Image in the Glass

             I turned this way and that, admiring my heavy dress in the mirror, its swish-swish sound perfectly in time with my sway. The intricate embroidery was a silver mystery on the cream satin. A smile of wonder started at the corners of my mouth, and abruptly stopped as something odd caught my attention. I had thought I was alone, but suddenly they were all I could see in the darkened reflection, right behind me.

I stared at the bloodshot eyes in the mirror. The sight sent a tingling chill up my spine. They widened and the black irises enlarged to fill the extra space. They narrowed as the pupils became vertical, cat-like. The irises turned green. A piercing, unsettling, irradiant green. And the colour began to fade…began to reappear as a brilliant, bright, terrifying scarlet. The colour began to overflow, slowly trickled past the lashes as tears of blood fell on my neck. I could not move, not even to release the shiver building in me, not even to look away from the compelling, accusatory expression in those eyes as my sight blurred, my eyes filling with tears. I raised a shaking hand to wipe them away. I stared in horror as my fingers came away covered in a viscous, rich red. Those eyes…they were mine. Those bone-like fingers covered in rotting flesh…they were mine. That dead, gray, matted hair covered in seaweed…it was mine. My lips curled back to release a horrified wail, and no sound escaped them. I had no tongue.

I could only watch in silent, screaming terror as my full cheeks receded slowly, so slowly, as the tears continued in a shower of hot bullets. I blinked and there was nothing in the mirror but a gaunt skull-like face grinning back at me with a perfect set of dazzling teeth.

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                I woke with a start, sweat covering my neck. My hand frantically groped the bedside table, and found the tiny mirror. I lit a candle and desperately stared at the reflection. My terrified eyes were bloodshot and my hair matted alright, but there was the rest of me – complete, whole. Full cheeks, full lips, straight nose, long lashes, whole skin. I sighed. The nightmares wouldn’t stop.

                I knew exactly why I was having these dreams, but would not admit it to myself; could not admit it. Because that would mean I was weak, and I was not. I refused to believe I was. It was not possible I was. Was it?

                My mind was trying desperately to tell me something, and I was fiercely denying the situation. Even my subconscious knew I was in trouble. Enormous trouble.

                I was eighteen years old, and I was going to be married. My mind was a strange place to be in, aflutter with so many varied emotions as it was. Doubt, anticipation, anxiety, and happiness – above all, swelling, glowing happiness – seemed to be swirling around in my head like light wisps of silver steam. But there was a dark, gray, thick smoke of another situation entirely that threatened to smother all the lightness, present at the very edge as well.

                My fiancé was a powerful king of a distant land. I knew not what he was like, not even how he looked. My people had heard only that he was thought of as handsome, shrewd, and merciful. He was twenty eight and looking for an alliance with my father. I had been trained all my life to be a married woman. I was ready.

                But I held a secret that I could not even admit to myself. The nightmares had started two months ago. And the cause for them four months previously, when I had stuck two fingers down my own throat.

                I had always had an extremely light, dainty figure. But I had recently gained some weight, and it showed. It was not much, only enough for everyone to comment how becoming I had started looking, how ready I was now for marriage to the king, how much rounder my already round face seemed, how my figure also had filled out and looked more womanly.

                I started hating myself. I felt like a fat old slave woman, and became paranoid about everyone’s attention. It seemed like they were all staring, whispering about my horrid looks behind my back, cackling about how I was lucky the king had never laid eyes on me. But I loved food, and could not get myself to give it up.

                I started thinking about food more and more, and all I wanted to do was eat. Eat everything that was unhealthy. Because I had weakly tried to forbid myself from these very things, my naturally perverse mind craved them more and more. And I lacked the will to stop myself.

                Five months before my marriage, I was desperate. So I excused myself from the table one day and made myself throw everything back up. I thought I had found the solution to all of my problems.

                I now gorged on anything I wanted and simply threw it all up. And I think it started having an effect on my weight as well. But with it came a price.

                A couple of months into my ingenious plan, my teeth felt weaker, and even if I had a small meal that I did not wish to get rid of, my body automatically made me throw it up. I could keep nothing down any longer. I was growing weaker. And I was having nightmares.

                My subconscious was telling me I was killing myself, slowly and surely. It was accusing me, showing me what would happen to my body. Of course, imaginative as I naturally was, it was dramatizing the entire thing to scare me. But one thing it absolutely had on the gold – I had to stop before I seriously damaged myself.

                My parents grew worried about me after they found me throwing up one night. They thought I had some serious, rare malady. One month before my wedding, I sat my mother, the queen, down and told her the truth. She was disappointed, and sad. But she helped me.

                The doctors had never heard of my condition. They were unable to do much. But Mother knew what to do. She helped me overcome my self-doubt and paranoia. She helped me realize my own inner-worth. She instilled in me my lost self-confidence. And I started eating small meals, and keeping them down.

                She kept me distracted. We played games in the gardens, took walks, read books, and ate freshly-picked fruits. And I started recovering. The paleness vanished from my face, and I was a strong, glowing bride on my wedding day.

                Before I departed from my palace room forever, to start my new, glorious life with a kind king, I asked Mother how she knew exactly what to do about my problem. She smiled that sad, knowing smile, gazed at an old portrait of my maternal grandmother and said, “Because there was a time… I was just like you.”