Mirror Mirror

"Just a sec, ma!" the girl yelled and rolled her eyes. She smiled at her reflection in the cheval glass and waited for an indecisive moment before leaning forward slightly towards the bedside table and picking a thin, navy blue tube of mascara. Parting her lips and tilting her head, she started applying a generous amount to her lashes. Her curly, blonde hair glistened under the soft light. She was getting ready to go out and see a movie with her friends. The Highwaymen cover of "Cindy, Oh Cindy" was playing in the background.

Sherry was a good girl.

She had a good family and good grades at school. Most people liked her, others noticed her and the remaining few were living on another planet anyway. She was going to graduate next year and dreamed of studying art history at an Ivy League university. It would be a change of weather in more than one ways and Sherry was looking forward to the challenge.

Scattered on the walls were little drawings and sketches she had put together while she was on the phone or in the painting class or killing time in their backyard during the nights. The balmy southern California weather gave her enough time to kill in the backyard during the nights.

"Sherry, hurry up! You're gonna be late!"

Keeping her eyes on her reflection, the girl shouted back, "Easy ma! Nobody's gonna die waiting for me for 5 minutes". She uttered a soft "tut-tut" and murmured, "Now what else is missing? Oh, right..."

She picked up the blush, puffed the brush gently and tried to accompany the song on the radio in vain. "There there" she went on talking to herself, "Not too little, not too much. You wouldn't want to look like you spent the afternoon slapping yourself, would you?"

The thought of slapping herself continuously while doing something casual, like reading a book or stooling, made her chuckle. Sherry was a quick laugh.

She took a step back and licked her lips. As she was putting some gloss on, she heard an impatient horn outside. "Bitches!" she smirked, quickly turned around and picked some change from her wallet. Her cell phone showed one missed call but she didn't have time to check. It was probably one of the girls, anyway.

She strode across the room and stopped with her hand on the doorknob. Laughing, she turned to the mirror and asked her picture-perfect reflection, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the prettiest of'em all?"

Wrinkling her nose to her silliness, she turned and pulled on the door. It did not move. She tried again, the smile on her face still shimmered, "Ha-ha funny". Checking and trying the doorknob, she shouted, "Come on guys! Open the door! Sorry to keep you waitin'!"

The door did not give way and she had no reply. The smile on her face began to wane. "Mom!" she yelled, "Mom! There's something wrong with the door can you come and help me out?!"

Silence was her answer.

"Oh come on!" she sighed before raising her voice once again "Mom! Amanda! You there?"

Disregarding the stubborn silence, Sherry went on tugging at the door, "OK, I'm really going to kick your asses once I'm outta here! Open the goddamn door! Come on! Mom?"

Her efforts seemed to go nowhere and she was getting both anxious and disappointed. She had looked forward to this night not only because of this stupid movie but also because of the possibility of Derek's being there. A joke gone too far was not the ideal start for a night that held her first proper chance of getting to know the boy of his dreams.

She tried one last time, "Mom! You can't really be cat's-paws for my friends! Come on! Open it!"

The clock ticking on the dresser sounded unnaturally loud and annoying. Time passed no matter what. It was immune to inappropriate jokes.

"Huh. Try and stop me." With that, Sherry turned on her heels and ran to the window. If she couldn't get out of the door she could always use the porch roof and once she was out, those little jerks were in trouble. Sliding the window upwards, she threw one leg over the window pane and steadied herself before pulling the other. Only then did she realize what there was out the window.

Screaming at the top of her lungs, she hurled herself back in and fell on the floor in a hurry, dropping her left sandal in the meantime.

The sandal twisted and turned in the air as it descended into the darkness. Swallowing, dead cold blackness was all there was outside.

No street, no sidewalk, no driveway, no car, no friends laughing at her and screaming "Gotcha!", nothing. It was complete void and she had been about to fall into it.

Tracing a hand in her blonde locks, Sherry wailed, "What the f...". Her sentence was cut in half as the cheval glass began to rot right in front of her eyes. She blinked rapidly a few times and tried to make herself believe that this was actually what she was seeing. There was no mistake. Deep red rust crawled around the edges of the mirror and its surface was discoloring fast as if it was covered in years of dust.

"Oh m-my..." Sherry stuttered "Oh... my... God... my God!" She got up and threw herself at the door, pounding and screaming helplessly, "Mom!! Mom help me!"

Was it just her or the sounds were getting cacophonic for real? That she did not know. The clock's ticking seemed to get louder every second and this time it resembled that of a notorious countdown. Terror rose in her veins. She bashed, she kicked, she yelled, she screamed.

Sherry was about to loose control.

The dust on the mirror grew thicker as she heard her own voice intermingling with that of merry children. They kept repeating the same verses over and over again:

"Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who's the prettiest of them all?"

The voices rose and fell around her and tears poured from her eyes. With her back against the door and her knees giving up, Sherry slid downwards on the floor. Her dampened vision barely captured two holes that looked like eye sockets forming behind the dust.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who's the prettiest of them all?"

"No... no... mom... mom..." Her lips quivered. Her young, immaculate, rational mind stopped thinking and went blank for the first time across this insane vision forming before her. A tear glided down her cheek and dangled on her chin before dropping on her right hand which raised and, palm facing the mirror, stretched out in a futile defense.

"Mirror mirror on the wall
Who's the prettiest of them all?"

The dark, empty eye sockets seemed to have fixed their opaque stare on Sherry's trembling form. After a moment of sudden stillness that made Sherry's heart fill with hope, she opened her eyes wide and screamed with agony because her belly button was being fiercely violated. She yelled, kicked and punched the invisible hands that breached her skin and started pulling on her bowels.

She managed to turn away from the mirror a little but screamed with yet another wave of unimaginable pain. Her head fell backwards and her blonde hair swept the floor while blood began pouring from her belly button. It formed a sprawling, irregular circle of dark stain on her tank top.

A brutal force dragged her on the floor towards the mirror. The poor girl clawed and scratched the air helplessly with what little life left in her veins. She hit the floor with a grunt; her limbs sprawled out.

The ticking of the clock felt like standing next to a gong, now. Every second shook her entire being while voices of children kept coming and going playfully.

"Mirror mirror on the wall
Who is the prettiest of them all?"

Sherry coughed and sniveled, "M-mom... some...body..." one last time. Her belly skin tore like paper and her bowels were drawn into the mirror, resembling a chain being pulled. Her eyes rolled back. Their whites caused an eerie expression on her beautiful face. Her bloody hand blindly grabbed one of the lower edges of the mirror and saliva extended from her lower lip.

Something pulled Sherry into the mirror.

She twitched and trembled uncontrollably, blood oozing from her belly and permeating the soft carpet. It tugged her hard and made her sit on the floor as if it was playing with its puppet.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who is the prettiest of them all?"

The last things that the girl saw were deep, black eye sockets penetrating from behind the rotten mirror. She could barely hear a voice as dead and black as the eyes themselves replying, "I AM! "

After falling short of patience and giving up calling for her, her mom and friends walked into Sherry's room only to find her arms and feet sticking out from beneath the cheval glass that had toppled on the floor, somehow. Her father had had it made for her as a present after seeing it in one of her sketches. She fell in love with it the instant that she saw it.

They rushed to lift the mirror up.

The clock kept ticking on the dresser and the radio played the chorus of the song:

"...Cindy, oh Cindy
Cindy don't let me down
Write me a letter, soon
And I'll be homeward bound..."

Sherry was lying prone in her own blood.