Mirror On The Wall

When things got me down, I asked the people around me for advice. They told me to go out more, meet new people, basically to talk more. But there wasn't any point in doing that. They could never understand what I was going through; there was only one person who could ever completely understand me, and that was... me.

That's why I started talking to the mirror, and with every ten minutes or so of venting everyday, I felt better again. Everything was right as rain, until one day, the mirror replied.

Well, the mirror was quiet, but the person inside wasn't. He gave me all the advice that I could ever need, a perfect friend, someone to always turn to. And that was exactly his biggest giveaway, he was too perfect. I could see him everywhere I went, watching me, learning my movements, copying my actions, a desperate attempt to be me. I grew sick of it and asked him to leave me alone but he kept insisting that he was trying to help me. Finally, one day I decided to test him, to see if he would go the extra mile.

I cut myself for the first time that night. I looked in the mirror, felt the warm blood flowing down my arm, felt the pain, saw him go through the same, and saw, with grim satisfaction that he was trying miserably to maintain character. I had an advantage over my doppelgänger now. I kept on hurting him regularly from then and felt powerful. I was powerful because I was original, he was doomed to fail because he was just a cheap imitation.

I would never let him win, no. I would never let him steal my place in this world and put forth his god-knows-what insidious agenda.

But then, of course, there were the people around me, ever watching, "concerned". They noticed my scars, reminders of a battle that I was winning. I understood their worries. I'd be a bit thrown off too if I saw them on another person. So I patiently told them with a huge smile on my face, "Don't worry, I'll protect you all from him, I won't let him get to me, I'm winning."

And that's what I wrote on the bathroom wall with my own blood, the same blood gushing from my veins, as I lay with one of my hands in a bucket full of bloodied water, my sight growing dimmer by the second, and my mind feeling more and more at ease at the thought of beating my impostor for one final time.

But it was too late when I noticed the mirror on the wall. My writing on the wall, instead of being inverted, read from left to right, and I realized with horror that I was the one in the mirror.

I was the impostor.