Melody

Where were you last night ?

It is not a question, really. You are not even here. I am standing in front of the mirror. The question hanging somewhere in the air around me. I look up at myself in the mirror and again I ask what I so desperately need to know.

“Where were you last night?”

My own reflection mocks me. For some reason I keep seeing your face instead of mine.

I want to get in there and wipe that smirk off your face. But all I can do is ask again where you were last night.

Or maybe I could smash the mirror and see every truth I used to cling to shatter around me. The mirror stays. Mocking me and comforting me at the same time. We always prefer presence to absence. Even if it is the presence of a lie.

I can still yell and cry and plead and whine. Until there’s only a whisper and lonely nighttimes. Then the question shifts into something else. Something even more daring…

“Will you be home soon?”

My feet are cold. I want to warm them. But everything remains the same until I feel the cold crawl up my legs and the rest of my body until it reaches my hands.

“Cold… Cold…” I mutter.

I look up at the wall, to where the mirror is hanging. And I start whining, like a little child.

“When are you going to be here? Will it be soon? How soon? How soon?”

When I close my eyes, the mirror is still there. And here I can smash it. We are always so much braver when we’re about to enter the land of dreams. And I need to hear the gentle lullaby of shattering glass.

In my sleep I keep seeing so many faces. A lot of them I don’t recognize. They all just loom up out of the grey skies. And then there are so many hands that reach to touch mine. There are some reaching for my feet as well. The hands are smothering me. Are they multiplying themselves? There are so many of them. They are scaring me. I want to wake up. Everything is so much less real when I open my eyes.

“Melody… Melody…” a voice is calling… me… right… Melody… that’s me right?

I realise I’m being pulled back into reality.

“Melody… Melody…”

I obey the voice. But it’s a slow process. Melody. Melody. I need to call out to myself.

It takes an even longer time before I can make out something out of the shadowy haze in front of my eyes. A man’s face looms up. He has dark features; dark hair, brown eyes, tanned skin. I don’t know him. What is this man doing here? In my house? In my room? In my bed?

I start yelling “Go away! Go away!” and things like “Leave me alone!”.

A suitcase is standing next to the bed. A fully packed suitcase, as is my guess. The man picked it up. He’s saying something. “I’m sorry.”

Why is he saying he’s sorry? About what?

I don’t understand any of it.

It is still night. But I get up anyway. Sleep won’t come to me now. I stand up, my eyes fixed at the walls in front of me. They are painted in an ugly yellow. Why did I never notice that before?

Then my feet step onto something cold and sharp. I look down. Red. Blood. I don’t understand until I bent forward and see what cause the flesh cut. Glass. Shattered glass. A mirror?

---

Did that make sense? It doesn't matter, really, I like mystery stories that nobody quite understands. I hope you enjoyed it anyway!