I had risen from sleep because Gary was snoring too loudly. I gave his large sleeping form a hard glance, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness before I got up. He slept away from me on his side, his mouth hanging open with dribble pooling under his cheek. A foul smell permeated my nose from his pits, crotch and mouth. He was a heavy man who hardly bathed, and whenever he came downstairs to fuck me over, his stench was overwhelming.

Disgusted, I rose from bed and plucked a moldy smelling towel off of my desk chair. I wrapped it around my waist and quietly opened my door and shut it behind me. Carefully, I ascended the stairs, being thoughtful about the steps that creaked too loudly.

I opened the basement door to the kitchen, which was always a sty. I would clean it for hours, only until Dad or his friends came in and told me to leave so they could ruin my work. I waded through the beer cans and glass bottles until I met the hallway. I held my breath as I peered through the archway that led into the living room, where Dad and two of his friends were asleep on the sofa and floor in a sea of cans and bottles. The room was like a wave of awful pot smoke, body odor and alcohol. One man, Lucas, had a syringe in his limp hand. On the coffee table were mirrors with little lines of white powder down their surface, with a razorblade resting nearby in a heap.

I walked down the hallway quietly before turning to the bathroom and locking the door behind me; I didn't want any unexpected visitors to sneak into the shower with me. I turned on the light and lowered my eyes to the sink.

I rinsed out my mouth and splashed water on my eyes to help wake me up before the rude awakening of a cold wash from a broken shower. But something caught my eye and immediately I looked up.

There was a gremlin in the mirror. He stared back at me with depraved, purple encircled lifeless eyes. They didn't have any color in them; the center sort of blended in with the white of the eye. I was startled, so I nearly jumped out of my skin—and so did he.

I was disgusted by his appearance, but I couldn't look away from him. His face was fat, with several chins and acne scars everywhere. His nose was long and horse-like, yet stout with wide nostrils like a pig. Beneath that was a pair of uneven livery lips with rotting yellow teeth behind them.

His forehead was wide and twice as long as the rest of his face, with two thick caterpillar-like eyebrows situated above each wide eye. When he wrinkled his forehead, it created lines that crinkled his entire face, masking him in folds. Stringy bits of greasy brown hair hung down around his face.

My eyes sank down his pencil thin neck to his sickly body—where his ribs jutted out in several directions as though he were mixed up inside. His thorax was splashed with several different colors—pink, purple, green and blue—and stained with acne. Although he was stick thin and malnourished, he was at the same time chubby with rolls of fat hanging down his side and back. With his long, gangly and scaly arms he undid the towel around his waist and revealed his diminished penis and discolored pubic hair. His thighs were stretched and bony, ending down in knobby knees and large misshapen feet with toes that were too far apart from each other.

I was so horrified by this appalling creature that I stepped back too far and fell into the shower, bringing down the curtain with me along with several bottles of old shampoo and soap. After I collected myself, I saw that the gremlin had vanished from the mirror.

I rose from the tub, avoiding the mirror while I bent over to pick up the fallen bottles and to reconnect the fallen shower curtain.

Suddenly, horror struck through my heart—a horror much more intense than seeing any monster in a mirror. Quietly, I opened the door of the bathroom to look out into the hallway to see if I disturbed Dad or any of his friends. Nothing stirred, there were no footsteps—nothing.

A wave of relief washed over me and I disappeared back into the bathroom, still avoiding the mirror, and took a dissatisfying shower. I toweled myself dry and shook out my hair before feeling through the drawers under the sink for a brush. My eyes accidentally met the mirror, but I didn't see much of anything because I dropped down to the floor to avoid any sight of the monster.

I put the brush away and on my hands and knees I crawled out of the bathroom. But it was dark out, and my face collided with a pair of shins. I winced, and then suddenly I felt a blow to my nose. Gasping, I curled up on my side, cupping my bleeding face. My nose was sensitive to the touch, and I was sure it was broken.

As tears flooded from my eyes, Dad screamed at me, "Why are you up so fucking early? Are you always up this god-damned early? Where is Gary, huh? What was all that commotion I heard earlier? Holy shit Schwartz, it's five in the fucking morning and the house is already fucking disgusting." I could smell his breath from the floor and his sweat. His words were unsteady, as though he were having trouble screaming them past his lips. He was hung over and may be coming down from a high.

As he barked all these questions at me, I made an effort not to bleed on the floor and instead on my towel, which I took off from around my waist and laid smoothly over my lap, my nose dripping on it and sometimes my stomach.

But Dad nudged my hands apart from my face with his foot while leaning over to the wall to switch on the hall light. There, he glared down at me with the same intensity the gremlin had in the mirror. He surveyed the damage he made, tilting his head, trying to come up with an excuse for his outburst. I looked back up at him, making sure my face remained neutral with no hints of pain. Dad's face lacked any pity or regret, and he had a small smirk beginning to twitch in the corners of his mouth.

I searched for something to say, but blood pooled in the back of mouth and when I spoke, some of it squirted from the back of my throat and past my lips and unto my chin. I rubbed it away with my knuckle while Dad chuckled.

"I always get up this early because I have to walk to school. Gary is still in bed; he hasn't left yet," I said after I coughed to clear my throat of blood, "and I tripped into the shower and some bottles got knocked down, but I cleaned that up. And I'll clean the house when I get home from school this afternoon."

Dad lifted his gaze so he stared off into the hallway. His fingers drummed on the wall. "No, you're not going to school. Your nose looks broken, idiot. What will people think of you going to school with a broken nose, huh?" Dad muttered as he stepped past me towards his bedroom.

I then cupped my nose again. I called out to him, my voice muffled through my hands, "Dad, this will be like… the twentieth time I've missed school. If you don't let me go, they'll get suspicious anyway. Besides, I don't have bruises anywhere else… I'll say that tripped and fell flat on my nose," I said after him, "and I'll clean up so people won't even notice."

Dad looked over his shoulder, and then turned around aggressively, his fists clenched. Fearful, I crawled back against the wall, thinking I said something wrong. My towel fell off and I felt so vulnerable against that cold wall. I was naked and shuddering with tears and blood flowing down my face.

But Dad held himself back and ran his hands through his greasy hair before nodding. He continued into his bedroom, closing the door.

Groaning, I waited a few moments to collect myself. My nose panged in the center of my face. The blood flow sort of diminished and didn't come out in a river, but a stream. I could taste it in the back of my throat. Carefully, I stood up, switching off the hall light with my elbow. Darkness fell around me, and I felt safe.

I returned to the bathroom, turning the faucet handles so cold water spewed out of the spout. I touched my nose carefully with a cloth to wash away stains of blood.

Looking into the mirror was inevitable, and I saw the gremlin again, his hideous nose now bent and crooked in various places. Our eyes met and I then realized that this was no gremlin. This horrifying creature was me.