Mirrworld

Mirrworld

W.B. Preston

     I stand by myself starring in a mirror. Someone stares back, but it is not me. Or more accurately, I do not feel like the person that stares back at me. That person is not me. He moves when I move, he feels what I feel, he cries when I cry, and still he is not me. I do not know why he cries but it can not be for the same reasons I do. He has this cocky look on his face like he is completely at ease and sure of everything going on around him. That is not the way I feel. 

     

     That arrogant smirk is not the way I look, to me. To me, I'm worried and scared. At any moment the ground could open up into a huge crack and the skies could fall in, taking me and my mirror with it. So when I look into the mirror I expect to see this anxiety reflected in my face. Yet every morning I awake to find that my face is calm and still. This worries me. 

     

     So much so that I have come to the conclusion that, however unlikely, this person in the mirror is not me. It can not be me. For if it was, it would mean, that I am incapable of projecting the feelings that reside on the edge of my psyche. That would make me a sociopath or something right? To be unable to express emotions that are so clearly and deeply residing within? No, that is way too frightening a possibility. No I'll stick with the doppelganger theory. 

     

     There is a mirror world on the other side of this glass. Mirrworld. Yes, and from this other world my doppelganger stares at my sad self and attempts to mask what he sees in the mirror with a smirk. That's it! He smirks to compensate for my anxiety. And all this time I thought I was going mad. Perhaps if I began smirking he would begin to frown. 

     I wonder what my life would be like if I smiled more like him. He probably was popular in school, and got girls to talk to him, all because he smiled to hide my frown. He probably had friends and laughed and played and joked and bullied the quiet, sullen children like me. Our lives diverge and connect here at the mirror. At a fork in the road of a smile and a scowl. And what of his dreams?

     Were his dreams lively and carefree? Colorful and light. While mine dreary and gray, filled with dark corners hiding evil behind. Afraid of the dark but too afraid to close my eyes to sleep, I wept. So did he. But why? Why would he cry if he had that life? The life everyone wants. The life I should have. I must know what this Mirrworld Man feared. I must enter Mirrworld. But how?