My New Year’s Resolution is to be free.
I only have one day to achieve it, and it’s almost over.
I don’t have a lot of time left, and I’m running out of options. I locked my captor down in the basement, but that door won’t hold him for much longer. If I don’t find a way to stop him… well, that’s really not something I want to think about right now.
What I want to think about is going on a hike with Melissa. We had always talked about going to the Smoky Mountains, but never got around to it. It was just a few hours away, but something always came up anytime we tried to plan a trip. I guess we both assumed that there would be time to do it later.
Well, she could have went on a hike there for all I know. A lot can happen in seven years, after all.
My captor must have had a sick sense of humor beyond what I could imagine, because the first thing I saw when I stumbled out of the cabin were the Smokies, far away in the distance. The snow-covered peaks rose far above the earth, and yet the sun perched even higher in the sky, a bright yellow disc whose rays stung my face and scalded my pale skin. When all you can see is a ten-foot-tall box for years on end, you start to believe the entire world is only ten feet tall. The sight of such a beautiful landscape caused me to fall to my knees and cry and vomit at the same time.
I have no clue where I am. If I pick a direction and run I could probably reach a road before nightfall, probably find a car to pick me up. I could also call 911 with my phone right now; if I get up on the roof near the northeast corner of the cabin, I have a single bar of signal. I could tell the police where I am, what happened to me.
But I know it wouldn’t matter.
That’s why I’m posting here. I need to tell my story if I have any hope of rescue. If I tell anyone else what happened, they will just write it off as a schizophrenic patient having a psychotic episode or some two-bit writer trying to conjure up some cheap thrills. But I’m hoping you will believe me.
I need you to believe me.
Please.
My name is Liam Hensley, and I’m 33 years old. I live in Knoxville, Tennessee. I have an excellent job working as a civil engineer. I’m happily married to the love of my life and my high school sweetheart, Melissa. I have a beautiful six year-old daughter, Jenny. For the last seven years I’ve been held captive against my will.
My captor’s name is Liam Hensley.
Lots of people have innocuous New Years Resolutions. Some people want to lose weight. Some people want to get a girlfriend (or a boyfriend). Some people just want to find happiness.
I wouldn’t say I fit into those categories until 2016 rolled around. I graduated UT in 2015, and I got a job at a local engineering firm, Thompson, right out of college. I was going steady with Melissa, and we were talking about getting married and starting a family. My wealthy grandfather (an odd but nice man) had recently passed and left me a tidy inheritance, along with some of his personal collection of strange and wonderous items.
I was smart, successful, and doing great by any metric. I was proud of myself. I thought I could handle anything the world threw at me. Maybe I could, if I didn’t let my pride (and the bottle) get the better of me.
What started as a few beers at parties turned into a few beers after work, and then some whiskey shots in the morning to chase after my hangovers. I began to alienate the people around me. Coworkers, friends, family, even my Melissa. After I got wasted no one was safe, and Melissa was around me the most. We’d shout and holler at each other until our voices got raw and then we’d cry and have sex and go to sleep.
By December 2016 I had been late one too many days and snapped at one too many people that my job had enough of me, and they cut me loose. I retreated into my apartment and refused to leave, except if it was to buy liquor. Melissa begged me to go to rehab, get a job, do something other than sit and drink and watch TV, but I ignored her. No one bothered me in my room. I could drink all I wanted, do whatever I wanted, when I wanted; plus, I still had quite the sum of cash from my grandfather. His curios were all around my apartment: a stuffed head of a lion with a voice box inside, an authentic set of oracle bones from the Shang dynasty, and my favorite, a mirror set in an oak cabinet from Colonial America. Melissa hated that mirror; she always told me shadows darted across her face unlike any other mirror she looked in. I told her she was imagining things.
I’m not sure when she left. I just remembered not noticing her come back that night on December 31st, 2015. My lowest point. My floor was a sea of beer cans and whiskey bottles which I stumbled around on, drunkenly calling out her name. As I lurched towards the bed (hoping she was just under the sheets ready to surprise me) I tripped over a Buffalo Trace Bourbon bottle and slammed against the oak cabinet. The last thing I saw before I passed out was my surprised expression in the mirror.
The throbbing in my head woke up; it felt like my skull had been cracked open and my brain was herniating through it. I raised my head and was greeted by my true self. My fleshy red face stared back at me, eyes cratered into black pits. A nasty wound sat on the crown of my head, and blood clung to the cabinet and mirror. I felt dizzy looking at the mirror. I thought I could see strange shadows flitting across my face, and my eyes looked at me with a hard intelligence that my drunken self should not possess.
I became dimly aware of the TV behind me playing. “All right folks, the Ball is about to drop in one minute! If you have any New Year’s Resolutions better make ‘em now, or else you’ll have to wait till next year!”
I had a moment of clarity, looking at myself in the mirror. I was a good for nothing drunk. I’d let myself go, lost my wife, lost my job. I was worthless. I would cry, but I was too numb to feel anything.
“10, 9, 8!” Joyous shouting from people all across the globe echoed from behind me, and a bitter jealousy and hatred suddenly rose up inside me. What did I do to deserve this? I had worked hard at my job and I certainly wasn’t abusive. I didn’t deserve to get fired and my girlfriend leave me, and I didn’t want to hear other people being happy. It wasn’t fair!
“7, 6, 5!” My reflection in the mirror seemed to goad me. Those shadows danced across its face, and the countenance shifted. It was still my face, but different. Thinner, with a mischievous smile and eyes which radiated charm, humor, and self assurance, and something else I couldn’t place but unnerved me.
This was who I wanted to be.
“4, 3, 2!” My head wound throbbed, and the room seemed to grow hot and cold at once. The me in the mirror looked pointedly at me, asking a question I already knew the answer to.
“For my New-w Ear’s Revolution, I w-want too bee a new person” I slurred out to the mirror.
“1!” My nerves lit on fire all at once, and the room began to spin. I grabbed at the table for leverage but my hands slipped on the blood and I began to tumble towards the ground, directly into the now broken bottle of Bourbon trace. My eye was about an inch away from the jagged glass when I felt something catch me. It lifted me back up and sat me down on the bed. I glanced around the room, looking for who caught me. My eyes flashed to the mirror, and a shiver ran down my spine.
There were two figures in the mirror. Both Liam Hensley, but the one crouched behind me on the bed had that same mischievous smile I saw earlier, and in his eyes I finally caught what I missed.
Malice.
I became transfixed on the mirror as I watched my body began to seize up, violently jerking back and forth. Spittle began to form on the corners of my mouth, and I could see the blood pouring from my head wound as the other me reached for it and—
I woke up with a gasp, and my hand flew to my hand. I winced as I made contact with a knot nearly the size of a golf ball with a gritty texture from caked blood. I looked around the room slowly. The room was still as messy as I remembered it, and I could see the bourbon bottle I broke last night on the floor. My gaze slowed as I got closer to the mirror, and my heart began to beat faster. As I finally forced myself to look in the mirror, I saw my terrified reflection staring back.
My shoulders slumped in relief, as did the figure in the mirror. That part had been a dream, at least. There was no blood on the cabinet or on the mirror. I got up and carefully picked my way over to the mirror, studying my reflection intently.
I tilted my head to the left. The reflection leaned its head to the left.
I raised my right arm. The reflection lifted its right arm.
I gave a full tooth smile. The reflection bared its teeth back at me.
Something seemed wrong. Small things. Subtle things. The way the reflection seemed to just slightly tilt more than I felt my head move. The way its lips curled ever so slightly back. That glint in its eyes, that malice, I remembered foggily.
I shook my head; I was probably just mildly concussed. There are no such thing as a spirits after all, and if there was something in that mirror then why didn’t it just kill me last night? It was probably my own guilt getting to me.
That thought made me wince. There was nothing supernatural about the mirror, but this experience had been the kick in the ass I deserved. I didn’t need a magic mirror to be a new man. I was going to do it myself.
Jan 1st 2016 was the day my life got back on track. I spent the morning cleaning up my pigsty of my apartment, and by the time I was done the garbage bag pile nearly reached the ceiling. As I cleaned, I felt something tickle my nerves when my back was turned to the mirror. I’d turn around to see my reflection staring back, those same strange shadows dancing across my face.
The next step was filling out job applications for the engineering firms who were hiring. I struggled with writing anything other than engineering notes; I normally just had Melissa write the applications for me. But this time the words flowed freely from my mind, and it only took me a few hours to finish a dozen applications. I felt confident and happy. I wasn’t even craving alcohol that much.
My fingertips prickled, and I realized someone was watching me. I scanned the library, but nothing stuck out to me. A few old ladies in the corner reading some romance novels, a desk clerk playing on her phone, and a shabby man who looked homeless sitting beside the computer section with his head in his hands, a bouquet of bright red roses beside him. I was pondering why he might have the roses when I saw my voyeur; out of my peripheral vision I could see my reflection in my phone, staring directly at me.
I watched the roses for a time, keeping note of my reflection. I couldn’t make out fine details in the periphery, but that mischievous smile and malicious grin burned in my eyes, clear as daylight. My reflection turned to stare at the roses, and I realized that I would need some sort of gift to woo Melissa back. And roses were her favorite flower, I was pretty certain. My hands went down to feel my pockets. Emptier than a bottle of Jack Daniels on a Thursday night.
I scanned the room again to make sure no one was watching me.
Later that night I showed up on Melissa’s parents doorstep. It was rainy and dreary and I had a bouquet of roses in one arm, like a bad romance movie. I rang the doorbell for 15 minutes, but no one answered. Eventually I sat on the steps and stared at the water pooling on the concrete below me. My reflection looked back at me, seeming perfectly normal this time. Maybe there was just some trick of light with glass, and that’s why I thought some spirit was stalking me.
My reflection winked at me.
I shot up, but before I could react the door slammed into my backside. I turned around to see Melissa glaring at me, tears streaming from her face like the rain outside.
“I’m surprised you left the apartment.” Melissa said resentfully. She tried to put on a hard face, but I knew her heart must be breaking like mine was in that moment.
“I… I brought you flowers.” I held up the roses weakly. They sagged from the weight of the rain on them.
Melissa’s face blanched. “I hate roses. I got an infected wound from them a few times gardening, and my arm would get red and puffy over the week.” Melissa glared at me. “I’ve told you that before, Liam. Maybe if you’d just listened to me, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
She moved to slam the door, but I caught it with my feet. Wincing in pain, I dropped the roses and they fell into the muddy yard.
“Ow. Both physically and metaphorically.” I said, my words flowing smoothly and naturally. “You’re right Melissa. You’re right about everything. I treated you poorly and didn’t act like a man should at all. You’ve been nothing but helpful and supportive to me, and I’ve repaid you with disappointment and awfulness.”
Her eyebrows shot up. She’d never heard me talk like this. I’d never heard me talk like this. I could feel a presence in the back of my head, and I saw my reflection in the water again. It was mouthing my words, a split second before me.
“I know that our relationship has gone to shit over the past year, and I know it’s all my fault. You’re right; if I had paid more attention to you I would have known you didn’t like roses. But I knew just how badly I messed up when I woke up this morning and I didn’t smell you next to me, feel your soft hair; I realized you meant everything to me, and I had to get you back. I’ve cleaned up the apartment, filled out job applications, and tomorrow I’m going to go to a doctor about detoxing. I know that I don’t deserve you, but I want you Melissa, so badly. I won’t be mad if you say no, but I’m never going to stop thinking about you. Come to my apartment if you want to talk, or at least see how clean it is.”
With that, I spun around and walked back to my car. I didn’t know why, but it felt like the right thing to do. In the glass I could see Melissa’s shocked face and my own giving me a congratulatory grin.
Melissa did come later that night and we talked and cried and had sex. It was some of the best sex we had since the beginning of our relationship; I made sure to pleasure her, and words of praise and adoration floated from my lips to her ear as I lightly tugged on her earlobe with my teeth in between. By the time we were done she was utterly exhausted and fell asleep in minutes. I was tired too, but there was something I had to do first.
I walked over to that strange mirror. My reflection wasn’t even trying to mimic me anymore; it leaned against the cabinet door, regarding me with curious eyes.
“Hey man, I don’t know what the hell you are, but I just gotta say thank you. That was you helping me earlier today, right?”
The reflection nodded, a small smile forming on his lips.
“Wow. Well, thanks. I feel like a new person already.”
The smile grew wider and wider until it became unnervingly large, like the Chesire Chat.
I backed up from the mirror. The reflection took a step forward.
“Hey come on, there’s no need to—”
I could feel my voice shift in that moment, turning deeper, richer; just like the voice I always wanted.
“—Panic, Liam. You are a new person.”
I tried to speak, but my body didn’t respond.
“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it Liam? That’s what you wished for last night, right at the very beginning of a year.”
The reflection in the mirror raised his right arm and with rising horror I felt my own arm move in sync.
“And now it’s almost been a full day since your wish, Liam.” He flashed the watch at me; 11:59 PM. “So that means it’s almost time to fulfill your wish.”
I tried to stumble towards my bed, to fall onto Melissa and get her attention. My rogue arm grabbed the cabinet’s ledge before I could fall, and after struggling to move forward I raised my left leg to kick the bed. It didn’t respond.
I heard my own voice laughing, softly at first, then rising in pitch and intensity.
“Don’t try to fight it, Liam! You wanted this! I’m helping you!”
My body dragged itself over to look directly in the mirror, and I could see Melissa began to stir. Yes! Just a few more seconds and she’ll see me…
My body planted itself in front of the mirror and started to lean in until my nose touched it. I was looking into my double’s eyes and I could see the hate inside them. Hate for me, hate for Melissa, hate for the world, hate that he was trapped inside the mirror. I had to snap out of it, had to break his control…
“Liam, what’s going on?” Melissa asked behind me.
Hearing her voice snapped me out of it. I stumbled backwards and tripped over my unexpected momentum. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, taste the iron where I bit my tongue.
“Honey, you were right about that goddamn mirror. I know it sounds weird, but need to throw it out, right now.” I stood back on my feet, wincing. “If nothing else because it doesn’t go with the couch.”
She gave me a faint smile. “It’s okay babe. I’m proud of you for quitting, but it can be really dangerous if you do it cold-turkey. We need to get you to the doctor right now if you’re having hallucinations.”
I stared at her nonplussed. “They’re not hallucinations. Can’t you see the guy in the mirror behind me? The one who just tried to kill me, probably?”
A tear formed at the edge of her eyes. “I love you too babe.” She went in for a hug, and I leaned in too, bewildered but wanting comfort.
Melissa’s form passed through me as if she wasn’t there. I jumped back, and my body went through my bed.
Melissa smiled and nodded, looking in front of me. “Of course I can drive you to the ER. Just let me get changed.”
As she walked away, I looked into the mirror with a sinking heart.
My reflection was there, and his back was turned to me, watching Melissa gather clothes and go to the bathroom. When she was gone he turned towards me, a smirk on his face.
“What. Did. You. Do.” I hissed at him.
He walked up to the mirror. “I can’t read lips yet, so I don’t know what you asked me. Maybe you didn’t even ask me a question; maybe you just said: “FUCK YOU!”, or something else uncreative. That’s something else I’m better than you at by the way; your idea of a romantic soliloquy is probably asking for a one-night stand. Oh, and bringing your girl the one kind of flower she hates.”
“Let me out damn it!” I yelled, banging my hand against the mirror. To my surprise it was solid, the only thing solid that I had touched here. But it was like punching a brick wall, and the glass would not even crack.
“Hmm. No. I like being on this side.” He walked closer, until his face was only a foot from the mirror.
“Besides, I’m a much better Liam than you ever were.”
“I’ll stop you. I’ll find help. There has to be a way out of here!” I turned and begin to sprint to my hallway door.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!”
Not heeding his advice my body phased through the door, and the earth fell out from under me as I careened into a formless mist.
My body fell for a year through that mist. Have you ever been so sick that you feel nauseous for stretches of hours and days? I don’t understand how it worked, but the feeling of tumbling over and over again through nothingness caused my stomach to bubble with every second of existing. I constantly retched, but I had nothing to throw up. I didn’t become hungry or thirsty or tired; it was like I was suspended in time. Tumbling through the abyss endlessly, with no purpose or direction.
I panicked. I cried. I cursed God and Melissa and the world. I became deeply depressed. Then I started to look around. I thought the mist around me was a formless expanse, but that wasn’t entirely correct. There were little pockets every now and then; windows into the real world, it would seem. I would catch brief flashes of them; a desert extending as far as the eye could see, a raging snowstorm on a mountain, and once the face of a smiling woman. That was a good day.
Then, I hit the bottom.
Or rather, I hit something. The force of the impact knocked me out, and when I woke up I was in so much pain I couldn’t even move. After a year of not experiencing pain, every single nerve fiber experienced overwhelming agony at once. I saw glimpses of walls, I think; it was hard to tell since I passed in and out of consciousness. Then I felt the pain vanish in an instant.
I was in the passenger seat of the car. Or rather, halfway inside the passenger seat of the car. I adjusted my body and I realized that I could hover where I wished; I just couldn’t touch anything.
I turned to the drivers side to see my double looking in the mirror.
“That looked painful. I honestly would have helped you if I could, but I was stuck where you were.”
I looked at him with a hollow expression.
He cleared his throat. “All right, now I do feel a little bad. Let me explain something to you. I don’t know why, but that mirror is a connection between your world and mine. I’m your reflection; everything you aren’t. When you wished for that deal and put your blood on that mirror, that opened up a doorway. But, it takes time to open. It closes too; each January 1st I get sucked back in there, and you take my place.”
I begin to feel a speck of anger rise in my mind.
“You’re not from there though; you can only exist in where the mirror projects. Which means if you don’t play nice, I’m going to lean you against the wall of the storage closet and forget about you until next year.”
I slammed my feet against the mirror. My double grinned.
“All right. Closet it is.”
Closet it was for a week. In a way, sitting in the closet was worse than tumbling through the air. When I was tumbling I felt awful every second, but at least I felt something. Sitting in the storage closet alone in the dark with only my own thoughts as company was as close to hell as I will ever come to in this life. When the door opened and my double raised an eyebrow I said nothing, only cast my eyes to the floor.
My double put the mirror in his bedroom and opened the shades and left the TV on while he was gone to work. Melissa nagged him about that, but he insisted. Their relationship was going well; she had fallen pregnant sometime in the past year and was due soon. Sometimes she would go into the bedroom during the day and I’d watch her from the mirror, listening to her talk to the baby. It was a girl, and they were going to name her Jenny. We had never discussed baby names, but this was something I would pick. I’d talk to her from the mirror; I know she couldn’t hear me but I’d like to pretend.
As 2018 approached my double said goodbye to Melissa and put the mirror in my car. He threw a blanket over it so I couldn’t see where we were going. We drove for a few hours until I heard the car come to a stop, and I could hear a door creak open and him slowly descend a flight of stairs. When he removed the blanket I saw I was in a small room with two padlocked doors on either side.
My double closed the first door and locked it, then opened the second door. As the mirror was taken into the second door I realized it was much smaller, barely a foot wide. My double grinned.
“Impressed? It’s a cabin I snapped up recently. I added some modifications, to make sure you couldn’t escape.”
He pressed something on the padlock and it beeped.
“That’ll lock it down for 24 hours exactly. I’ve left you some pizza, some candy, some books, oh, and a playboy magazine I found on the drive down. Go nuts.”
I felt strange and light-headed. I blinked, and then I was my own body. In the real world.
I immediately fell to my knees and put my face against the cold concrete. To feel coldness again! I dived for the pizza and began to gobble it up greedily, hardly stopping to chew. I felt my doubles eyes on me. Watching me. Mocking me. That same anger at being held captive for two years rose up in me all at once, and I threw myself at the glass walls that the mirror and my double were hiding behind.
Like the mirror, I bounced off the glass walls. They were bulletproof no doubt, and an inch thick. Even if I cracked them, it would take too long to entirely break them, at which point my double would be in control and he could simply replace it.
He was laughing at me, I could tell. Why would he give me small freedoms like an open window if he took such great enjoyment in punishing me? Was it because he wanted me constantly tipping over the brink of insanity?
No matter. I scanned the room and I realized he had made a mistake. A cheap ceramic plate lay on the floor, pizza sauce smeared into it. I broke the plate into three long pieces and began to saw at the padlock.
For ten long hours I sawed back and forth, slowly wearing down the cheap metal lock. I would glance back from time to time to see my double’s terrified face; why he had gone with bulletproof glass and settled for a cheap electronic padlock was beyond me, but maybe we both shared that same sense of pride. My pride had caused me to be exiled from my world, and now ironically it would allow me to come back.
Finally, the lock broke and I sprinted out of the cabin. I ran, my feet punctured by small rocks and body cut up from thorns. I ran until the sun was long since gone and I reached a road, and I ran down that road until a truck appeared on the edge of my vision.
I frantically waved my arms at the driver as he approached. I must have quite the sight; a crazed barefoot man wandering on the highway miles away from civilization in the dead of night. Still, to his credit he picked me up.
His name was Jeff, and he told me that the nearest town was about an hour away. I told him about my wish, about the double, about my family; it was so wonderful to talk to another human after all those years alone! He definitely thought I was missing a few screws and would probably turn me into the looney bin once we got into town, but I was okay with that. As long as I was as far away as possible from that mirror.
After a lull in the conversation, I turned my head outside the window to see the trees flashing by, lit up one by one before they were swallowed whole by the night. Almost out of instinct, I checked the rearview mirror to look for cars behind me.
My reflection was climbing from behind the backseat, his mouth locked in a snarl and his eyes radiating hatred. His hand shot out and grabbed me by the head, and I felt a surge of cold and warmth run over my body. I screamed and began to flail like a man possessed, and Jeff shouted at me as the truck swerved wildly in the night. I tried to resist with all my might but the double commanded my body to lean closer to the mirror and—
I was back inside the cabin. I screamed and pounded at the mirror. I was so close. Why, why, why? How could he have gotten me through the truck mirror? Does that mean I can’t look at any mirror for the rest of my life? How can I live like that when nearly everything we do involves some sort of screen?
After a while I calmed down, and then there was nothing to do but wait. I waited for a long time, wondering if the truck had crashed, if my double had been killed, and what would happen if my double was killed. A reflection can’t exist without a physical object, but what happens when a physical object is placed in a reflection?
I don’t think I’ll ever get to know the answer to that question, because my double did reappear a month later. He brought a newspaper article about the bizarre crash and death of a trucker in Tennessee.
“His death is on your hands.” The double said coldly. “After we crashed he was caught in the burning wreckage. He pleaded with to pull him out, but I just stood there and watched him die.”
He tapped his finger to a line on the paper. “Because of your insolence, Jeff’s children don’t have a father anymore.” He looked at me directly in my eyes. “Do you want your child to be without a mother?”
That broke me. Beyond the pain of falling through an endless expanse, beyond the horror of being in the dark alone, the idea of him killing Melissa brought an incomparable amount of pain to me.
From there, I became a shell of myself. I watched my double install reinforced steel doors with outside access to prevent me from breaking out again. After he was gone I sat and dreamed of my future with Melissa if I wasn’t trapped inside the mirror. I created, ended, and rebuilt entire worlds in my mind. It wasn’t ideal, but after a time I began to accept it. Occasionally my double would come back and pin clippings on the wall. Clippings about Jenny and her accomplishments, pictures of them on family trips, even an employee of the year certificate once.
I think these little ornaments were meant to torture me, and they certainly did for the first year or so. But gradually, I began to appreciate seeing my daughter grow up. I watched her laugh at her birthday parties, be the star hitter in softball, and play board games with Melissa and my double. It was touching to see her grow and mature. Gradually my anger, my jealousy, my bitterness began to evaporate. I was just happy my daughter and wife were happy.
Around that time, the pictures started to slow. Jenny and Melissa seemed less happy in the photos, and I thought I even saw a bruise behind Melissa’s eyebrow once. My double became more agitated, travelling to the cabin once every month to hurl insults and abuse at me. One night in a drunken rage he tore up all the clippings in the room.
“Who the hell do you think you are! You think you can influence me! Me! Well I’ll show you! This year is gonna be your goddamn last year on Earth, fucker! I’m gonna rig a bunch of grenades to blow up your goddamn innards once it hits five minutes past midnight on January 1st. You’ll have 5 goddamn minutes to evaluate your stupid goddamn life and realize just how much a piece of shit you are and how much everyone hates you, MOST OF ALL ME!”
That’s when it clicked. He was my reflection. I had lost my anger, my bitterness, my jealousy, but that only meant that he gained them. And I couldn’t do a thing to stop him.
Yesterday, my double stumbled into the basement, drunk again. He staggered back and forth, muttering to himself as he tried to jury rig the grenades to explode. I desperately thought of something, anything to do to stop him, but even in his drunken state he managed to finish the device. He opened the door and shuffled up to the mirror, his face a twisted grin and hateful eyes.
“I should have known I couldn’t be the new Liam until the old one was gone. Enjoy hell, fucker.”
He raised his middle finger at me and brushed against the glass in the process.
I felt a shiver run up my spine. It wasn’t quite midnight, but it was close. I could feel myself almost ready to take control of his body, but there was still a minute left; plenty of time to shut the door and activate the bomb’s timer.
I reached deep within myself. I focused on my calm, and I thought about his rage. I imagined two ends of a magnet flying together, connected through an invisible bond across space.
My hand twitched. The doubles hand twitched.
Quick as a flash, I used my arm in the physical world to grab the mirror. My double screamed and stumbled back, but I pressed the mirror to my body’s legs and they began to respond to my commands. He raised his fist to smash the mirror but I jerked it to the side and his fist hit concrete. As he howled I pressed the mirror up to his face and—
I was holding the grenades in one hand, and the mirror in the other. I carefully sat the grenades down and placed the mirror back on its ledge. I sighed when I realized the timer hadn’t gone off yet. When I looked in the mirror I saw the double screaming obscenities at me.
I was sure to flip him off as I closed the door behind me.
And now we’re caught up. Like I said, it’s impractical to say I won’t ever look at a mirror again. Unless I cut out my own eyes I’ll run into one eventually, and besides I’m not even sure not seeing would solve the problem.
No, I’m afraid I have to do something more drastic. My double was trying to break the mirror earlier, but I sense that he did that just so I wouldn’t have control. I think if he breaks it we’ll both die; why else would he bother with the grenades if he could have just smashed the mirror anytime? Still, I’d rather smash the mirror then let that monster roam free.
But there may be another way. This whole thing started with a New Year’s Resolution made right at midnight. Maybe I can fix it with another. I just need to figure out what it should be. One more hour left until midnight. One more hour to decide.
Any suggestions?