Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-29826537-20160901145558

Looking for some feedback on a story I've written recently, I've proof-read it several times but I think I'm starting to entrench all the mistakes I've made.

Sorry if this is formatted completely wrong, blog posts and forums have always eluded me.

The Wrong Reflection

 

It’s impossible to predict what sort of things you’ll find fascinating. My younger brother, for example, loved looking at rocks in the garden. My own personal fascination was always with my reflection. Ever since I could make out shapes my mother would always find me staring at mirrors, I wouldn’t look away until she physically moved me out of line of sight. My parents had always assumed it was a regular child-like obsession with my own image; It wasn’t until I could talk in full sentences that my obsession with my reflection started to trouble them.



“Who’s that?” I asked my mother one day as I was sat staring into the mirror in my parent’s bedroom, running some toy trucks over an issue of Cosmopolitan my mother had left lying around.



“In the mirror? That’s you, darling.” My mother answered with a look of concern. “Didn’t you know that?”



“I’m only little” I responded, confused.



“I know, honey, but-“



“And there’s a big man.” I interrupted my mother. She tilted her head and frowned, taking a quick glance towards the mirror to check there was no one there.



“What man?” She asked with an audible uneasiness.



<p class="MsoNormal">“Red hair man.” I said in reply, unaware of how strange my answer was.

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<p class="MsoNormal">My parents just assumed that I had made up some imaginary friend that I’d soon grow out of, they decided not to worry about it and to just wait it out, not seeing any harm in me playing. My mother quickly became impatient, however, as on more than a few occasions when she had sent me to the bathroom to wash my face I would come back still looking dirty having not used the mirror to wash.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Right.” She said sternly after I once again came back from the bathroom with black marks on my face after a particularly messy school day. “Why have you left dirt on your face again?”

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<p class="MsoNormal">“I thought I did it all” I answered, frustrated with having to go through the whole argument once again.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Well maybe you should go back in there and look at the mirror this time?” My mother retorted, beginning to lose her temper.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“But the re-“

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Don’t you dare blame it on your little imaginary friend, it’s about time you grew out of that!” She shouted. “Now go back in there and take a look at yourself in the mirror! Wash your damn face!”

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<p class="MsoNormal">I hurried towards the bathroom, my lip quivering. I stopped just before entering the hallway and turned towards my mother.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“But I’m not in the mirror.” I said in a sullen, pleading voice.

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<p class="MsoNormal">I saw several therapists in the year that followed. I had several explanations given to me for my behaviour: need for attention, inability to recognise myself, one doctor suggested I might be colour-blind and that I simply assumed it wasn’t me in the mirror because I had been told I didn’t have red hair. Nothing the therapists suggested satisfied my mother. No matter how she tried to tackle it, the problem still persisted. It took nearly a year before she finally found a therapist that made progress with me.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“What do you see right now, in this?” The doctor said, holding a small hand mirror.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“The red hair man” I replied, as if the answer was obvious.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Are you sure? Because I see myself. Tell me exactly what you can see, like a story book would.”

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<p class="MsoNormal">I shifted closer to the mirror, examining it with squinted eyes. I was taking a closer look than I had ever before.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“There’s a big man with red hair. Some of his hair is yellow, like daddy’s. The red hair goes all down his face.” I said, prompting a small frown from the doctor.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“What’s around the man?”

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Rocks. There’s pointy rocks. Some of the rocks are red too, a little bit.”

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<p class="MsoNormal">The doctor scribbled something down, his face showed clear agitation. I grabbed the mirror to look even closer; I hadn’t noticed the rocks before and was interested in examining them.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Are the rocks painted red?” He asked “Or perhaps they have red hair too?”

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<p class="MsoNormal">“No” I said with a giggle, taking the doctors question as some kind of joke “The rocks have red water on them. Dark red, just like jam.”

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<p class="MsoNormal">I only saw the doctor once after that before it became clear that there was no therapist that could help. I soon learned to not talk about the man in the reflection for risk of getting grounded. My mother decided the best way to deal with the problem was to ignore it and to make me ignore it too. For a few years not a single word was uttered about the ‘red hair’ man.

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<p class="MsoNormal">It was when I started secondary school I first began to worry about what I saw in my reflection. Up until then I had just accepted it as one of the many things in this world that I didn’t understand.

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<p class="MsoNormal">One afternoon I had accidentally squirted a tube of paint on my face in art class. The teacher dismissed me to the toilets to clean myself up, of course I knew the still image in the mirror would be of no use to me so I opened up my phone’s camera and used it to see where the paint was, feeling grateful that I’d decided to sneak my phone in to school that day.

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<p class="MsoNormal">That was the first time I understood what I was looking at in the mirror. On my phone screen I could see the paint had squirted all over my fringe and was running down my nose. Red paint. I looked like a younger version of the person in the mirror. For a second I thought maybe the man in the mirror was my father but it couldn’t have been, the person in the mirror was clearly a teenager, around 16, maybe younger, not to mention the fact that my father wasn’t clean shaven. It seemed like I was looking at a blood drenched, older version of myself. It had become clear what it was that had been staring back at me all these years. It was the only explanation I could think of. Somehow, for some reason, my reflection was showing me the future. I was looking at my own death.

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<p class="MsoNormal">As the next few years passed I began to resemble my reflection. I had to fake a fear of heights to stop my family from taking me somewhere my lifelong premonition could come true. The fake fear very quickly became real.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">I knew I had to take my fate into my own hands. As soon as I could I grew a beard in an effort to make myself look different from the figure in my reflection. It wasn’t much but it differed me from my reflection enough to keep me happy. I was comfortable under the protection of my facial hair right up until I had to shave it off.

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<p class="MsoNormal">It was my cousins wedding day and my father insisted on me taking a razor to the hair on my chin. At 15 I wasn’t really in a place to argue so I did as he said, making a promise to myself that I’d be extra careful until it grew back.

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<p class="MsoNormal">The wedding went fairly smoothly. The ceremony was on a beach so there was no chance of me falling to my death there. I felt completely fine, maybe a little annoyed with all the sand that was blowing in my face.

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<p class="MsoNormal">After the ceremony my mother took me and my brother to get ice cream, knowing we wouldn’t like any of the food at the reception anyway. She suggested that we take a walk on the pier but my protests convinced her otherwise. My brother was not so easily swayed. With a reckless disregard towards the slippery floor he ran towards the pier, dangerously close to the edge.

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<p class="MsoNormal">I hesitated, wondering if it was a good idea to go after him, given that the pier was surrounded by sharp rocks, but I wasn’t about to let my 10-year-old brother get seriously injured, or worse. I sprinted after him, calling his name and quickly gaining on him. I reached to grab him but my foot caught a wet patch on the wood and I went flying towards the edge of the pier.

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<p class="MsoNormal">The rocks came into view as I neared the edge, franticly grasping for something to halt my approaching plummet. I flailed desperately several times but with no success. I closed my eyes, terrified of seeing the drop down. The next moment seemed to last a lifetime. The space between each breath stretched out to an infinity. I scolded myself for breaking my promise and tensed my entire body, anticipating the fall. Then I stopped dead.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“That could have been bad.” A voice said from above me.

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<p class="MsoNormal">I opened my eyes to see a stranger holding my arm. I looked around desperately for my brother, hoping someone had grabbed him too.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“He’s ok, I’ve got him here.” My mother said, gesturing to her side where my brother was stood. “Thank you for that.” She said to the stranger.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“No problem.” The stranger said before walking away.

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<p class="MsoNormal">Relief washed over me as I hurried away from the pier. My heart rate slowed back down and my thoughts strayed from visions of death.

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<p class="MsoNormal">The rest of the day went without incident, in fact the next few years passed without incident too. I quickly outgrew my reflection until I looked almost nothing like the person in the mirror, especially since my beard became full and respectable. The day came when I looked in the mirror and no longer saw the man on the rocks. For the first time in twenty-one years I saw my own reflection, a true copy of myself following my every motion.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Now that takes me back.” My mother said as she entered the hallway to see me staring at my reflection. “That ‘red man’ isn’t back is he?” She asked, jokingly.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“It was the- never mind. I’m just having a good day.” I replied without taking my eyes off the mirror.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Great! You won’t mind helping me with the kitchen then. It’s in a state after your brother’s party last night.” My mother said playfully.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Get him to clear it up then, I was cleaning up my mess when I was fifteen. I think.”

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<p class="MsoNormal">“He’s sixteen, it was his birthday party that made this mess so I’ll let him off this one. Anyway he’s off rock-climbing with your dad. It’s one of his presents.”

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<p class="MsoNormal">I turned to my mother with a slight frown.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Rock-climbing? Since when did he like that?”

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Don’t worry, he’s nothing like you were when you were his age.” My mother said, reassuringly “He loves his heights.”

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<p class="MsoNormal">She opened the kitchen door slightly but paused before she went through.

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<p class="MsoNormal">“Mind you, he doesn’t half look like you did back then.” She said, looking back. “Just without the beard.”

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<p class="MsoNormal"> <ac_metadata title="The Wrong Reflection (Unreviewed)"> </ac_metadata>