Back before you Parallel Realm Dwellers ‘invented’ mirrors, we were named whatever our parents wanted. We got to choose how we looked, we got to be who we wanted to be. Those mirrors you all use have changed that.
My name is Katherine. The other Katherine goes by Kathy, so I’ll call her that to avoid confusion. I live in what you call mirrors. We call them the portals to the Imploded Province, my home world. How else would someone be in them? Reflections, scientific ideas? All of that was created by our leader of the Imploded Province, President Anomalous. He was given the game-changing ability to travel into The Parallel Realm, the world from which you are reading this from, and used it to our advantage. You see, from middle school graduation on we are assigned a Parallel Realm Dweller to mirror for the rest of our lives. Every action, every word mouthed is one of us. Before that, I was named Alana, and I was short with blond hair, and now I’m tall with deep chestnut brown hair. Before our lives merge into theirs, little Parallel Realm Dweller kids don’t see their reflection at all. Their parents will have been so accustomed to their own reflections that their minds will automatically fill in the blank and think they see a reflection. Because of so frequently seeing their parents’ reflections, the kids will hallucinate theirs. From the fateful Day of Assignments on, we are to stay in front of a mirror at all times our counterpart could possibly see themself. Any other time we are training hard at our classes or reading books. Some of which are like Art of Mirrors, Mimicking for Dummies, and The Full Guide to Becoming Your Counterpart. And no, I’m not joking.
Everything is harmonic in the Imploded Province. For as long as anyone can remember, it has been. I remember back when I had first been assigned Kathy and my features had shifted into hers. Everyone was excited for their own transformation, for their new lives. Well, everyone except Misty Tarver. She was always an outcast, but her parents were my parents’ friend, so it was obligatory for me to talk to her. Because of this, she always clung to me during classes, always conspiracizing about things as much as an eighth grader can.
A week before the Day of Assignments ceremony, Misty showed her weariness. However long she had been developing her theories, she hid them until the time was right.
“Assignments shouldn’t exist,” she stated, to which I responded that Assignment Day would be amazing. Looking back, I can see how insolent I was. If I had just listened… Well, none of that’s the point right now. My point is that Misty had ambition and once she came up with a plan, there was no stopping her. I ignored her antics for as long as I could, but at some point I had to listen to her whether I wanted to or not. I was just thinking of the prize I could get from someone important if I got Misty to cooperate.
“I’m not going to mirror Vanessa,” Misty whispered as the Assignment Day ceremony went on. Vanessa was Misty’s Parallel Realm Dweller. I had just received my assignment of Kathy, so I was almost ready to enter the Changing Room, where it would mark the official start of our new lives. “In fact, I’m not even going to Change.”
“But you have to–” I was cut off by President Anomalous, who walked over to us.
“Is everything alright over here?” he asked. “Misty, will you come with me?”
Misty flashed a terrified look in my direction as she followed our President. I just wrote it off as another kid being paranoid. I’m cringing now, don’t worry, I see my idiocy. When she came over to my house the next day, she was Vanessa. Her dark, wavy hair had turned bright red and choppy, but her ever-tortured expression hadn’t changed.
“What was Changing like for you? And how do you feel about getting a one-on-one talk with the President? You must feel like a celebrity,” I said cheerfully.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Misty, well, now Vanessa mumbled miserably. I’m still going to call her Misty for the sake of simplicity. After all, I still remember her as Misty. “Fine, I Changed. I’m still not going to mirror Vanessa, like I said before. I’m going to tell her what we are. Where we are, what’s happening.”
“How? You can’t talk through mirrors,” I reasoned.
“Yeah, but I can show her writing.” Misty held up a crudely written sign, written in a broken type of language I didn’t recognize. As if reading my mind, she explained, “It’s backwards because everything goes through mirrors reflected.”
“Oh, that all makes sense, but why? Aren’t you happy with your new life?” I asked genuinely.
“No. Never. There is some dark stuff happening here, things you’ll never understand.”
“Yeah, right. What’s so ‘dark and mysterious?’ If you’re talking about President–” I was cut off by Misty shushing me.
“Don’t say his name,” she said in a low tone. “He has spies everywhere.”
As if on cue, Misty’s parents walked in, smiling almost unnaturally. Of course, I thought nothing of it.
“Vanessa, sweetheart, is there something bothering you?” they asked, almost in unison.
“No,” Misty replied quickly, sliding her sign for Vanessa under a couch cushion.
“Feel free to talk to us at any time,” Mrs. Tarver said unblinkingly. They smiled unnaturally as they left the room.
“Close one,” Misty whispered.
“Come on, you don’t really think your parents, of all people, would spy on you for President–” I stopped myself so that Misty didn’t have to shush me again. “They’re the nicest people I’ve ever met!” I recalled all of the happy memories I had with them. Birthday parties, playdates, and oceanside walks filled my mind, all with the constant presence of Misty and her parents.
“I’m only telling you this in case I don’t make it back.”
“What do you mean, ‘don’t make it back?’ Nothing will happen if you follow–”
“See, you’re already doing your job. Just keep being the perfect law abiding citizen you are so that they won’t suspect a thing. If I don’t make it back, hypothetically, you must tell The Parallel Realm what’s happening. From what I can tell, Vanessa’s got a good head on her shoulders, but you never know. I have a computer connected to the Parallel Realm Internet in the room at the bottom of Lake Evince.”
“Room where at the what?”
“It’ll make sense when you get there. Just write all of everything down and post it to whatever site it connects you to.”
“Katherine, may I talk to you?” Mrs. Tarver smiled a smile that looked nothing like her own warm one. Maybe Misty was right, at least to some extent. Things were starting to feel off.
As she led me to a side room away from everyone else, I started to feel uneasy.
No, stop it, I told myself. You’re safe with Mrs. Tarver. I became even more uneasy as she led me to the garage, where President Anomalous stood with the same fake grin that was plastered on Mrs. Tarver’s face.
“Oh, hi there, Mr. President,” I stammered. Why would he be here of all places? Didn’t he have a whole world to run? “I’m honored–”
“I know,” he replied without moving his stretched face. His expression changed into a cold and malicious one as he held up a shiny black button with a label. I was able to make out the words ‘Katherine Bree’ on it, my name, right before everything went black.
I woke up what I assume was a few hours later in my house.
“How was your sleep?” my mother asked.
“Sleep? Where’s the president? Where’s Mrs. Tarver and Misty?”
“Did you have a strange dream? Who’s Misty?” my mother said, a blank expression on her face.
“Misty, I mean Vanessa now, you know who she is. She was just at our house yesterday.”
“No, you spent the day with me yesterday, don’t you remember, we went shopping?” I nodded and beamed happily. Obviously something was wrong. I knew what I did yesterday, and it sure wasn’t shopping.
“Oh, yeah! That was great.” My mother smiled that same smile I now associate with wrongness.
“Mrs. Tarver doesn’t have a daughter. I think you had a dream,” she said.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “I did feel really tired after shopping.”
My mother left the room, apparently satisfied with my answers. Misty was right, I was perfect at being a model citizen. Apparently, I was so good the President, or whoever was controlling everyone else, thought I was stupid enough to believe that obvious lie. Was I really that stupid? Gullible maybe, brainwashed totally, but stupid? If I was smart enough to play dumb, maybe I would escape this fiasco with my life.
The next day, I called one of my old lab partners that I now only vaguely remember as nice, trying to find something left of Misty. She couldn’t have just vanished, right? We made small talk for a few minutes before I decided to cut to the chase.
“Do you remember any weird people? You know, in school, before we Changed?”
“No,” he said. “Everyone was perfectly normal.”
“Remember that one friend of mine? Kind of weird?”
“You never had any friends, except the girls from drama class,” he said. “I remember feeling so bad for you.”
“Nothing else, nothing slightly off?” I pressed.
“Are you feeling alright?” His voice was suddenly different, cold and tense and on high alert.
“Yeah, I must have been thinking of one of those drama girls,” I said, going into autopilot. “Thanks anyway.”
“You’re welcome!” Again, he was chipper and happy.
As I hung up the phone, my thoughts shifted to Misty. Did she make it out? I wasn’t so sure. After the past few days, I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Why else would she have never existed in the records or anyone else’s memories unless she tried something and failed?
I remembered what she said to me, “Just keep being the perfect law abiding citizen you are so that they won’t suspect a thing.” That’s just what I’ve done since then.
It’s been seventeen years since then. Seventeen years of agonizing waiting, agonizing pretending even though I know the truth. Seventeen years spent becoming someone I’m not. Seventeen years spent being too scared to tell the truth, scared to tell the story Misty died trying to tell.
Vanessa disappeared from your world too. Either the mind-controlling leader killed her along with Misty, or she decided not to believe and lived a life without a reflection.
I’ve realized that I don’t have a real life of my own. We spend so much time becoming someone else, especially in the beginning when we don’t even truly know who we are yet, that we lose any of our own personality. So many people I remember loving for their kind hearts or senses of humor have become cold and foreboding, just because their Parallel Realm Dweller did.
I swam to the bottom of Lake Evince a few hours ago, kicking myself for missing all of the obvious signs back when we were teenagers. It’s taken this long to write it down because I keep blaming myself. I could have done something different, anything, to change Misty’s fate. It’s been hard keeping it all in, especially since Kathy decided to work for the government, forcing me to follow her exactly. It feels wrong every day going to work for President Anomalous, knowing what I know, protecting his secrets.
After I post this, I’m going to go above and beyond the role Misty failed to play. I’m going to tell you all what happened, starting, but hopefully not ending, with this post. To Kathy: don’t look in the mirror. If they find out about this, we both could disappear. To Misty, if you’re still out there: I finally did it! I hope you aren’t dead. I hope you escaped through the mirror and lived a better life than mine is. I hope this works.
When the mirrors start cracking, help your reflection out. If you don’t, they could get you, too.