Mirror Test
Characters: Linnet + Delwyn
Word Count: 773 Words
Summary: Linnet, freshly back to life, realizes that dragging your old corpse behind you is only good for giving you a back ache. ( / Most birds fail the mirror test. They see their reflection as a rival.)
(Note: This was written specifically for pride month!)
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I see a ghost sometimes. It follows me, it whispers in my ear, it possesses me when it can, and I can catch a glimpse of it every so often.
I try to work backwards, work with what it gives me to find out what I can. I haven't found a single thing it likes yet, but it has a mile long list of complaints.
It doesn't like that I threw out most of its old clothes. (I kept the boots and the hair clip.)
It doesn't like my name.
It doesn't like how I talk, to the point of paralyzing my throat whenever it can. (Tried doing a different voice, but that wasn't good enough. It seems the word choice is all wrong too.)
It doesn't like how much it pisses me off.
I think it just hates me. I'm fine with that. Feeling's mutual.
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I stand in front of the mirror, only noticing how hard I'm gripping the sink when my knuckles feel like they might just break. I had to retreat from another conversation after not being able to say a single word I wanted to.
I thought maybe I could find common ground with it. Work with it, and in return reveal everything I know it's keeping from me. I wanted to know why it is the way it is, learn who it used to be.
But after a certain amount of a dead voice being forced out of your own throat, forcing you to passively accept treatment you know you don't deserve... You'd lose your patience too.
I'm tired of my voice, forcibly pitched up and softened. I'm tired of "it's no trouble!" "oh, no, you're fine! I'm not mad!" I'm tired of smiling when I see the relief in other's faces at the realization that I'm not one of the difficult ones.
So, I finally force my eyes to meet that ghost in the glass. I can't quite tell where one of our scowls ends and the other begins. I lift one hand from the sink, stretching my fingers to return some feeling to them, and slam it against the mirror.
God, did I really think I was going to be able to grab its collar? My palm just meets cold glass.
"You had your life!" I ignore the part of myself that's thinking that maybe screaming at my own reflection in the bathroom mirror is embarrassing. That my roommates might hear. "It's mine now!"
I hate it, the ghost that's staring back at me with tears in his eyes. I haven't gotten to see myself once since coming back, it takes up all the space in the mirror.
I try not to think about the life that would lead a ghost to thinking it's best to do nothing that'll ever upset anyone, to value everyone in the world's opinions before its own. I try not to let the anger die out, I need to get better at being angry.
"I'm going to do whatever I want," I say, and I reach for the one thing I brought to the bathroom with me.
Kitchen shears. I couldn't find actual scissors. I don't look in the mirror anymore, I know if I see this process as it's happening, the ghost will be frightened enough to paralyze me.
I hate my hair. Its hair. Our hair. Whatever.
Everyone keeps touching it without permission. It's long, and it has a crown braid around it that I seemingly came to knowing how to do. Apparently when people see hair like this, they think it exists for them.
I don't want any part of me to exist for someone else. Not the idiots I adventure with, not the strangers that talk to me, and not this ghost.
As I watch the sink slowly fill with little tufts of light blue, I get the strange sense that my hair doesn't grow fast. I wouldn't know, I haven't been around long enough to find that out, but in this moment I'm sure that this is years worth of work down the drain.
I can't stop smiling.
When I finally finish, when the hair only reaches around my chin, I look in the mirror, and...
There I am.
I don't look so bad.
My arms wrap around my shoulders, and I'm holding myself, and I'm laughing, and I'm crying. All the spite, the anger, it's forgotten in this moment of finally seeing who exactly "Linnet" gets to be, who I get to be.
Deep down, I hope he likes the haircut too, that ghost. I hope we both can feel a bit more free now.