House of Mirrors

"I am not what I think I am. I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am." -Aaron Bleiberg and Harry Leubling.

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Dark, gray clouds drifted across the full moon, briefly obscuring its yellow light. I stood in the center of a field just outside of town. The night was quiet and I could hear very little except the slight rustling of a few trees in the gentle breeze. There were no stars visible in the sky and no artificial light to guide my way. I'd stumbled quite a bit here and there but my pupils had adjusted to the darkness now and I could pick my way across the field to hop a fence and come to the dirt road I'd been looking for. For the past few nights, I'd gazed from my bedroom window out over the field only to spot what appeared to be a carnival tent on the horizon, but I'd come to look for it every morning and found that it was nowhere to be seen. Consumed by my curiosity, I'd decided to sneak out through my window and explore.

The town had been sleepy and quiet. The bakery windows were empty of items on display; the pizza place, which was such a busy location during the day, was empty and desolate now. Passing by these had filled me with a profound loneliness I could not have hoped to explain at the time, being only 12. This had not deterred me, however, and I'd found my way to the small dirt path.

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I stepped lightly, trying to keep from making too much noise as I was not quite sure if I was being watched. The path bended to the right then, and passed through a line of trees. As I turned the bend, I came to a stop. There before me stood a colossal circus tent, one of thick purple and yellow stripes, strange and mysterious in the pale light of the moon. I looked around the clearing, wondering where the carnival workers must be. No other structures were to be found: not a wagon, not a tent--no sign of any human being. I stood tentatively, unable to decide if I should continue exploring or if I should return to town. A chill ran down my spine, although the night air was warm.

My curiosity overcame me and I approached the tent. Every step filled me with a greater sense of unease, but as I gained momentum, I found it impossible to stop. Something was drawing me toward the tent and it was no longer my choice if I went or not. I found my way to the entrance, near which stood a large sign. It read "House of Mirrors - Ticket required for entry" in large yellow letters. Opposite of it stood an abandoned ticket booth. A purple ticket rested on the counter. I reached my hand out to take it and noticed that I was trembling slightly. I tried to calm myself, watching my hand to see that my efforts were meaningless--I knew something was terribly wrong.

Unsettled, I took the ticket from the counter. Fear aside, this tent had been consuming my every thought for days now and I could not turn away. I had to know what terrible secrets were concealed within. Heart pounding, I pushed the flap out of the way and stepped inside. Before me stood an aisle leading forward, surrounded on either side by mirrors which stretched up the vast distance to the ceiling, looking bizarre in their exaggerated dimensions, all illuminated by the dim light of many lanterns hung upon the ceiling far above me. I gathered myself and stepped into the aisle. As I made my way slowly, I looked to either side of me, finding my image reflected in an infinity of mirrors, each smaller than the last, appearing to stretch beyond my realm of sight.

At length I came to a fork in the path. I chose the to explore the left path, wondering what oddities it might reveal. Here, the mirrors became stranger, distorting my reflection. In one mirror, I saw myself condensed impossibly thin, my head expanding from my body into a sort of bulb. The next stretched me until I was round like a ball. Mirror after mirror contorted my image in a variety of bizarre ways. My footsteps echoed amongst the many pathways of the mirrors as I walked, raising and lowering my right hand to see it grow and shrink in the mirrors to either side of me. No other sounds were to be heard. I was quite alone.

I stopped. As soon as the thought had entered my head, it seemed wrong. I gazed about myself anxiously. The feeling of being watched which I had felt earlier while walking the small dirt path to the clearing where the tent was hidden had returned. I had become so absorbed in my experimentation with the mirrors that I had lost track of where I had been in the maze. There was no hope of peering over the tops of the mirrors, as they reached far above my head. When looking up to the ceiling, I became dizzy with the scale of the labyrinth I'd wandered into. As I returned my gaze from the ceiling to the walls of mirrors around me, I began to sense that it was the mirrors which were watching me. I felt almost as if there were eyes hidden just beyond their reflective surfaces which were gazing at me intently, even hungrily.

I had to get out. I could no longer stand the gaze of those unseen eyes. I tried to retrace my steps, but as I approached the last fork, I found that I could not remember where to go. For all I could tell, the mirrors had shifted to create a new path. I began to panic, running through the forks of the maze without thought of where they might lead. I came to a large mirror in which I could see myself, undistorted. I gazed into my own terror-stricken green eyes, my red hair resting atop my head in a mop. My mouth gaped in surprise as something began to appear on the mirror. Red letters grew on the surface of the mirror, spelling out "COWARD" in what appeared to be blood. My image in the mirror grew white in the face, fainted, and then lay upon the ground, whithering away into nothing. I stood transfixed, staring at my own dead body, terrified and disoriented.

I turned from the mirror, breaking its hold on me and running in the direction from which I had come, only to slam into another mirror that had appeared behind me. It did not budge. I put my hand to my head, nursing the bump that was forming from my collision. On this appeared a new set of letters, spelling "FOOL." My reflection guffawed complacently, seeming to find my collision humorous. In his delight, he choked, falling backward from the surface of the mirror, grasping desperately at his throat as he struggled to take in air, but failed.

I turned to my right, checking for a mirror before proceeding. My heart raced as I searched the walls of mirrors for path openings and scoured my brain in an attempt to remember how I had come to where I was, feeling their eyes upon me and full of ill intent. I came to the end of a hallway, seeing a new label appearing on the mirror, "LOST." My reflection stared at me morosely, hands against the mirror in a plea to escape. I did not stay to see the resolution of his pleas, but turned left and continued my journey through the maze. I reached a dead end and pressed my hands against the mirrors, trying them to see if any would give way to pressure. Not one moved, every was as solidly in-place as the last. Growing impatient, I clenched my teeth and punched one of them. It did not crack, but rather, from where my fist had made contact, a new label grew outwards, "IRASCIBLE." Being 12, I had no idea what this meant, but when my reflection stomped into view with a face contorted with rage, I got the general idea. I ran from the dead end, wandering the maze in the dim light of the lamps above, hardly able to see more than ten feet ahead of me in any direction. The many reflections surrounding me had my head spinning and as I ran, new labels began to appear all around me. I did not read them, but ran from them as fast as I could, terrified of what they would reveal, lost in the maze, hopeless.

I no longer had the slightest sense of where I was or where the door might be. In all my wandering I had never found anything that looked like an edge of the tent. It seemed the maze was even more massive in size than it had appeared to be from outside. I sat down in place, tired of running and feeling too desperately lost to have any hope of escaping. In the mirror before me grew "DEFEATED." I watched the mirror closely, not seeing any sign of my reflection. Just then, my image came tumbling in from the top of the mirror high above me, a hangman's noose about my neck as I fell toward the ground. Just feet short of touching, my mirrored self reached the end of the rope. My neck cracked and my corpse hung there, swaying slightly.

Shocked and disgusted, I took my face in my hands and began to rock back and forth. Who was I? Why was I here? How was I ever to get out?

Then a thought occurred to me.

Who was the boy in the mirror?

Is that me?

It didn't have to be.

I wrapped my arms about my torso, hugging myself. I returned my gaze to the boy in the mirror, dangling by the neck from the long rope. He looked like me. I had never known a mirror to show anything but what was before it. But what is a mirror? This mirror didn't show me, did it? I placed my hand around my throat, checking for a rope. No rope. No, I was not the boy in the mirror. The boy in the mirror didn't exist.

With that, the image and the label faded. Were they real? I couldn't say; they were gone now. I pinched myself and felt pain. I am real and I am not the image that was in that mirror. I was not defeated.

I stood up. I looked around me, the maze looming in every direction. Inescapable. Or was it? I closed my eyes and cleared my mind. In my head, I saw the many images of myself swimming in a sea of doubt. I could not allow them to make me lose sight of who I was. I did not allow myself to become stranded in this ocean, though. I saw ahead of me a single star, a point of light suspended in the stormy sky, shining down on me from a small break in the brooding clouds overshadowing the tormented sea. I kept my eyes on that star, its radiance and clarity. I opened my eyes and saw that ahead of me a path had opened. It was the path I had entered through: a straight hall leading directly to the door. I walked calmly down this path until I reached the exit flap.

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The sky had cleared. The moon glowed brightly, casting its yellow light onto the clearing. My eyes adjusted quickly and I began my walk back to the dirt path to town. I took the ticket from my pocket and tore it to pieces, scattering them as I left. I turned the corner around the line of trees and the fields came into sight, along with the gentle twinkle of lights in the town. I returned there and never once looked back.