Three Things

Three Things

 

He has smeared “I WAS BEAUTIFUL ONCE” across the wall in a violent, vile mix of blood, bile, rot, and feces. A dead rat has been smashed into the T.

 

He sits alone in the room. It is filled with urine soaked paper, mould and mildew drip down the walls. He boarded up the windows a long time ago. He looks at the mirror. It is the only thing that hasn’t been destroyed, violated, or defaced.

 

He crawls to it. His eyes are downcast, his hands scramble through debris as he makes his way to it. Things crawl over his fingers, across his calves. When he reaches the mirror, he caresses it, leaving blood on its edges. Blood on new cuts, blood that drips over old gashes. He smashed the windows before he boarded them up.

 

He gathers the courage to look into the mirror. His face does not look back. His own face as it looks now does not stare back at him. His face from before looks back. His face that made women, and some men, swoon looks back at him. His unblemished, angelically beautiful face looks back.

 

“Are you ready,” his other face asks.

“Not yet, I want to, but not yet.”

“Take your time darling,” his other face says, “I will wait for you forever.”

The other face smiles after it says this, then dims and begins to fade away.

 

“Please,” he whines, “Please come back.”

“That was quick. Does this mean you are ready now?”

“No. I remember that you once said you love me. Do you still love me?”

“I do. You’re everything to me. The universe could collapse tonight and as long as I had you I wouldn’t care. You are my breath, my world, my soul.”

“Then why did you do this to me?”

 

A sculpted eyebrow is raised.

 

“I only gave you what you asked for. What you wanted.”

He screams, “I wanted this? This?” and spit flies onto the mirror. It rolls down the glass and puddles on the floor.

 

“What was the first thing you asked me for? The first time we met, I asked you what you wanted and what did you tell me?

 

“A woman.”

 

“And I gave you hundreds.” There is no anger in its voice. It is patient and tender. A tolerant teacher talking to an idiot child. The child who will be lucky if he ever has enough mental acuity to leave his parents’ house.