Mirror

“It’s way too damn cold...” Erica complained as she crawled out of her car. The grey sky and the chilly wind made for a rather bleak start of the new year, Erica thought, locking her car and heading off towards the grocery store. Her head was still slightly throbbing, as if it wanted to punish her for having celebrated the start of what had already promised to be a depressing year. She was going to visit her parents this evening, as they weren’t present for the raucous party she and her boyfriend, Brian, threw last night. They much prefered to have a quiet New Year’s Eve inside, enjoying a bit of champaigne and watching TV in the company of their ancient labrador, Boomer. Erica had promised to pick up some of their more urgent groceries on the way there (coffee and cigarettes.) This because the only store that was open on the first day of the year was on her way to her parent’s home. Memories of last night were hazy at best, though she could swear she hadn’t imbibed much that much alcohol. Still, her vision of the past was dim, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that something was off. The dull throb in her head made it rather painful to think however, and she decided to brush off these irksome thoughts, and try to plaster a smile on her face.
It was slightly after dusk when she arrived at the home where she grew up. Her parents never wanted to move because there were “too many memories there” and she had to admit that the place held a certain charm. As she stood in the front garden, she noticed the tree in the front garden looked exactly the same as in the family picture she had in her bedroom, taken more then a decade ago. She couldn’t recall the occasion it was taken on, probably a birthday, but it was the only picture she had that featured their entire family.
Breaking out of her reverie, she stalked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. Not two seconds after she had rang however, she noticed something odd. The front door had already been opened and stood slightly ajar. Assuming her father had already opened the door for her, she strode into the hall. “Hi Mom, Dad!” There was no response. “Dad?” Erica called out again, uncertainly. Again, nobody answered. The hallway was unlit, and the usual hospitable feel of the home had turned oddly sinister. Again, Erica called out: “Mom! Dad! Anybody home?” Feeling slightly confused, Erica reached out for the lightswitch and entered the old house. Maybe her parents were gone for the day? Surely not, they had known that she was coming over hadn’t they? Letting out a sigh of frustration, she dumped the groceries on the floor and snatched her smartphone out of her purse. “Damnit,” Erica murmured to herself, “If they had told me they were planning to leave, I would’ve stayed at my own damned appartment.” Hoping that her father hadn’t forgotten the cell phone she and her sister gave him, Erica called her dad in the hopes of getting some kind of explanation for all of this. To her dismay however, she heard her father’s ringtone coming from the living room. With a sigh of resignation, she headed towards the living room. She was going to scold her father about how he really couldn’t leave the house without being reachable ever again.
The living room was pitch black, just like the rest of the house. When Erica entered the room she noticed a faint whimper coming from the corner. Her heart skipped a beat, and she bolted for the lightswitch. She couldn’t help but be a little bit paranoid with this unsettling situation. When she turned on the light, she couldn’t immediatley see what had made the noise. The second whimper however, came from behind the still erect christmas tree. Erica clutched her chest when she saw what was hiding behind the lavishly decorated tree. “Boomer!” she exclaimed, “What are you doing there?” The reaction she got from the aged dog was about as warm as the air outside. Instead of his usual greeting, the wagging of his tail while wearing a goofy grin, Boomer tried to crawl further behind the tree. Almost as if he was afraid of her. Slightly disappointed by her welcome, she approached the dog and reached out to pet him. Boomer snapped at her, and Erica was only just able to withdraw her hand.
Startled, Erica quickly retreated towards the couch. Boomer tried to crawl further back in the corner behind the christmas tree, while giving her a frightened but murderous glare. A horrible feeling started to settle in Erica’s chest. What could have caused her old canine buddy to lash out at her like that? This just wasn’t right. Something was horribly wrong here, but she couldn’t figure out what. Her parents would have never abandoned their old faithful pet. Despite the dread that was slowly creeping over her, Erica promised herself she would figure out what had happened. Hoping that this was all just a silly misunderstanding, she got up and started to search the house for anything that might tell her what the heck was going on. On the ground floor, to her disappointment, she was unable to find anything. The kitchen was spotless and neat, as her mother always left it, and the pantry yielded no clues either. It wasn’t untill she was back in the hallway, that the small pang fear that had been building up in her turned into legitimate dread. There in the hallway, she saw something she had overlooked when she entered the house: both her father’s shoes and his walking stick were resting against the wall near the door. Erica’s heart nearly stopped as she saw this. It meant that her parents were still at home and that, for whatever reason, they weren’t responding to her calls. Erica nearly fell over as this realisation hit her, but as soon as she found her footing again she resolved to find out what was wrong with her parents. She had been stubborn and determined as a child, and no amount of fear was ever going to change that.
Steeling herself for a second, she took several long and confident steps towards the staircase, before hesitating another second. What was she going to find up there? Erica took another deep breath. “Only one way to find out...” she muttered to nobody in particular, as she made her way up the stairs.
The hallway on the second floor was just as dark as the hallway on the ground floor had been, but the chill that ran up her spine this time, wasn’t from a feeling of dread. It was unusally cold here, which only added to the mystery. Her parents, like most old people Erica knew, preferred the warmth. And the fact that Erica could see her own breath was another sign of something being terribly wrong in the old home. Sadly, no amount of paranoia or sinister clues could have prepared her for the terrible scene she witnessed as she opened the door to her parents bedroom. The moment Erica entered the room, she fell to her knees and cried out: “NO!” The wail of despair had been so loud it hurt her throat, but she didn’t care. Because there on the bed lay the bodies of both her mother and her father, in the middle of a pool of blood. Tears nearly blinded her as she crawled up to her parents’ side and grasped their cold hands. Who could have done such a horrible thing, and why? What had her parents ever done to anyone?
For a good twenty minutes, Erica sat at her parent’s feet and simply cried. It wasn’t untill she realised that her tears had frozen on her coat, that she realised the window was open. Whoever did this must have escaped through it after committing their horrible crime. Just as Erica was putting these thought together, she recieved another jolt of fear when she heard muffled voices arguing downstairs. They must have come back to rob the place, Erica thought, adrenalin rushing through her system. She wiped away her tears and desperatly searched for something to defend herself with in the small bedroom. “UPSTAIRS!” she heard one of the voices calling out. Erica realised that there was nothing here with which she could defend herself, and concluded that there was only one thing left to do. She had no choice but to jump from the window herself, and make a run for it. She was already standing by the window when she heard two sets of feet making their way up the wooden staircase, and drew several quick breaths before jumping into the front garden.
Even though there was a bush to cushion Erica’s fall, it still hurt enormously. The adrenalin coursing through her body urged her to continue despite the pain, and she bolted towards her car. “FUCK! OUT OF THE WINDOW!” she caught one of the voices yelling after her. Erica frantically crawled behind the wheel of her small car, and managed to wrestle the keys out of her bloodied coat. Shaken with both fright and grief, she raced towards the highway as fast as the little car would allow. She needed help, she needed safety, she needed Brian.
The sun had already set when Erica reached the appartment complex she and Brian lived in. Erica knew she probably should have gone to the police first, but she felt that she was about to collapse, and needed someone to be there for her. It wasn’t untill she stepped out of the car that she realised she had twisted her left ankle in the frenzied flight from the men who had murdered her parents in cold blood. It didn’t matter though, because despite all the grief and panic she had experienced that day, her survival instinct was praising her for still being alive. The blood on her hands had since dried (was it hers, or her parents?) and as she opened the door, her breath seemed to have steadied for the first time in the past two hours. To have this small moment of peace was like standing inside the eye of a tornado that was wreaking havoc to the world around her, but she was grateful for it all the same. Unfotunately, this moment of rest would only be short lived. The moment she stepped into the hallway of her own home, she was met with the same sinister darkness that had greeted her at her parent’s house. Trembling slightly, she closed the door and reached for the lightswitch. She fell to her knees as the tornado violently blew away the only thing that was left in her life. There in the hall lay the body of the love of her life, with a kitchen knife lodged firmly in his chest. “Please, no...” Erica whispered to her boyfriends body, hoping against hope that there was still some trace of life left in him. The moment she grasped his hand though, she knew that this hope had been futile. He was just as cold as her parents had been, not an hour ago. Her chest started heaving violently, and the tears she wanted to shed refused to come, already dried out from the previous events of that day. Erica wanted to yell and scream, to cry and curse, but the only thing that escaped her lips was a hoarse and painful wail. Erica collapsed even further into herself, as dispair washed over her. There was nothing left in her world, nothing more that could be destroyed.The raging storm that had been wrecking her life however, wasn’t done just yet. Just as Erica’s senses came back to her, there was a loud knock on the front door. “OPEN THIS DOOR!” the voice commanded. It was them again. The men who were so intent on destroying her life had followed her to finish the job.
“FUCK YOU!” Erica screamed at the top of her lungs, almost tearing apart her throat. She got up in a flash, and dragged the dresser in the hall in front of the door, hoping to keep the bastards who had killed her loved ones out. One of them had started bashing against the door, and Erica in her desperation, fled into the bathroom and locked the door.
As Erica rested her head against the door, a feeling of grim determination rose up in her. She figured that if she was going to die, she might as well tried to take at least one of those assholes with her. Maybe she could make them experience a tiny bit of the pain that they had inflicted on her. The muffled thuds seemed to become louder and louder. They were becoming impatient. Erica backed off of the door, and tried to look for anything in the bathroom she could use to inflict harm upon those motherless bastards. The light in the bathroom was still turned off, but in the light of the street lantern coming in through the window Erica discovered that there was a female figure lying in the shower. With morbid fascination, she searched the face of the woman lying in the shower. Her eyes widened with shock. Not because the woman’s throat was cut, but because she distinctly recognised this woman. The dark blonde locks, the slightly upturned nose, and the coffee brown eyes were her own. Erica jumped up as if she had been struck by lightning. Who was this person, lying on the floor of her bathroom, and why did she look like herself? There was a violent crash in the hallway, but Erica didn’t notice a thing. She turned around to face the mirror, as if she wanted to know for sure that the dead woman’s features were her own. The moment she caught her own eyes in the mirror above the sink, her jaw dropped.
The face that was staring back at her through the mirror was not her own. Instead, what Erica saw was the blood caked face of a man. She was staring in the face of a balding middle aged man, his eyes wide open with shock and his mouth open in exactly the same way as her.
With a violent crash, the door to the bathroom swung open, and the two men rushed in and wrestled Erica to the ground. “You’re under arrest!” one of them yelled, while the other handcuffed her. She (or was it he?) was simply too shocked to struggle. What had just happened to her? “You sick bastard, “ said one of the voices “they’re going to lock you up for good”
Just as they dragged her out of the bathroom, Erica caught a glimpse of the female figure on the floor. As Erica looked into the face that she knew to be her own, she caught a wink.