Young Writers Society

Hello! It's way to long since I've posted. I apologize for the lack of participation the last few years. >.< Excited to return from my hiatus!

Mirror, Mirror

Part One

Translucent layers of ice coat every leaf, each tree limb drooping from the heavy weight. Frozen droplets twinkle in the few rays of light that have manage to peek through the branches above. Beneath foot, frost has solidified the mud. John’s and Garret’s knit hats cover their ears from the brisk cold, noses red from the harshness of the air.

“My cousin told me that there’s this old pond back here, and that when it freezes over, she would go ice skating on it. We can’t be too far,” John tells Garret as he pulls away branches from their trail. “You didn’t tell your parents, did you?”

“No. Hey, check this out,” Garret says. He holds up a large stick. The stick comes up to Garret’s waist, the circumference larger than the width of his wrist. Pieces of bark are missing, gashes in what’s already scarred.

“Dibs!” John takes it from Garret’s fingers.

“Dude, I found it.”

“I called dibs.”

Garret didn’t know how to argue against John’s definitive answers. With his prize, John continues stomping down the trail, looking up at the branches above, impersonating a great explorer navigating with the stars. A few paces behind, Garret follows, though his footsteps much lighter and precarious than John’s. His eyes search for a new treasure, one better than the stick.

“Do you even know where we’re going?” Garret asks.

“Of course I do. I know everything,” John says.

“How? You’re onlyeleven.”

“I just do.”

Since they met in first grade, John always had a vision that Garret envied, though he didn’t realize it. John always oozed a confidence that Garret clung onto to fill the insecurities that he felt. When Garret didn’t do well on a spelling test, John succeeded. On a science project, John would exceed expectations, and Garret would meet them. John liked Garret as a friend, someone who looked up to him as a leader and someone who would always need him.

As the years went on, their friendship evolved to a codependency, a symbiotic relationship. John, strong in nature, was someone that classmates decided in an unspoken agreement to leave alone in terms of pestering and teasing. Being connected to John, Garret experienced the same barrier, a shield between him and his cruel, childish classmates. In return, Garret provided John with a constant. A constant companion, a dependable project partner, a follower to join him on small adventures.

John clips his walking stick on the trunks of trees, the echoes vibrating through the woods. With each clack, Garret startles slightly, then regains his step. John presses on, swatting away any branch that blocks his path. The air gets thicker the further they go, a heavy weight pulling down on their bodies. Garret’s hair starts clinging in chunks that fall loosely against his forehead.

“I think we’re almost there,” John says behind his shoulder.

Garret quickens his pace to meet John’s, wanting to see the pond that John spoke highly of. A small clearing breaks through the trees, tall reeds walled around the pond, shadowing their view. Stumbling through the stalks that almost reach their shoulders, John and Garret reach the pond’s edge. The surface of the pond is smooth, a layer of ice glazed over the top, reflecting the treetops and clouded sky above.

“Isn’t it cool?” John says.

Garret nods, stepping onto the pond’s edge, pressing his weight slowly onto the surface. He looks down at the icy surface, his appearance staring back at him. His hair matted, dark eyes squinted, thin lips in a line, nose rounded at the tip. He stamps his foot, waiting for the ice to buckle. The ice instead holds solid. Another stomp and the ice doesn’t crack. John grabs Garret by the shoulders and throws him forward then pulls him back, startling him.

John laughs at Garret’s wide eyes, the scramble of his feet when John threw him forward. “Shut up,” Garret says.

“It’s fine! Trust me.” John walks out onto the ice, stick in hand, believing in the strength of the ice to hold him.

As John turns his back, Garret takes the opportunity for revenge. Something harmless, but something that will startle John like he startled Garret. He searches the ground for something, an idea. He grabs a pinecone. A small smile curls on Garret’s face. He rotates the pinecone, feeling each poke of the sharp edges. John stops moving forward and steps back.

“Hey, John. Catch!” Garret hurls the pinecone at John’s head.

John turns quickly around, his feet shuffling and slipping. Arms flailing, John loses his grip on his stick, sending it into the bushes, and falls onto the ice. John stills as the split in the ice spreads like veins outward from where he landed. The surface cracks like porcelain painted as the sky. Before Garret can react, John slips into the pond.

“John!” Garret stays at the pond’s edge, peering out to where John disappeared.

John bobs up to the surface, calling for help.

“I’m going to go get help!” Garret tells John. “I’ll be right back.”

“No, get me out! Please!” John begs.

“I’ll be right back, John. I’ll be right back.”

Part Two

Translucent layers of dew coat every leaf, each tree limb droops in response to the gray afternoon. Dew droplets twinkle in the few rays of light that have managed to peek through the branches above. With each heavy footfall, Garret crushes another bundle of leaves deeper into the earth. Water squishes upwards, overlapping the rubber sole of his Converse sneakers. The cuffs of his denim jeans are caked with a thick mud, flaking off into clumps as he trudges through the brush.

“Hey, Garret, catch!” A pinecone flies through the air, aiming for his chest. It hits him, splintering pinecone seedlings.

“I think I got something in my eye. Jerk,” Garret says. He digs his dirt-dusted finger in his eye, picking at a bit of pinecone shrapnel.

John laughs.

“Can you tell me where we’re going yet?” Garret asks.

John shakes his head. “Not yet!”

“Why can’t you tell me?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Why is it a secret?”

John clips his walking stick on the trunks of trees, the echoes vibrating through the woods. With each clack, Garret startles slightly, then regains his step.

“It just is.”

Garret keeps his head down low, watching where he steps. “John, I think it’s getting late.”

John keeps pressing further into the woods, the beams of sunlight that had once shone through are now shadowed, and getting ever darker. “We’re almost there.”

“Almost where, though?” Garret quickens his pace to match with John’s, dodging thin branches reaching out like fingers grasping for his arm.

The air gets thicker the further they step, a heavy weight pulling down on their bodies. Garret’s hair clings in chunks that fall loosely against his forehead. Sopping leaves cling onto John’s legs and arms, sticking to the fibers of his clothing. The mist gets thicker, forming larger droplets that collect on the ferns and the boys’ jackets.

“We’re almost there,” John says.

Garret stuffs his hands deeper into his pockets, nervous at what they might find, or where his friend might be leading him. He lied to his parents about his whereabouts, claiming he was working a project with classmates.

“There it is,” John says, pointing at a cabin.

It isn’t really even a cabin. An interweaving of moss and fungi coat the shingles. Through thick ferns and ivy, Garret can barely make out the outside walls of the cabin. Gaping holes are left where windows once were. In one, shards of glass shoot upwards, a small vine wrapping around the contrasted edge. Long tendrils of ferns hang over the door, their roots knitted with the moss. Rusted tin cans strung up by old wire sway when a subtle breeze shifts through the woods, creating a tinkling sound as they touch. Broad branches create a barrier between the cabin and the sky, preventing sunlight from breaching except a few small beams filtering through. The entire cabin is shadowed in damp air, stagnant and rotting.

“Come on.” John runs towards the deteriorating cabin like he is returning home.

Garret sheepishly follows John, scanning the forest floor for anything suspicious. John waits at the front door of the cabin, fingering an old knife that protrudes from one of the rotting beams holding up the overhanging roof. Garret steps onto what had been a porch in years past, holes now rotted out on the floorboards. The wood flexes with the boys’ weight. John wraps his small fingers around the rusted doorknob and turns.

Inside, vines and ferns have grown through the floor, every surface as damp as outside. A chair sits in a corner, one leg broken and leaning awkwardly. Over the chair is an old blanket, torn, tattered, and deteriorating. Miscellaneous home goods scatter the floor: a rusted pot, a metal spoon, a ceramic mug with a broken handle and lip, a shattered porcelain plate painted as the sky.

In his hand, Garret fiddles with a piece of the shattered plate, scratching his fingertip on the sharp edge. “How’d you find this place?”

“I don’t know. I was going to the pond and found it,” John says.

Garret remembered the pond, how close John was to dying. When he returned with help, they pulled John’s body from the pond, dragging his limbs through the broken pieces of ice and upturned silt floating through the water. They checked his pulse, then wrapped up his body in a black fabric. As they transported John back to the ambulance, Garret noticed how slow the paramedics and firemen worked as if trudging through sand.

Then he got the phone call from John, a couple weeks after their adventure to the pond. The forest had thawed for the spring. John told Garret of this cool cabin that he found while going back to the pond in search for his shoe. With a mouthful of lies, Garret convinced his parents to let him go out.

“Check this out.” John beckons for Garret to look into this broken mirror dangling off a rusted nail.

“It looks old,” Garret says.

“It’s really cool!” John guides Garret closer to the mirror.

Stepping into the vision of the mirror, Garret first sees himself as he currently is. His hair matted, dark eyes squinted, thin lips in a line, nose rounded at the tip. He steps closer to the mirror’s surface, and focuses on a small blemish on the tip of his nose, obscured by a crack through the reflection.

“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty cool. But it’s just a mirror,” Garret says.

“Just keep looking,” John says, irritation rising in his voice.

Garret peers back into the mirror, seeing his face speckled with bronze stains from the surface. The longer he stares, the details of his face break, vein-like cracks in the mirror erupting over his features. His ear pulls apart from his head, eye falls out. He watches as his image shatters, a dark green emerging beneath the image, a chill spreading through his body.

Before Garret can step away, John presses his head forward, forcing Garret to continue looking into the mirror. Garret struggles in John’s grip, arms flailing.

“What are you doing? Let me go! Stop!” Garret says.

“You were supposed to help me, Garret. Why did you leave me?”

In the splintering mirror’s image, the space between the cracks grow, water seeping through the gaps, dripping onto the rotting floorboards.

The two boys scuffle and struggle in each other’s grips. Garret twists and yanks his body back and forth, and John holds on tighter. John’s foot falls through a hole in the floor, the jagged wood tearing his jeans. Garret glances at John’s leg, visible in the torn denim. Where John’s skin was once pink and covered in subtle scratches from playground accidents is a paled purple, smooth like ice.

“John! I’m sorry!” Garret

John’s fingers claw at the wood. “Garret, help me!” Garret, almost to the door, pauses. He looks back at John in the floorboards. “Garret, please.”

Garret stands still, not sure if he should help him. He inches forward, then steps back. John’s pink cheeks fade, his eyes turn glassy and milky. Garret picks up one of the porcelain shards from the floor and holds it outwards. “I can’t, John. I’m sorry,” Garret says. “You’ve changed.”

John swipes his hand at Garret’s ankles, hooking around Garret’s calf. Garret tumbles onto the floor, the piece of porcelain flying from his hand. His body acts as an anchor for John to pull himself out of the hole. “Why won’t you help me, Garret? Why? I thought I was your friend.” John drags Garret to the mirror, pleading to Garret, asking Garret why he didn’t help him.

“I didn’t know what to do, John. I’m sorry!” Tears well up in Garret’s eyes.

John lifts Garret up from the armpits, his fingers digging deep into Garret’s skin. Garret’s eyes meet the mirror once again, water spilling from the cracks. “John, what are you doing? John!”

John pushes Garret’s hand to the mirror, palm pressed against the surface. Blood drips from Garret’s hand, the shards of mirror puncturing his skin. John presses harder. The mirror breaks further, pieces falling onto the floor, water gushing. Garret’s hand sinks into the dark water, the rest of his arm following. John gives one final push, and Garret feels a wave of chilled water wash over his body. He opens his mouth to scream only to have water spill inside of his gaping maw. He flaps his arms, trying to swim.

Garret breaks through to the water’s surface, gasping desperately for air. A thick layer of grit coats his teeth, tongue covered in sediment. He feels his body heat being absorbed by the water around him.

“John! Where are you? Anyone! Help!” Garret paddles and kicks his way through the water, his muscles aching from his dropping internal temperature. He flops to the pond’s edge, his fingers sinking into the mud. Garret’s body erupts into shivers, making it difficult to stand. “Help!”

There’s a rustle in the brush at the opposite end of the pond. Breaking through the reeds, he sees two boys, one wearing a red coat just like the one he has hanging in his closet back home. The surface of the pond is once again frozen, the sky reflected on the smooth ice. One of the boys, the one with a shock of dark hair atop his head, a large stick in hand, pushes aside the boy in the red coat and steps onto the ice.

Garret recognizes the two boys. John steps to the center of the pond, waving his stick in the air. He watches himself pick up a lone pinecone. Garret stumbles to his feet as he sees himself throw it at John. The pinecone hits John square in the chest. John falls onto the ice, stick flying into the reeds. He stills as the split in the ice spreads like veins outward from where he landed. The surface cracks like porcelain painted as the sky.

“No! John!” Garret scrambles over the splitting ice. He reaches out his hand, grasping for John’s hood.

John slips through the ice, leg disjointed and hooked onto the icy ledge. Beneath Garret, the ice shifts and bobs with his weight as he dives forward.

“Garret! Help me! Get me out!” John says.

“I’m going to go get help!” Garret hears himself say.

“No, get me out! Please!” John begs.

“I’ll be right back, John. I’ll be right back.”

Garret watches himself run into the bushes as John scrapes at the ice. Inches from John, Garret makes one last attempt to grab onto him. The ice beneath Garret’s weight gives out, his body falling into the water, fingers brushing John’s arm. He feels his body sinking deeper and deeper, the force of John’s flailing body disturbing the surrounding water. He can hear John’s muted cries for help.