Deep Down

There's something less than enjoyable about walking the city's streets. The store windows are black. I don't know why they insist on tinting them; it only screws up the reflection and makes the city all the more inhospitable. Perhaps they're trying to be "modern." If so, it's working, but not in the way they want.

A girl of about seventeen is standing on the sidewalk talking to a middle-aged man. Dark roots are showing on her bleach-blond hair, and the smile on her face might've simply been painted on with lipstick. Certainly she's wearing more makeup than she needs. That spiteful voice in my head wonders if she'll have breast implants in a few years.

My mother looks behind her to make sure I'm still following. If I were smart, I would've gone into the coffee shop a few blocks back and just let her wonder what happened to me. But I didn't. So when she looks back, her piercing eyes focus on me, and once again I find myself wishing she would fall on those heels of hers and land in the middle of traffic. She doesn't smile at me, she never does. Instead she just turns away and keeps walking.

About a block later, we reach the mall. It's filled with teenage couples and PMSing mothers who insist on buying their five-year-olds more clothes. My mother and I end up in one of those clothing stores where everything's bland and it takes the richest people to look that way. I think I remember hearing something about child labor and sweat shops, once, in reference to the merchandise here. I hate just being in the place, and I bite my tongue to keep from saying that I wouldn't even let myself be buried in any of this. Mother, of course, is already picking clothes off the racks to try on.

"Lizzie, come over here."

I hate it when she calls me that.

"There, that looks like it'd suit you."

The top she's holding up to me is hideous. I simply bite my tongue. Forced to take the top, I hold it up to myself and walk over to a mirror.

It takes all of my effort to look into the mirror. And I still see it.

The top is a dripping mass of matted hair and blood, falling in oozing clumps from the hanger. I see glimpses of the store reflected in the mirror, but none of it's the same. It's all horrible sculptures of human viscera and animal carcass. My hands are stained red from touching the top.

I turn quickly away from the mirror, dropping the top as I rush to clutch my stomach. I fight the nausea sweeping up over me, telling myself that none of it's real and it's just a normal mirror and I'm being delusional, it's got to be a delusion.

Squatting on the ground, I open my eyes. My back is to the mirror, and for the moment I decide to keep it that way. Mother's too busy looking at clothes to notice me, and I'm thankful for this one small favor.

This sort of thing has been going on for about a year. Sometimes, I would look in a mirror, and I'd see it. It's so horribly real, and it keeps getting more and more frequent. This makes it harder and harder to shut out.

Shit, how long have I been kneeling on this floor? I grab the top and stand up, brushing myself off. My hands ball into fists, fingernails biting at my palms. I turn around and look into the mirror.

It's only me, holding the bland-looking top in the bland little store.

I exhale, not even realizing that I had been holding my breath.

"Would you try on the top, already?" I hear from behind me. My mother's condescending voice never fails to drive a nail into my gut. Without answering, I walk into the dressing room and shut myself into one of the stalls. I look into the mirror, and my reflection looks back. I quickly pull off the shirt I'm wearing and yank the top off of its hanger. I slide it on over my head and tug it down to see if maybe it could look decent on me. It can't.

"Is it on?"

I whip around and look to see where my mother is. I see her foot tapping impatiently behind the door.

God I hate appeasing her.

I run my hands quickly through my hair, brushing it away from my face. Then I open the stall door, with my mother standing directly in front of me.

"Does it fit?"

I tug on it a bit, pretending to think about it. "I think it's too small." I don't look into her eyes, because I hate the way she looks down on me from her place in those high-heel shoes. And besides, it's probably quite obvious that I'm lying. The only thing wrong with the top is that it's ugly.

"Are you sure?"

I swing my arms a bit, twisting my torso back and forth. "Yeah, it's too small."

My mother stands there a moment longer, and I still refuse to look directly at her. Finally, she walks away, and I go back into my stall, closing the door.

I don't even think about what I'm doing. That's how my eyes lock on the reflection.

It's like someone painted a top on me with clotted blood. I see it clinging to my skin and dripping down my arms. Trickling down my wrist, down my hand...

One red, shivering drop falls from my finger tip, and I stumble back, eyes still locked on the mirror. I crash into the door, and suddenly I'm turned around and pulling at the lock. I push the door open and sprawl onto the floor. Quickly picking myself up, I bump into another lady.

She appears to be in her mid-thirties. Stuttering, my mouth opens and shuts as I try to apologize. My gaze wanders behind her, and I see her image reflected in another mirror.

The lady's hair is matted with gore. Her clothes look ragged and bloody. My mouth gaping open, I can't think. I look around to see what the other mirrors hold. I catch glimpses of her face, plastic skin melting away to reveal a moldy skeletal structure. One of her eyes is completely gouged out, leaving a blackish gaping hole in her head. A better view of her clothes show that they're stitched together with human hair.

My eyes lock on their own reflection. Their gaze wanders downward, and I realize that I'm still in the top. Not even managing to utter a real sentence to the woman, I back away and rush into the stall, slamming the door and tugging at the top. I pull it off of me, gasping for a real breath.

"Lizzie, I have an outfit for you to try."

I want to scream at the woman who gave birth to me, the woman who named me, that my name is not Lizzie: it's Liz. But I don't, I can't, and it doesn't matter, anyway. I open the door, not even thinking about the fact that I'm standing there in my bra. My mother looks at me as if I'm a gutter whore with syphilis, and I snatch the hanger from her hands so I won't have to look at her much longer.

"Give me the top back. Perhaps I can find a size that fits you."

I wonder if she does this just to make me miserable. Turning around to grab the top, I try to avoid looking at the mirror. I look around it, at the walls, at the floor, but when I bring my gaze up to see the top, it's like my head is forced to turn towards the reflection.

My mother. Her eyes are saggy, droopy, pus dripping down and smearing the makeup on her face. The woman's hair is thinning, falling from her scalp, and she's nearly bald. Holes smashed in her head, and I see glimpses of cockroaches swarming in her skull. Her clothing is of children's hide and animal innards. The hands which she got manicured every two weeks - cracking, crumbling, fingers splitting open to a black abyss. And those heels, those goddamn high-heels, are bloody, rusty nails driven into her feet.

I whip around and slam the door shut in my mother's face. My stomach cries out that it wants to vomit, but I breathe in deeply, trying to calm myself. I close my eyes, squeeze them shut, but the image is burned into my mind.

I slowly turn around and look into the mirror. The gory, ugly reflection greets me. Red hand prints covering the stall. Crimson splatters decorating the walls, almost as if someone was playing baseball with rodents in this small space.

The image, it isn't still. I see myself breathing. My hands clench and unclench, eyes piercing into their own reflection. And on the outskirts of my vision, the blood keeps dripping. I focus, I see it. Clearly. Trickling red gore and-

"Stop it! Stop it!"

I hear the phrase over and over again, and when I realize it's me screaming I don't even care.

"Get out of my fucking head!"

I crash against the mirror, my body slamming against it. I feel cold glass against my face. Slipping, sinking to the floor, my fists begin pounding into it. I beat against the mirror, wanting to cry and feeling as if it's all futile when finally I hear a crack as my knuckles make solid contact. Again and again, and I feel stinging on my hands and something warm and slippery as I continue to pound against it. The cracking is louder until soon it's all I hear. Then I feel glass rain down on my head and slice through my face as the mirror breaks.

And something inside me shatters.

I come to, laying on a carpeted floor. I can immediately tell I'm in a store, because it's hard and uncomfortable here. Suddenly, flashes of what happened fill my head and I bolt upright, eyes still shut to see the memories clearly. I wonder if anyone heard me. My mother? The store clerks? Shoppers? They would have to be deaf to have missed it, and I realize I'm probably not in the stall anymore. They've probably moved me and are all standing around in a circle looking down at "poor, misguided Liz." I can just hear my mother saying how I never seem to act normal and I'm always causing some sort of commotion, even though that's not true and I usually sit in a corner quietly ignoring everyone. If anything, I've inherited my delusions from mother.

I open my eyes, and find myself staring into my reflection.

My untainted reflection.

My eyes wander the length of the mirror. Everything looks perfect. I blink. I rub at my eyes. It's still just a bland little store with bland-looking items on plastic hangers.

My face is unscathed. No marks on my hands, and the mirror isn't even scratched. But why? Perhaps I fainted in the stall and it was all just a bad dream. A horrible nightmare. Now I can go back to mother and finish telling her that none of the clothes here fit me.

I stand up and brush myself off. Turning around to open the stall door, my eyes focus on my surroundings.

Gory. Walls old and crumbling. I look down to see blood smeared across my skin.

"No, no, no..."

I fling the door open and hurry out, shutting my eyes to keep from seeing the shoppers passing me by. Opening them again to see where I'm going. Struggling to keep my balance as I realize I don't want to know where I'm going, and the horrible surroundings keep pouring into my head.

Out of the dressing room, I see a woman looking through racks of matted hair and intestines. Holes in her head, and a cockroach falls out of her skull and scurries across the floor.

My mother.

I rush to the exit without looking back. If my mother noticed me, she didn't say anything. Walking through the mall, I pass person after horrible person. A woman hurries past me, a cavern where her chest should be, silicon oozing down her ruined blouse.

My walk turns into a run, and soon I'm bounding through the mall doors and out into the city air.

Air filled with smoke. Dirty and black, collecting above the skyscrapers. I don't feel it in my lungs, but just seeing it makes me cough.

A mother and child walk by, heading into the mall. Another corpse-like woman, it's all I see. Every adult.

Not the child, though. A pale girl of about four, with soft brown hair brushed back out of her face. The child's dress was pink and frilly, and I wondered what went through parents' heads when they picked out such clothing.

"Come on, hon."

I hadn't even realized the girl had stopped to look at me until her mother spoke up. The girl looked up at her mom, who in turn lovingly caressed the child's face. They began walking away, and when the girl looked back at me one last time, I saw a bloody smear across her cheek.

"Fucking hell, this is not happening," I say under my breath, as if that will make it all disappear.

I walk down the city streets, staring at the ground. The concrete crumbles and shifts under my footfalls, and no matter how bad I had thought the city before, it had never been this bad. There's roadkill in the streets. Dead dogs and cats rotting right under the cars' wheels. I can smell the horrible stink of garbage coming from a dumpster an alley away from me. The fumes make me look up and glance into the alley. I quickly realize I shouldn't have.

Day or not, sun or no, the alley is dark. Shadows cling to the walls, to the garbage bins. And to the corpse laying on the pavement. A girl, probably of about twelve years, left in the alley with a bullet to the brain. Her clothes are torn, and-

I turn away quickly and keep walking. I know about rape, sure I know it goes on in the city. Everyone knows. But I did not want to know it happened in that alley to a girl that young and to see how they beat and murdered and fucked-

I stop where I am and shut my eyes, my hands clawing at my face.

Get it out. Get out! Get out...

All I can hear is my voice ringing in my ears in my head and that horrible image of that girl in my mind and I simply want to rip it from behind my eyelids.

I breathe in deeply and let it out. I open my eyes and the memory fades. I keep walking, looking at the ground, trying to concentrate on anything but what I see around me.

I get a few blocks, and I'm feeling slightly calmer, when I see the same teenager I saw earlier. Bleach-blonde with roots showing. Too much makeup.

Only now her skin is bruised and scarred. I see a few gashes still dripping, and the girl appears simply diseased.

A middle-aged man is standing near her, talking to her. One of his legs is bigger than the other, chunkier. He's missing an eye and his lip curls back over yellow, broken teeth. His clothes are shredded, falling apart at the seams, and it seems as if they've been sprayed with acid. I can see his package: his black, shriveled penis, and his one, lonely testicle. He talks, and I hear him asking about cost.

I look back at the girl. She opens her mouth to speak, and semen spills out. It drips down her chin and stains her clothing.

Reeling, I run past them. I don't want to see it I don't want to see any of this. I push past people, refusing to look up into their faces. I want to run out into the street. Out into traffic. It'd be nice to see the windshield rushing towards me, feel my bones breaking against a metal framework. I urge my feet in that direction, but they won't do it. I can't. As much as I want to, I can't end it.

I slump down to the sidewalk, letting my back lean against the building behind me. I close my eyes and curl up into a ball, rocking back and forth.

"It's not real, none of this can be real..."

I don't know how much time passes, nor do I much care. I'm sitting out here, head resting on my arms, leaning against my knees, when I hear the one thing I least want to hear.

"So, this is where you are. I was wondering what happened to you."

I don't look up. I don't want to see what's standing before me. "Hello, mother," I reply bitterly.

"I don't know what's up with you," she continues. "You're such an odd child. Why can't you act normal? But, anyway, I'm done shopping now, so let's go home."

I peer out from behind my arms. Looking down at the cement, I see her standing in front of me. Her feet, a nail driven into each heel, and-

I look away quickly. I have to force the words out, force my throat not to choke up. "I'd rather just stay here, if you don't mind."

"Well, I do mind," she snaps. "I will not have my child sitting out here on the sidewalk like a lunatic. You are not city trash, and you are coming home with me."

I can't stand it when she pulls this crap. "I'm staying here, mother."

"Don't you dare talk back to me. Stop acting like such a spoiled brat."

Something inside me snaps. "I'm sorry I'm not the perfect child you wanted," I spit out, finally looking up into her sagging eyes. "I don't want to go home, and I certainly don't want to be anywhere near you, right now. So please, go away."

She simply looks at me for a moment. "Fine, stay here," she says. My mother leans over a bit, and I try to ignore the gaping holes in her head, the pus dripping from her eyes. "Live out here, for all I care. You're such an ingrate, but even still, I am your mother. And when you grow up, you will be exactly like me."

My mother's gaze pierces into me, her words ringing in my ears. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the cockroaches which fill her skull scuttling about. One crawls out and suddenly falls from her head. My entire body spasms as it lands on my arm and begins scurrying across my skin and under my sleeve, leaving a brownish-red trail of blood and grime behind it. At this point, I can't help it.

I begin to scream.