The Thing in the Mirror

Still not sure where I am.

Occasionally, I'll see an eye where there really shouldn't be one. It watches silently. It knows what I've done.

Sometimes I'll wake up with holes in my memory. Usually things will have been rearranged. Sometimes there'll be scratches on the walls and door. The window is barred, so Judas hasn't yet bothered trying to get out through there. Once I woke up with a tingling sensation in my finger tips, and a dull ache in my arm, like I'd been shocked. I still don't know what that was about.

There's a dumbwaiter in the room that delivers food. Too small to crawl through.

Waiting. Waiting for judgment.

There's a big mirror on the wall. Sometimes when I look at it, I see a corpse staring back at me, a corpse with my eyes, and rotting flesh hanging from its bones. The first time I saw it, I nearly screamed.

"Like what you see?" the reflection asked. It spoke with a woman's voice.

I stared numbly. Part of me felt like I was in a dream. Part of me wondered if I'd gone mad.

"Possessed by the Dying Man," the reflection went on. "Is it not your fate to become like this? Is this not your future?" A woman stepped out from behind the reflection. Startled, I swung my head around. No one there.

Her laugh drew my attention back to the mirror. Pale, naked, and hairless, she regarded me with an amused smile. I slowly found my gaze drawn to her eyes. Golden, with pitch-black slits for the pupils.

"Or perhaps," she said, "your future holds something different."

The corpse-me shimmered like a reflection on the water and it became something else. I looked at... me. But a better me. A smiling, confident me who radiated splendor and power. Clean-shaven, no wounds or scars, muscles so perfectly, flawlessly defined. I moved my hand, and that immaculate version of me did as well.

"Do you think, perhaps, one of us can give you this form?" the woman asked.

My gaze snapped back to her. Her skin was so pale... like looking at printer paper. But there was a change. Her stance had become looser, her legs spread slightly apart. Pink nipples stood rigid, and she smiled at me invitingly. Her facial structure had changed as well. Changed to...

"Who are you?" I demanded, panic nearly rising in my voice.

In an instant, she was back to how she had originally appeared, and the corpse-reflection had returned to the mirror. The woman laughed. "Who indeed?" She asked. "I'm a reflection. Nothing more and nothing less. Mirrors reflect the truth of the world, do they not? But tilt the mirror slightly, position it just so, and it can create an illusion. So what is real and what is fake? Perhaps I am merely a product of your feeble mind? Or maybe I'm something greater. Something far greater than you could ever understand."

My mouth moved. "The Mother of Snakes." It was not me who spoke.

The reflection shimmered again, and the corpse was replaced by... by a shadow. An image of darkness in the shape of a man, and I could just make out a skeleton deep within it, shrouded in that gloom.

"Aw," the woman-- the Mother of Snakes-- said. "Good job... Judas is what you call yourself, correct? What a very... human sense of humor."

"What do you want?" I asked. I could Judas bubbling under the surface. He wasn't happy.

"Me?" the Mother asked. "I merely wish to guide you. Why, Matthias, I can save you."

Now that was a load of bullshit if I ever heard one. "Why?"

She laughed. "The game has been set, the pieces are in place, and you have proven that you will be a valuable piece indeed." Her lips peeled back as she smiled, revealing a fanged mouth. "Keeping you alive is within my best interests. You are far more useful than you know. Matthias Stanford... do you have any idea the paths your lives may take?"

My reflection once again changed, and I saw myself as I am now, but covered in blood, and grinning from ear to ear, eyes wild and mad and rejoicing.

"Everyone has it in them to become a monster, my friend," the Mother of Snakes went on. "Reflections do not lie. Oh, they may bend and stretch and distort the truth, but they do not lie. So which will you be? The victim,"--the reflection became the corpse again--"the hero,"--the reflection became that perfect me--"or the villain?" Once again my blood-splattered self stood in the mirror. His hand moved, independent of my own, and seemed to rest against the glass, like I was looking through a window. He faded away, and my reflection went back to normal, but a bloody handprint remained.

"The game is afoot," the Mother of Snakes said. "The players have assembled."

"But why help me?" I asked. "I don't understand how my well-being is so important to you."

She shrugged. "I cannot lie," she said, "but I can withhold the truth. Suffice to say that the Grand Game is not analogous to chess or checkers or any such human game. It is more akin to politics. And what do you mortals say? Politics makes strange bedfellows."

"I'm flattered," I said flatly.

She laughed. "I'm sure you are. When was the last time you tasted woman?" Her form flickered to someone else, someone long dead, before vanishing.

I stood for a moment. Judas had gone quiet, and I could actually sense a feeling of uneasiness from him. I walked over to the mirror, and reached out against the handprint, and wiped the blood away.