The End of the Mirror

This is a short story of a dream I had, thus following the nature of dreams it is very weird and unusual, and does not seem to be anchored in one realm or another. Despite this, please enjoy.

The End of the Mirror

“Together like this, we will die.” He says. I don’t know what frightens me more; the face, the eyes I held so firmly with my own and the lips that had just stepped out of a mirror, or the fear that he will leave me behind.

At this point, I struggle to remember who I used to be. I’ve become so heavily involved in him and this heinous web of crime and lies, that what I was before seemed nothing more than some patient façade. And now I struggle to believe it actually wasn’t. To put it simply, I’ve always been the person I am now, and everything before then was simply sleeping dormant, playing its game just as planned, waiting and waiting until he came back again.

I was a prince. A prince of a corporate kingdom. I lived in my dazzling basket of treasure, the prized precious egg of a sinking monarchy. I was their heir, and they all loved me. But I never belonged. From all I can conceive of the fictitious life, living clutched in their moisturised hands, being picked and prodded, being pushed and cupped in their expectations of a real prince, it is only that I didn’t belong.

Before he came.

He emitted the light of a thousand kings, and I knew that for sure he was the reason I was here. I approached him cautiously, my hands out-stretched toward his face. He allowed me, smiling ever so gently as my fingers found the familiar shape of his cheeks. I had seen people like this before, I knew they existed, but to comprehend that I was one of them? It was shocking, almost sickening. I believed the very first words he said to me; who couldn’t believe words coming from your own lips.

“You’re not the prince.”

He had the same face as me. He had the same voice. He had the same build. He was me in every way. His hair was slightly longer, and perhaps his weight slightly lesser, but it shocked me to believe that he could be standing here, or exist at all. He explained to me carefully, making sure I understood. We were twins, but he was the real prince, and I had been standing in for him, making certain to keep things level. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew for sure that it was true.

What followed was a syndicate of pillaging. Whatever he dragged me into made me feel alive. We committed the most atrocious sins know to our human morality. We stole, we obtained money, we obtained riches, we may have killed, we may have murdered, it was the ultimate scheme. Nobody would ever suppose the prince had a double. The story itself enraged me more. That there were two twins, but one of them was deathly sick. For such a high standing family that was a curse. One would be discarded, and the other chosen to be the one and only. He told me he was chosen, and I was fated to be discarded, but they had saved me and saved him, swapping our places to give me a chance. Naive of the world and now sure of my place this brought upon my fury, and I knew right then and there that I would follow him to the grave.

No perfect crime may last forever. And as much as we believed otherwise it has finally caught up to us. Our genius, our plots, our ploys, they’ve all come to an end. We’ve barely escaped with our lives.

“Die with me.”

He is ragged and weak, as am I, but him even more so. We have escaped, dragged ourselves as far as we could, but this is our last stand, our last stance against the society that has pursed to contain us. He pulls himself up against the stone. He is damaged, injured, frail. I feel stronger, but I know that us, together, we are one, and whatever happens to him, is the same as what happens to me. He is bleeding.

He pulls out a small satchel from his pocket and empties the contents into his hands. Inside are gleaming gemstones, larger than our eyes. He hands me a huge green one and two more.

“Here we will die, we will rest until our bodies can live no more. But I don’t want to leave this earth as nothing. Let they who find our skeletons know of our riches.” He lifts his tongue and places the green gem underneath it. He lays his head down gently against the stone and closes his eyes, laying two more gems atop them.

“When we we die, and our bodies begin to rot away, jewels will sink into our skulls, encrusting us with eyes forever more. That is how we will die.”

I nod and follow suit, laying beside him, my arm around his frail waist, my eyelids closed to the cool surface of the stones. There we lay. Waiting for death.

We waited until our last straw, but it was not the end. Around us people began to emerge. Had we been discovered? No. This was something different. People we knew, people crazed and naked, draped in nothing but their skin and sheets. Huge furnaces were lit, burning bright and hot. Atop them all sat a cruel god, reigning in the people around him who fawned although he was made of promised gold.

“Die for me!” He cried. “Die for the cause! Die for yourself! Die!” The god vanished, leaving the people alone.

A woman broke from the crowd, laughing in ecstasy. It was our mother. “I will die for all the atrocities and sins I exist for! I will die for my mere existence!”

With that she threw herself into one of the raging furnaces, burning her body to nothing but dust. The people roared in delight, and one after another they all started throwing themselves into the furnaces. “This day will be remembered! We died on this day!” A crowd the size of a city, all burning their own bodies and throwing themselves into the furnaces.

He bolted up, spitting out the jewels and clutching me tightly. “NO! I don’t want to die here! I don’t want to be a part of this. I am not one of them. I am not a number. I don’t want to die here.” The desperation gave him strength, and with his body that had been so ready to die, he stood and I followed. “I am going to die! I am going to die anyway!” He cried in a desperation I had never heard. “I had only days left. I was going to die. But if I was going to die, I wanted to take the world down with me, I didn’t want it to happen like this! I don’t want to be taken down with the world.”

His tears were mine, and together we ran, pushing through the trembling mass of hot skin, all shoving themselves toward the furnaces. No matter how far we ran, nor how hard, we couldn’t escape them. All around us there were more and more furnaces, as people threw themselves into the fire and became nothing more than forgotten ash on the wind gone by.

We continued to run, but by this point he was bleeding from his mouth. “I want to be special. I am not simple a part of something. We can’t die here. Not here.”

I felt wetness on my chin, I felt my throat gag at the taste. Just as he was, I was bleeding. Just as he was, I was dying. He was...

We collapsed in the ashes of a thousand bodies, unable to escape. The pain as melting his face. “I’ll die tomorrow. I’ll die tonight. Just not here.” We were weak. We were dying.

“Death is our last statement. Without it we live as nothing, but after it we are nothing. We are all the same and that is nothing.”

He holds my eyes. No. Not here. We can’t die here. Not /here/. He holds my eyes with eyes that match my own. He holds my hands, the end of his silken sleeves drenched in the blood and ash and dirt of everyone who had died before us.

“You were the prince.”

And with that, he dies.