Only in the Mirror

Only in the Mirror

"I'm losing focus. Kinda drifting into... "

It's before 6am on a cold morning. The sun hasn't yet rose. Here's me rolling into the bathroom on a cold Monday morning. I'm a groggy half asleep searching in the dark for the light switch. He's the last one I want to hear right now. Hitting the switch as I move over to the sink, I look up into the mirror and grin back with unheartedly mocking sincerity, "Morning, BFF". Yea, with him... who needs enemies. BFF, as I'm calling him today, is in my bathroom mirror.

I rub my head with my hand as I turn on the water. Fumbling sleepily as I get my tooth brush ready and move into my morning routine. Water warm, not too hot. It takes a minute or so to get the water at the right temperature. A two pea sized amount of tooth paste on my brush. Finally I open the mouth wash and pour a bit into the cap. From the cap to my mouth it goes "No it doesn't really matter anymore. None of this really matters anymore." He's been talking to me, I just haven't been listening.

"Yes I am alone...". That's where I prefer to keep him, as I think to my self after hearing BFF babble on some more. At this point, I'm going through the motions half-asleep as I'm brushing. I soon feel a small ting in my mouth from the mouthwash and toothpaste. It's a rush of wintergreen that starts to wake me up. I continue on. Rubbing my my eyes as I look up into the mirror. My mirrored companion is still there, babbling away.

"Yeah, I just made you up to hurt myself! ... And it worked. ... Yes it did!" He's caught my attention now and I stare back to him. My tooth brush is hanging from my mouth out like an old sarge with a cigar. He's grinning back at me knowing that he's pushing buttons this morning.

I know up front if I asked him why he says things like that I'm sure to get back flippantly that "he likes me". Maybe. Lately he's been less defined. more abstract as a figure. Still, why do I have the honor of babysitting a mirror friend? We've only gone a short pause before he starts back into me. And right now he knows he has my attention, "There is no you, There is only me! There is no you, There is only me! Only... " He's done this before to me... it's just that only this morning I return him the honors in the form of plaque busting spray from mouth onto the mirror.

One of the few things that I've learned about BFF is that I can affect him indirectly by affecting other things. Thus the nice wintergreen white and blue foamy spray on my mirror has effectively covered him. It's kinda cute, BFF being all all pissed off at me and stuck in my bathroom mirror. With a simple smile back, I reinforce the point that he's in my apartment and he's just the rider along for whatever ride he signed up for.

by the time I'm washing out my mouth and putting my tooth brush away, the BFF is finally pulling his composure together to tell me about "... when I get out of here...". This phase has become my cue to bounce the verbal noise right back. Before he can continue I cut him off and coolly state to him "You'll end back up in my pin art on my desk and start pretending you're Trent Reznor again." I laugh after saying that. He hates that. Its one of the few things that actually stops his babbling

I really don't know how he jumps around from object to object in the place. It seems he's rather efficient at it when he gets lose. Why the pin art trapped him, is anyone's guess really. I came home and find there he was just trapped in a object he wasn't trying to get to. Angry and bouncing around the pins on the toy, BFF looked over inches away from his intended target, my computer. I've never really given though to what he would have done with it. Instead I sleep at night knowing that I have the local novelty's store stock of pin arts hanging around my place in select areas.

He's been staring back at me all this time. I can see in his eyes that he wants to continue but knowingly unable to. He knows that I'll remind him of the collector's glass. He hates that more. When I found him on it, he had managed to insert himself next to the leading woman from the film. The boyfriend character had been displaced, left laid out on the ground. My mirror companion, having the pleasure of being there posed himself with one arm around the female, one foot on the boyfriend's head victoriously, and his other hand stretched out giving the Buddy Jesus. What he didn't know at the time was when a cold liquid is poured into the cup, she disappears from the scene. The cup ended up in the freezer and I had a period of peace and quiet in the apartment.

Readying myself for a shower, I get the hot water running and generate enough steam to qualify my small bath room as a sauna BFF sees the steam roll up the window, he looks back at me. He's still angry, but knows that he can't stop it. I do this every morning because the steam seems to acts like a fantasy mist to lock him away. the mirror is half fogged as I look to him and he's starting to fade away on me. His upper half is yet obscured by the fog and that's the half that's fixed right at me. It's the look that indicates that he's up to something. What that is, I do not know, nor do I care right now. The mirror is almost fogged over and he's now almost gone. For now. Before stepping into the shower, I have a moment of sweet silence in the bathroom as I notice sun starting to rise. I think to myself, it's turning out to be a good day.

Short Story Challenge Response

Mukashi mukashi...*
*Once upon a time, in a far away land...

Here is the tale of the Great Dance, and the awesome people who channeled their power into defeating the zombie horde.

The zombie horde had carefully planned their attack and on a bright sunny day in April they launched their offensive. Outbreaks of the zombie virus were everywhere, and the human population was terrified and helpless. And paranoid.

You see, the zombies weren't you usual brain-eating shamblings messes. They looked pretty normal, and could imitate the emotions they had seen in their human prey. Which was pretty much limited to sadness, horror, and pain.

As these hordes ate away at the remaining bastions of humanity, a cry went out across the land for the brightest, toughest, and bravest to come together to find a way to defeat the horde. The message was carried from safe house to safe house, whispered about so quietly it was like the twitter of a passing bird. They came from all over- different countries, different continents. They spoke different languages and did their hair different and had different unique talents. But everyone knew that a gathering of this many great people was completely awesome.

Naturally, the security at this meeting was tight. Everyone had to pass stringent anti-zombie tests, and we're not talking about answering some stupid questions, either. This naturally took a long time, so there were a lot of people standing in lines, waiting for their turn.

All of a sudden, a woman named Lisa shouted. She ran across the room and tackled a young man standing in one of the aforementioned lines. At first people were scared- was she a zombie, trying to eat his brains? But no, Lisa had just recognized her twue wuv, Chester and was so excited she forgot everything else. Once it was explained, everyone started smiling and laughing, glad to see the two reunited. Some one even broke out some crazy dance music, and order disintegrated as everyone started dancing.

Well, almost everyone. Like Cylons, some zombies had infiltrated the gathering. They watched in amazement as the humans celebrated Lisa and Chester's twue wuv. They had never seen such happy dances before! Overwhelmed, their zombie minds couldn't take such awesome and the evil zombie infection lost as the awesome infected their bodies. The zombies started twitching and shaking, and while some just thought it was a new type of dance, a few of the nerdy fighters recognized what was happening.

Immediately, they threw open the doors. "Spread the happy dance!" they yelled. The remaining humans did. They tangoed and twisted through the zombie horde, their awesome dance moves created a kind of safety dance, protecting them from the zombie virus, as well as curing their infected friends. As the former zombies became human again, they joined in.

And so the zombie horde was defeated and everyone lived happily ever after!



Love and shurikens!
~Anne

P.S. I forgot to mention in my comment that I am also a ballerina secret agent veterinarian

A Short Story Challenge?

I've been on campus all since 8am. And I'm writing this post from my office tonight. I've been busy today. Writing out what being busy means turned out to be two very long and very dry paragraphs. Two paragraphs that are no longer in this post cause they're not even interesting for me to read, or for worse edit. Normally, I've be out by 5pm and on my way home. Tonight was a a long night preparing to teach a lab tomorrow. So Its now late, and I'm fearing holy retribution if I don't post in time. So supper can wait so I can get this out of the way.

Looking back over the first week, there's one moment that was a bit surreal. This was a comment left by one of Anne's friends that was directed and intended for Anne alone. Where we take the turn for bizzaro is that this friend left the message on Frank's post. ... Okay. Whatever. ... Speaking of Frank, I'm not exactly sure why he can't spell his name right. But I suspect that it's because he's an English Major. Anne is too but she has her own delusions.


I've been thinking of a challenge. A short story challenge.
I'm proposing that each person first finds a piece of music, tv, or something other than text as an inspiration. Here's the twist to the challenge: You're can't refer to the piece directly. Your story has to derived from an idea or piece from it. You're supposed run with that and diverge as much as possible. Think of it as the path not taken. Having said that, all clever references to your inspirations are of course allowable. So Who's in?

Well, it's before Midnight. Call back the bombers.