Reflected Imposter

• Tahlia Molloy, Grade 10, Esperance Senior High School
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'Write As Rain 2014' competition

I look upon the mirror, she looks back at me. A familiar face but not quite the same. Was she my twin or just a beautifully crafted imposture. I, she had the same features as I, long cascading hair, the colour of freshly melted chocolate. The same wide open grassy green eye. The same pale face with lips the colour of a worn old pink sweater. All the same features but the way she expressed those features were something I was familiar with. The once wide open eyes, weren't wide open with the curiosity of a child, the were now wide with fear. The once perfectly wavy hair is now in disarray down my, her back. The lips that were once use to smiling are now quivering like a pond, and the perfectly pale skin was streaked with wet tears. I'm yet to decide if she is I or I am her or if she is a beautifully cruel imposter sent to ruin me.

I breath in a sigh of resentment, I guess I will never know, I think to myself. I get up from the broken old timber chair and walk down the stairs and out into the backyard which I once use to greet as an old friend. Now I look upon the garden as it is poison in my veins. My Mama use to take care of the garden. The word use to stung like a vicious prick from an unsuspecting rose bush. I walk past the garden trying not to cry again I held my head high and proud just like mama would have wanted. Again I hold back the assortment of tears wishing to escape from their endless prison cell. I keep walking on, I walk to the shed my father use to work in. I spat the word father as it tasted vicious in my mouth, he did not deserve to be my father... he killed my Mama, not his hands itself but what he did, his stupid actions caused her to die.

I don't quite remember what compelled my to go out to fathers shed, probably some part of my heart reminiscing about the good all days when my father was my dad. I sighed I went up to the mirror in there and I looked just as different. My usually tidy and neat get up was now a dirty white dress, that reminded me of my old puppy scruffers, he was a white pup and always liked to get up to mischief. I looked again I could swear I saw movement in the mirror and I gulped.

I did not turn around for fear of what would happen if I did, I just stood staring at the mirror waiting for it to happen anything to happen. Who ever it was waiting for me to move he didn't want me to see his face and I let myself cry, I cried for a solid five minutes. I closed my eyes and waited, that's when I felt them, the hands on my shoulder and they pulled me in. Wait pulled me in? I opened my eyes to find myself trapped inside something, and I look out and there was my fathers shed and I look and there is me... then I dawned on me... im trapped inside the mirror.

I screamed.