This work was last updated October 30, 2018

I stumbled to the mirror, grabbing viciously at the edges in order to steady myself. My hair, once a deep brown, was slowly turning white and thinning as I stared. I grabbed at it, almost as if I was trying to keep the colour inside, but all it did instead was begin falling out in clumps. My cheeks were becoming more sunken in, my skin becoming translucent so that I could see the shadows of my skull if I turned my head in the dim candlelight. My skin began falling away, pieces chipping away like eggshells, or like a puzzle that lost its support. I gasped as a tooth fell out, and then another, and another. My eyes flickered to my hands, still holding on to the edges of the mirror, and I found that all my skin had fallen away until all that was holding the mirror was the bones of my fingers.

I fell to the ground, my legs unable to hold my weight anymore. I sat in a pool of my white hair. I felt a sob escape whatever was still left in my rib cage, but no tears fell. You can’t cry when your eyes have fallen out.

Suddenly everything stopped. I still sat in front of the mirror, struggling to breathe through my sobs as my body panicked. My skin was there, my eyes were at the right place, my hair was back on my head and the same familiar brown I’d always seen in the mirror since I knew what mirrors were. I clutched at the collar of my pyjama shirt, begging my heart to steady, but it wouldn’t listen.

The voice returned. It whispered like the breeze coming through my open window, making the panic worse. It made my skin crawl, my body shivering even in the hot summer air.

“You have a year to fulfil your promise. One year to kill 100 people. Do this, and I will let you live on freely, but know that if you fail me… This was only one of the ways that I can, and will, punish you.”