A Bloody Mirror

I should have known to stay away.

They all avoided him like the plague. I asked what he did wrong, and he said that just like me, his family had gone by his own faults.

I should have known the second time I saw his face.

Skin loose, as if hanging rather than attached. Eyelids offset, slightly off to the left of the sockets they belonged to. But my mind had omitted it without my knowledge, trying to keep me from repulsion towards this seemingly friendly man.

All the signs pointed to something sinister, but all I saw was a mirror, another broken man.

The next time I went digging through the faces, he was not there. Many were not there, in fact. I never saw some of those fragments again. I should have been scared, yet I was only curious.

The third time I saw him, I saw his true self.

The skin hanging on his face was synthetic, having replaced almost everything organic with steel. His grief for his family was only to mourn that he could not have removed them earlier, a hindrance to his plans.

He told me to kill.

Kill the person who caused so much grief to the ones you love. Kill the people who stop you from being free. Kill your heart, to protect those you care for.

He was deceptive and murderous. Things I wish I could say I was not as well.