Reflections

Chris shambled into the bathroom, bleary-eyed. Another early morning, another day of pretending everything was okay when it wasn't.

Shower, lavatory, brush teeth... Chris's heart sank as usual at the sight of the familiar face in the mirror. Thin, narrow features and sunken cheeks highlighting sharp cheekbones, lending that face even more of an unhealthy look than the waxy pallor of the skin or the reddened eyes that may once have been blue, in better times, but now gave the impression of a sort of washed-out grey. A few days' worth of patchy beard growth, coming in grey along with the lank, grey-brown hair. That angry, purple scar that ran from receding hairline, down the left side of the face, onto the neck and across the throat. The scar, as ever, seemed ready to tear wide open once again, spilling a crimson river in an obscene gush as it had done the day that it had happened.

The face seemed the same as it had every day since the accident. That day of terror and screaming brakes on a wet road. Of tangled metal and the coppery smell of blood, so much blood. The face had greeted Chris in the mirror each morning since then.


It glared back angrily and snarled. Oh yes, it was familiar – but it wasn't her own.