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Send to FriendIt's the reflection inside the mirror that I have always despised, looking in the mirror and seeing that wretched, disgusting face staring back at me. It all started around puberty. When I was a kid, mirrors didn't bother me one bit. Then I turned 13, and everything changed. I started feeling awkward, embarrassed whenever I saw myself in a mirror, or even a vague, transparent reflection in a window somewhere in looking in a pond. It was like that dream where you're going to school (or work if you're an adult) and you think everything's fine and dandy only to realize a second later that you forgot to put on your pants before going out the door...or worse yet, you realize that you are completely naked. Anyway, that's about the best way for me to explain it, and that feeling only grew as I got older. That awkward hate-how-you-look phase people go through during puberty? Bah! It has nothing to do with how I look! I don't give a shit about how I look. I know I'm an ugly bastard both inside and out and I don't care. It has nothing to do with looks! I look in the mirror now, I feel nothing but wretched disgust for what I see. I feel ashamed, deeply ashamed. Looking in the mirror leaves with a deep and lingering feeling of utter damnation. A mere glance at the mirror in my bathroom has nearly sent me vomiting in my fucking sink on many, many occasions over the course of my life, and one of these days, a mere glimpse at my reflection just might actually do the trick.
Don't ask why I hate looking in the mirror so much, I just do. I can't explain it. Other people can look in the mirror without any problem, without any shame or disgust for what they see. Why can't I? You can imagine the feelings of deep-seeded jealousy I harbor for those who can actually look in the mirror with no problems; it is yet another reason to resent the rest of the human race, because as far as I know, I'm the only one who has a problem with fucking mirrors! I can't explain it; I'm just different. That should be obvious to you by now. I'm different from everyone else, a deviant, a psychological sideshow freak. In my few lucid moments, such as now as I write this, I wish more than anything sometimes that I could be like everyone else, that I could be normal instead of the disgusting freak that I am now, but that's the way God made me, I guess. Why argue? Besides, once I'm high, nothing matters anyway. That's the beauty of weed; it makes all the pain go away. Weed; it is perhaps the only thing I've ever truly cared about...besides Eve anyway, may she rest in peace. But I digress...
I have always tried to avoid looking in mirrors whenever possible. The only time I wash my hands after using the bathroom is when I take a shit. Otherwise, I don't bother. I wouldn't bother washing my hands after cleaning the toilets at school either, except there is no mirror on the wall over there, so it's not so bad--otherwise, I'd gladly risk some kind of disease or infection if it spared me from a single, horrible glance in that object from hell, the mirror. I don't use a mirror when I shave or brush my teeth either; it's not so bad or difficult once you get used to it. As for getting my hair cut, I don't see a barber for that either; instead I cut my own. I usually fuck it up pretty badly, not having a mirror in all, but fuck it--I'm a janitor and I don't have to look good. Besides, most of my hair's gone due to male pattern baldness anyway, so who gives a fuck?
And of course, in the event that I ever did go to the local carnival (though I would never do something like that, not even when I was with Eve--too many people there, too big a crowd--thank God Eve had felt the same way), I would certainly avoid going into any mirror maze they had there. A mirror maze would be the ultimate torture for me--everywhere I turn, another mirror right in front of me, everywhere I look I see my own ugly mug staring back at me. If I were to spend even five minutes in that wretched hell, I would snap; I would end up a deranged lunatic, ranting and raving and muttering while I shake around in my straight-jacket and kept in a padded cell until the time of my natural death. I've had nightmares about being trapped in mirror mazes...horrible, horrible nightmares plaguing my nighttime slumber and driving me insane. Luckily, in reality, I have a bit more choice as to where I'll end up, and I sure as hell will never end up in one of those places! Even if you put a gun to my head, I still wouldn't step foot in one of those places. I'd rather die than go into a mirror maze; it is truly a fate worse than death as far as I'm concerned. A fate worse than death.
But of course, mirrors can't be avoided completely (oh, it'd be like heaven on earth if they could be, though). Sometimes it seems like you can't go anyway without seeing a blasted mirror or seeing your reflection in something that resembles a mirror, whether it be a pond/lake or a window or whatever you got. I see them all over the place: on cars, in public bathrooms, everywhere. You can't get away from them. I sometimes see people, both men and women, carrying mirrors around with them wherever they go so they could look at their faces whenever they want, displaying their vanity as though it were a badge of honor. They make me sick. Yet I sometimes wonder how they are able to enjoy looking at themselves so much. It makes no sense to me. It is beyond my comprehension how anybody could possibly enjoy looking at their own reflection in the mirror, but I guess that is only because I am so disgusted, so horribly disturbed by what I see.
Throughout the years I have lived in my apartment, there has been but one mirror in my home the whole time, one mirror that had remained throughout the duration of my stay, worse than an unwelcome guest that comes and goes as he pleases, this one invades my home, invades my life, and has no intention of ever leaving. I have always felt violated by having it there, in my bathroom, bolted to my medicine cabinet. You would think that in my home, the one place I can truly feel safe and comfortable in, I would be safe from the oppressive sight of such an offensive object as my own reflection. It is the ultimate violation as far as I am concerned. I have to put up with one of those...those things in my own home?!
No fucking way! I decided just two days ago, and that's when I finally did something about the problem.
I had carried a small wooden chair into my bathroom (not a lot of room to move around and maneuver in there carrying a chair the way I was, but somehow I managed), and holding it by it's rear legs, in gripped tightly in each hand, I gave the mirror one final look of disgust, feeling ashamed, feeling worthless, all the emotions brought forth to me by the very sight of that wretched thing now seizing me for a second or two. And then, somehow, I managed to shrug it all off. Not this time, I thought, trying to retain at least some of my inner strength, some of my motivation. You're not gonna pull this shit on me all over again, you bastard! No fucking way, man, this time, I'm gonna put a stop to this shit for GOOD, you son of a bitch!
And with a sharp, blood curdling scream, I swung the back of the chair straight into the mirror, hitting bull's eye and standing triumphant as I watched the tiny glass shards explode off the medicine cabinet and spilling into the sink and on the bathroom floor. I stepped over the mess of glass just then for some reason, feeling the soles of my feet burning (I had been barefoot) as broken glass went into them, scraping and impaling them. My feet began to bleed, but I didn't care about that or about the pain. I only cared about one thing: that that mirror was finally done away with. I had to take a good, close look at it--I had to be absolutely sure. Most of the mirror was gone, yet there were still a few pieces of it sticking to the perimeter and jutting outward toward the center a little bit, and I could still see a small fraction of myself in a distorted reflection but in a reflection nonetheless and I knew that my work hadn't been completed just yet. I snarled, letting off another blood-curdling scream and tearing the whole fucking medicine cabinet right off the fucking wall and then spiking it on the bathroom floor like a football player spiking the ball after touchdown. Later on I would throw it out the window onto the busy streets below, never to hear from the damn thing again, but that thought hadn't occurred to me yet.
I felt a huge jagged piece of glass cut deep into the sole of my left foot and without thinking about it, ripped it out like I had ripped off the medicine cabinet from my wall, creating a gaping wound on the bottom of my foot that hurt like hell and was spilling blood rapidly. I probably should've gone to the clinic to get stitches or something, or at the very least applied some sort of disinfectant, but I had thought of doing neither one of those things at that moment, I was so caught up in my own personal victory against my most hated enemy.
I walked out of the bathroom, smearing bloody footprints over the plush beige carpeting in my living room. I had just sat down on my couch when I heard a sudden knocking from my front door.
Bam! Bam!
"Mister Bastard! Mister Bastard, are you okay?!"
It was Mister Smitty, my landlord. These visits from him were quite rare indeed. You see, I always pay my rent on time, I never start any trouble. In all the years I've been living here, I've never complained about any of the other tenants and none of the other tenants have ever complained about me either. He had no reason to harass me for anything, and thank God for that because I fucking hate being hounded and harassed and bugged for anything. I don't hate it as much as I hate mirrors, but it's still up their on my list of hatreds.
I heard him hammering against the door once more. "Mister Bastard--oh shit--Mister Bastard!"
I got up off the couch and decided to go answer the door, hoping it would shut the fat bastard up so I can get back to basking in the glory of my great victory against the ultimate evil.
The door only opened a few inches because that was as far as the chain lock would allow it to open, and I saw Mister Smitty standing there, a fat man in his late fifties with a huge pot belly standing outside my door, his bald pate gleaming from the hallway lights, with what little hair he still had now gone completely gray. He had this fat face, now beat red and dripping with perspiration probably because he had to run to get here (don't know why he was in such a hurry); his eyes were a dull gray, he had thin lips, fat, pudgy cheeks, and a huge schnoz the size of a golf ball. He was dressed in his usual attire: black pants, black dress shoes, a white button-up shirt, and a necktie the same shade of red as the blood that was currently leaking out from my punctured left foot and deeply staining the carpeting I stood on.
"Mister Bastard," he huffed and panted, "Mister Bastard...oh my God...are you okay?"
"Yes, Mister Smitty," I answered, now in a Zen-like state, "I'm fine. What brings you to my door anyway?"
"Some of the other tenants reported hearing a loud crash and screams coming from you room. I just came to check it out and see if everything was okay."
For some reason, I found it rather ironic that when I screamed in utter fear when those aliens were coming to abduct me in their space craft 10 years ago, no one bothered to report all the noise I had to have been making and no one bothered to check up on me to see if I was okay; no one bothered to come and help me when I desperately needed it back then. But now, just because of a few screams and a loud crash, now everyone was making a big deal about it. I thought no one was supposed to give a shit about you in the big city. Damn it, that's what I like about living here. I figured that the only reason Mister Smitty was even concerned about it now was because he feared that if I had gotten hurt, I might decide I wanna go and sue his fat ass, which sounds like a very good, very appealing notion, but even if I had a legitimate case against him, which I didn't, I probably wouldn't have wanted to bother with it anyway. Too much trouble and way too time consuming.
"I'm fine."
"Okay, hear that, he's fine!" Mister Smitty proclaimed to whatever crowd had gathered around my apartment. "He's fine, so you can all go back into your rooms now, nothing to see." I hadn't seen any crowd gathering--my eyes were fixed solely on my landlord. But I could just imagine one gathering, all the other tenants on the 25th floor standing by their doorways or in the middle of the hall, gawking at what might have been going on, the parents holding back their children, everyone here wanting to get a peak, thinking they might see a dead corpse in my room and compelled to check it out by their own morbid curiosity, but still standing still, unable to move out of fear that once they did see the corpse, the image would burden them for the rest of their lives and they would be forced to walk around with that ugly luggage constantly nagging at the back of their minds for all eternity, the pathetic losers.
Mister Smitty's eyes met mine once again, and he asked: "Are you sure you're okay, Mister Bastard?"
"Yes, for the hundredth time, I'm fine. It's just...a vase fell over and shattered, and I got a little pissed off about it and lost control. That's all. Everything's fine now. I'll clean up the mess. Don't worry about it."
"You're positive? You don't need medical attention or something? Those were some really loud screams."
"I was really pissed off about it. But don't worry; I'm fine now. And it won't happen again, rest assured."
"Okay...if you say so."
"I say so, Mister Smitty. Goodbye."
"Yep, seeya."
I shut the door.
I headed back to the couch, my foot now covered in blood, as though I were wearing a red sock over it, and as I got halfway there, I fell to the floor. I hadn't passed out from blood loss or anything like that. I just fell to the floor, not caring about the pain in my left foot or about the blood loss--it wasn't going to kill me or anything...and even if it did, I didn't care at that point. I felt my throat tightening up, my vision blurring because of the tears that were welling in my eyes, and a single teardrop ran down my cheek as I sobbed and whimpered. I curled up into a fetal ball, buried my face in my hands, and I cried.
May 11, 2001