order from the beginning or you will be seriously lost!

Again, sorry for the quintuple posting here, but it won't allow individual posts with more than 10000 characters. It is not my fault.

***

"What exactly were you looking for?" said a voice from behind a dark curtain. It sounded niether male or female, but instead very androgenous, disturbingly so to the point where it almost no longer sounded human. Or perhaps, it sounded too human.

"I dunno..."

"Sure you do." Persisted the voice. "You know exactly what you were looking for."

"I'm not sure, then..." Armelia admitted.

"Yes. Yes, I think you are. You were searching for something you look for everyday."

"No..." Armelia replied with eyes growing wider and breathe quickening.

"Mirrors. You look for them. When you find them you look to understand what you see in them. This is your sickness. Your guilty obsession."

One last utterence of the word 'no' escaped from Armelia's mouth and shouted across an unseen abyss before her and echoedback louder than she had said it, ringing in her ears.
She began counting her steps, carefully, at this point. She slowly and forcefully stepped forward into realizing she was dreaming and that she could make it stop. She readied herself for the next step out of the dreams suffocating fold. Slowly, but determinably, she crossed into the path of control. Armelia wanted no more to do with this dream as it was to her, as she saw it, inherently evil and very wrong. Finally, she traversed the threshold into the world of the awake. Interestingly enough, the world around her bed seemed to be waking up, as well. Things seemed to be shaking off their hidden meanings just as Armelia's eyes opened and focused enough to see. Nothing was out of place as far as her memory would allow.

Her mother came into the room. "Elia, dear. I heard you making noises in your sleep. Are you having bad dreams again?"

"No, mama, I'm fine."

"Oh, but it's ok to tell me, dear. It's ok to tell me all about it. Whenever something is bothering you, remember you can tell mommy all about it whatever it may be and she will listen." Her mother smiled her angelically warm smile.

"Thanks, mama. I am fine. I was just dreaming about mirrors and I didn't like the way I looked in them."

Her mother chuckled, "nobody likes the way they look in the mirror every time dear. I think that is a recurring nightmare I can relate to myself." She smiled again and leaned over to hug her daughter.

Elia pulled away, scared. "How did you know it was a recurring dream?"



CHAPTER 5- Memory's Own (Memory will have her revenge on seattle)


Sometimes one finds themselves disoriented upon waking up not only because of whatever exhausting dreams they may have had, but because they quite literally find themselves awakening physically in a place they did not remember going to sleep in. One does not expect to come to with their face pressed hard against the bathroom floor by an unexplained feeling of weight inside their head and no recollection of going to sleep in the first place to boot. So there I found myself, laid out flat on my stomach, sprawled out like I had been thrown down to the floor in the same clothes I had worn to work. Not wanting to move and feeling so disoriented and exhausted from whatever it was that had led me to my current position, I considered not caring about what might have happened to me and going back to sleep right there where I lay. That's when I coughed and jerked my mouth against the floor in such a manner that I noticed something was quite wrong with my teeth. I tasted blood. Here came my favorite part. I dragged myself to the sink and looked up slowly, not quite sure what to expect. The movement to look up and into the reflection did not feel so automatic this time. The mirror did not draw me to it, but instead seemed to be pushing me away, along with the feeling of unexplained weight inside this head, which was slowly spreading downward, in an act that felt like my whole spine was being regurgitated into a state of "alertness" to to the waking world I had not felt in years. I hadn't felt this awareness of the grounding of physical and innanimate objects in reality along with what appeared to be their emptiness, lack of personality, and habit of making me angry in years. I was, for this once, free of the torment of overthinking every painful detail of life and emotions caused by such trivial things to the point that it almost drove me to giving up day after day.

Finally, with extra effort fueled by things unnatural, this bloody, scratched, and mess of a face grinned a smile of jagged teeth at itself in its very favorite mirror.

"Oh dear friend, you shall be beautiful in any way you please." The face hacked and coughed spatting blood onto the mirror and all over its face. "I defy!" it laughed out maniacally. "I defy the laws of beauty! Look... look at this... Experience the perfect ruining of a face! I care not! Not anymore!"

A sharp thud in the back of my head, and I was reeling out of this unique alertness quicker than it came. How long I had awaited to be able to enjoy the meaninglessness of things enough to not cry so much from guilt every other night. The world's guilt on my shoulders. Gifts are always taken away quicker than they come to you and I was out cold before I had a chance to shed a single tear for my loss.

***

The apartment was quiet and dark. It felt as peaceful as it ever did in the depths of the night as I lay there in bed. My clock flashed "2:13." Had the power gone out? i couldn't be sure, but didn't really care. I was too comfortable. Enveloping me, the darkness of the room was a pond in a deep, black forest, and I lay at the bottom of it submerged in watery surrealness which lulled me into its magical trance like only a song could do. Somewhere far above, on the ponds surface, frogs made their eerie night cries in revolving unison to protect me from things less mysterious than their ancient composition that had hypnotized travellers to this forest for centuries. I heard only my breathing and the sound of silence.

No, wait. There was something else. I was not alone in the physical world. Silence had a visitor and I could hear it like an intruder within my space louder than it could ever be simply by speaking and saying it was there. Louder than actual noise.

"I know you are there...what do you want?" I ventured.





From the corner of the room a small voice came. "I... I... I'm sorry. I know I shouldnt be in here, but I know I heard you screaming and your front door was wide open. I know I heard yelling this time...cuz...cuz...it was you. I found you in the bathroom screaming at the wall behind the sink or something and hurting youself...oh..oh god. It was awful. I had to stop you........somehow. I hit you hard. I'm so sorry."

"Ar... Armelia? What are you doing here?? If your mother finds you here she's going to think something awful...we need to get you home." I started to get up, but the throbbing in my head was unbearable and I collapsed. A sharp pain was obvious where it had been struck. "Ughhh...what did you hit me with?"

"Uh...umm... the metal towel bar."

"Jeez"

"It was the closest thing I saw, but you were screaming and hurting yourself. I was scared. I didn't know how to stop you."

I considered this for a moment in the dark and realized after a few moments of silence and her anticipation and hope for aproval, that she had done a very kind and brave thing to help a seemingly dangerous complete stranger in need "Thanks, Armelia. You really are a kind person to save me from myself. Your mother should be very proud."

"Ohhh, I knew you were too nice to be scared of. You just need a hug." Armelia leaned over in the darkness to give me a hug at that point...

"Wait, Armelia, how did I end up in my pajamas? I was in my work clothes when I was in the bathroom, earlier."

"I...I helped you get into them while you were out of it and tucked you in and everything...."

"Uhhhh..." I was nervous at this point. The whole thing sounded innocent enough from her perspective probably, but it didn't quite seem right and I felt guilty that i had allowed her to do that while I was in whatever state of 'half there' I had been in. "Well, I...umm... suppose that's all right."

I looked at her then, in the dark, and wondered if and when I were to have a daughter someday, she would be that kind to other people, that brave, and that intelligent for her age. Forgetting everything as I drifted to sleep with kind thoughts in my head, I managed one last sentence.
"Good night, Elia."

"How... how did you know my nickname?"

TO BE CONTINUED

Copyrighted Mark S. Skinner 2004

_RED_ stuff

[tempted]

https://members.aol.com/browrob549/emo/gen014.gif

WOW...it's really good..creepy just how i like it ....it was def/ worth the waitting to read it again...can't wait to read some more..good work https://members.aol.com/browrob549/emo/gen053.gif

[jjmoohead]

man at first i was like wow this is a lot of reading, but man it was worth it, very well done.

[Piggle_humsy]

About time!
I re-read it all just to refresh my memory and all I can say is "Ooooh"
It's getting really interesting!
I picture the little girl in it a younger version of the girl in eli's sig. lol
Looking forward to the next installment when it arrives.

Piggle
x x x x