Mirrors
 

This is a flash fiction (under 1,000 words) I wrote called, Mirrors. It was written on a prompt given to me while I was in a writer's block. The prompt was as follows: “You look in the mirror, but the reflection doesn’t match. Did the room change?”

I was thinking about submitting it somewhere, but I wanted some opinions (outside of my happy go lucky Writer's Group I run). So thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? All welcome... anyway enjoy...

Mirrors

I stood there, looking in the mirror. The bathroom was the same as it always was. The royal purple shower curtain, the ugly green walls and even worse cream colored panel closet doors; all of which I could see behind me. Towel hanging over the shower rod, the empty hook on one of the closet doors, all the reminders of what there was what there once was.
Turning away from the mirror I looked to the window. It was partially open, and I could see the sun shining in, but rain falling would have been better. I could see the window blurring, could feel the moisture on my cheek. Tears were going to flow soon, like water coming out of a showerhead. Turning away from the shining sun, the only reminder of happiness, I stared back into the mirror – back at myself.
Straight hair hanging down, white shirt loose around my body, but what caught my attention was my eyes. Red, swollen, half shut barely being able to see. Shutting them fully, I could feel the sting, felt the pain and reveled in it.
Opening my eyes I saw something different in the mirror. I saw a different room, my parent’s room. I was a small child sitting on the bed playing Chutes and Ladders with my mother, with my father and brother on the floor looking at baseball cards. It had been a happier time then, before everything. Before the fighting, the screaming matches, the name calling; a time before things got beyond repair.
I couldn’t stand looking at it anymore. Couldn’t stand seeing all the happiness that once was, moving to the side, I looked into my mother’s full length mirror. My father was standing there screaming; my mother sitting there listening. I was hiding in the kitchen, eavesdropping and wishing I could turn away. My brother stood there nose to chest with my father. Defying everything that was being said, yelling back and that’s when I heard it; the defining sound of flesh on flesh, and the gasp coming from my mother’s mouth. That was the first time I truly felt the moisture begin in my eyes. Lifting my fingers to my cheek I dashed the tears away. I stared at my reflection in the stove door, closing my eyes to the look of distress on my face.
Opening my eyes once more I am looking up at my father towering over me. A menacing look in his eyes, he is shouting at me, calling me names, belittling me. I can feel the tears flowing down from my cheeks freely, my mouth not working only my ears and eyes. I can see my mother sitting in the corner, cowering protecting just herself, not that I blamed her. I smelled the booze, could see his unsteadiness. A normalcy in my life, the only normalcy; I looked past him I saw my helpless seventeen year old body standing there, taking the abuse. And the same eyes, the red swollen half shut barely being able to see eyes. I shut them and that all familiar stinging feeling came back.
I looked into the mirror, and was brought back to reality. The royal purple shower curtain, the ugly green walls and even worse cream colored panel closet doors, the towel hanging over the shower rod, the empty hook on one of the closet doors all the reminders of what there was, what there once was, and all that was now a familiarity. I looked to the window and saw the bright sun, now paired with the flashing of red, white and blue lights. The sound of sirens, the knocking of the door and the sounds of feet on the floor, I looked away down to the counter, the knife sitting there, next to the sink.
I turned to open the door, and took one last look at myself in the full length hanging mirror. My loose fitting white shirt covered in red, my jeans damp. My eyes not red swollen and barely opened, instead they were full of relief and finally at peace.
Opening the door I walked out of the bathroom, away from the mirrors and memories. Away from it all my head held high and eyes straight ahead, to my next destiny; to my next hell of memories and the next set of mirrors.