I fled. I ran and I ran, but I know I can never run far enough.
I have since checked into a sanitarium so that I might hide amidst the mad and the infirm. But it is useless, because I am a cursed man. I can hear them, you see. The whispers. I hear the dead speaking to me, without the aid of the wax. Without the facilitation of the machine. I have been touched, and they will not release me until I join them. Even if they have to come and drag me into the very bowels of hell.
I know all of this to be true, because the name that Mas’ud Nasir spoke on that recording wasn’t the name of my friend, Oliver Maxwell. I have no doubt that Oliver heard his own name when speaking with the spirit, but upon playback of the recording a different name issued from Nasir’s unearthly lips.
It was my name that echoed across the eons.
My name that was etched into the wax.
It was mine.
Tonia Brown is a Southern author with a penchant for Victorian dead things. She writes in many genres from horror (Sundowners) to humor (Badass Zombie Road Trip) to erotica (Lucky Stiff) to steampunk (The Cold Beneath). She also tends to a few webserials such as the weird western Railroad! and the humorous Confessions of a Villainess. She recently signed on with Permuted Press to re-release the self-published novel Skin Trade, as well as two more new novels in the series. When not writing, she raises unicorns and fights crime with her husband under the code names Dr. Weird and his sexy sidekick Butternut. You can learn more about her at www.thebackseatwriter.com
-The Mirror Box
by Charles Colyott
She listens: nothing.
In her hesitation, she fumbles the keys. They hit the carpet with a flat clink. She bends, slowly, and as her hand closes around the key ring, she hears a tentative shifting behind the door.
Then a frantic seizure of rattling, banging, and scratching. She glances each way down the hall, slides the key home, and makes a silent vow never to be late again.
There is no scream, but she hears it anyway, feels it, deep inside.
Never again.
* * *
September 28, 1990
i can’t stop looking at her hands. She takes it well enough, i guess, probably thinking that i’m paying attention to the lesson, but i just can’t stop staring - they’re so small and delicate, like a child’s. So dainty and clean. i wonder what it must be like to touch them. Would they feel cool, the way your pillow feels on your cheek? i imagine so. i wonder what they would feel like on my face, only that makes me think of Garrett, Diary, and that makes my throat close all up sure as if he was there on top of me again, those fat leathery fingers squeezing me. She asks ‘whats wrong’ and ‘am i okay’? but i can’t answer till i have had a pull or two off of my inhaler. Even then i can’t tell her, not really. Not the truth. i look at her face, her eyes, and i see who she is and i love her so much, but i can’t say that either. She’d think i was crazy for sure.
She’s so pretty, Diary. And sweet and kind. She doesn’t have to be here with me, helping me read, but she is. And she says she don’t mind. She says we are friends. i think about that all the time, how she says that and meant it, too. i wonder how she knew it or if she just decided it or what.
She says ‘dakota?’ and i say ‘what?’ (Actually i said ‘Huh’ but ‘What?’ is better and you are my diary and so i can change it if i want to)
She says ‘You ok?’ and i think i smiled. It was getting late and i had to get home but i told her ‘Thank you’ for the lesson. She said she’d see me at school tomorrow. i told her no cuz Garrett and Cindy promised to take me up to see my mom.
(i know diary, i know–i promised to tell you more about my mom, but i’m not ready to yet and if you are a real friend you’d understand and STOP PRESSURING ME about it already)
She says okay and i give her a big hug but she winces and tightens up like one of them store mannequins.
She must think i’m ugly too, only she don’t say it.
That’s ok. i know i am ugly. i got eyes.
An ugly dirty stupid whore.
But Beatrix Carrell is my friend and she can look past all that.
i love her.
* * *
The thing in the box nods, its eyes squeezed shut, the worn nubs of its teeth ground together. It cannot scream; its vocal cords have been severed. As the scalpel draws down its scabrous arm, teasing the skin apart layer by layer, the creature sucks air in with a long, low hiss.
The woman looks down at it, touches the box gingerly, lovingly, and sets the blade upon a paper napkin.
The thing in the box cannot speak but it mouths the words thank you.
* * *
October 15th 1992
Goddammit.
Sometimes they say that it’s good to write about things. That it gives you a bit of distance, a different perspective.
I hope they’re right.
Today, when I was leaving school, Mark and I ran into Dakota. She was doing her shoegazer routine, shuffling from foot to foot, staring down at her dollar store Keds, so I asked her what was up. She kept glancing at Mark and looking uncomfortable. I know how she is… and she can be so goddamned frustrating sometimes. I think I lost my temper a bit, put a bit too much of an edge on my words…
Dakota–The incredible shrinking girl.
I moved in to catch her before she disappeared completely. Put my hands on her shoulders just to reassure her, felt the edges and hollows of her bones… God, she was scary thin.
And I felt like such shit. How could I be annoyed with her for acting like a victim when that was all she’d ever been?
And then it hit me.
I was supposed to help her study, and I’d completely forgotten. All because of a dumb boy.
When I told Mark, he turned into a complete asshole about it.
Or revealed that he’d just been an asshole in hipster’s clothing the whole time.
God, what a dickhead. He was all talking down to her, calling her “Duh-kota” like the shitty jocks do. And to see the hurt that it caused her… and the look in her eyes… like she thought that he was putting words to the way that I really felt.
I didn’t think. I just shoved him. I pushed him so hard, diary, and I caught him by surprise because he fell down and slid a few feet on the concrete. I could see his stupid paisley boxers and the angry red scrape that was already coming up on his hip. I felt so strong, then. And I didn’t have to raise my voice at all when I said to never ever call her those names again.
He could see it in my eyes that I was very serious.
He was shocked.
And he tried to play it off all cool, like he didn’t care. Called us “lesbos” called D. a “retard.”
Whatever.
So I took Dakota to my house.
Dakota had a book report due, so I helped her finish it. I wrote out the words correctly, and she copied them over in her own writing. It isn’t cheating, really. She did all the work, but sometimes her letters don’t come out right. Mr. O’Connell says Dakota is lazy. Dakota says it’s from “the accident,” but I don’t know what accident she means.
There’s a lot she won’t talk about, but that’s okay. I know how it goes.
I had the radio on–“Everybody Hurts“ by R.E.M. She touched my hair. It would’ve been weird, but I know her… Sometimes Dakota can’t help it… she thinks something is pretty, so she wants to hold it.
She hugs me an awful lot. I don’t know what it is she sees.
Dakota is so skinny. Gawky. And her hair falls around her face in a sort of mousy brown car wreck. Her eyes, when I can see them, are troubled and beautiful and blue. I like her eyes. Mine are brown and unremarkable. The color of shit.
And I’ve told you all of this just to say that… I didn’t mean anything by it.
I thought we could be silly and girly, that’s all.
I reached out to brush the matted tangles from her face.
When it’s just the two of us…
Dakota is:
<
br /> Afraid.
Timid.
Wonderful.
I stroked her cheek.
She never wears any makeup, doesn’t even own any.
So I smiled, took her by the hand, and led her to my bathroom. She sat on the counter, by the sink, and I, with my brushes and combs, began to work at her hair.
I remember thinking that she could be pretty, maybe.
So when I was done with her hair, I cleaned her up a bit. A little foundation, a little mascara… She cringed when I did her eyes.
When I finished, I kissed her forehead. She smiled up at me, the way a kid would.
Secret sisters, that’s us.
I turned her around to face the mirror.
God…I…
She screamed so loud and it knocked me to my knees and I don’t remember seeing her face hit the glass but I will never forget hearing it… the shrieking of the mirror as it shattered, the splash of the tiny shards spilling over us, biting into us.
Blood spattered my knees, but I don’t know if it was mine.
And then I screamed too, somehow, and pulled her away from the sink, dragging her from the wreckage. And I could see tiny reflections of horror staring back from the openings in her cheeks and forehead. We were both monsters (Secret sisters) and I just kept asking her why over and over and - through our sobs - I heard her quiet terror in the words “I am not her. I am not her.”
It was all she said, in the ambulance, and in the hospital - I am not her - until exhaustion took her from me.
* * *
It is the quiet moments, the silences between torments, which they both cherish. The woman sets the tools aside and leans over to touch The Thing.
She knows it cannot feel her anymore, but she touches it anyway.
Her fingers trace the pink ropes of scar tissue–scars upon scars, until the tissue barely resembles skin.
This reminds her to check the thermostat and refill the humidifier; drastic temperature changes cause Its flesh to crack and split, a symptom of the repeated cutting.
Its arms and head emerge from holes in the lacquered plywood box. Its joints and knuckles are swollen, the skin, yellowish and ashen, strains against bone like overstretched canvas.
In contrast, the woman’s hands are almost albinotic, except for the long, manicured nails painted deep crimson with polish and blood.
She strokes Its face and wonders how much longer this can go on. The Thing undulates and issues a hiss of a sigh; the shards of glass packed into the box crackle beneath it.
* * *
October 16th, 1992
Diary, I hurt. Cuz I was so stupid. I can’t believe Bea even wants to be friends with me, I’m so stupid.
It’s just that I got so scared there for a minute. I saw Her there in the mirror and it just all came back like somebody set off a bomb inside my head.
The doctor says I probably won’t scar much, on account of a plastic surgeon being there when they brought me in. It don’t matter to me. I know I’m ugly, they know I’m ugly. What’s a few scars matter?
I know I said I’d tell and I may as well. I told Bea a while ago. I hope she doesn’t leave me. I just wanted her to understand.
See, Diary, my mama never wanted me. She was a whore. In the movies. She did bad things in movies with lots of men. Girls too I guess.
She didn’t want me but she had me and so I stayed mostly with my Gramma while she was off whoring, but one night some men came. They had masks and they had cameras and they hit me and they…
…they did the bad thing and they videotaped it. And they hit my Gramma and my mama and they did the bad things they wanted to do and they put it all in the movies. Mama told them to, so she could be famous again.
They beat Gramma so bad that she died not too long after.
Mama wanted to be famous more than anything I suppose, and she didn’t care about anybody else.
I hate her.
When she died I wasn’t sad and I wasn’t happy. I just felt dead and empty but I kept on going like a robot.
I saw some head doctors and stuff on account of them saying I had problems from my accident where the men hurt me. After awhile, when they figured out that they couldn’t fix me, they just said I was fine. Then they gave me to my foster parents. I had a bunch but now I am with Garrett and Cindy and they are not so bad. I have had worse, Diary.
There is one other thing I should tell you. I don’t want to but I should. Gramma said honesty was the best cuz you didn’t have to remember so much, and my memory is not so good and so I tell the truth.
The true thing, Diary, is that I always dream that those men put my mama up on a stage like she was a cow or something and they had an auction. And one of the men gave me an awful lot of money and he told me to bid. When I won they gave me everything I needed and made me go down there to where she was chained up, and I took the gun they gave me and I shot that whore until there wasn’t no bullets left.
When I look in the mirror I see her there. When I go to the bathroom or I have a bath I see the things she done. The things they done to me.
I miss my Gramma so much and I’m so sorry that she died cuz of us.
I don’t want to be like that whore and I don’t want to look like her, and I do, and I wonder what I would do if I still had that gun from the men.
Bea says that virginity isn’t something a man can take from you. She says you have to give it and she says that I didn’t. But I don’t know.
I don’t like to think about those things and all these changes.
Tomorrow I will be sixteen years old. Sweet sixteen. And I have to spend it here all bandaged up in the hospital, Diary, can you believe it?
Bea says she will visit.
Have you ever wanted to be somebody else, Diary, cuz I know I do. There are times I wish I was Bea on account of how pretty she is. And I seen her daddy hugging her and he cries when he does cuz he loves his girl so much.
I don’t even know my daddy.
I wish somebody loved me like that though.
Oh heck, Diary, I am tired and not making any cents! I will go to bed now and hopefully dream of horses.
They are my favrit.
* * *
July 4th, 1993
“Would you come on, Dakota? It’s okay!”
Bea waves her friend on, attempting to coax the shy girl into the changing booths. Dakota hugs herself tightly, with eyes cast to the wooden dock.
It is 78 degrees and sunny. The beach hurts Dakota’s eyes; the sun and sand are brilliant white, the water a luminous blue.
Dakota wears an oversized black t-shirt, an ankle-length skirt, boots, and a wide-brimmed hat. She looks at Bea’s cut-off shorts and tank top.
“No.”
“Dakota, c’mon… you can’t swim like that!”
“I don’t want to swim. I don’t know how to swim.”
“I’ll help you. Dakota! You promised…”
Dakota feels the girl’s pleading gaze.
Her stomach full of butterflies, she forces herself to Bea’s side. They clasp hands and, together, enter the changing booth.
Inside the cramped wood slat box, Bea immediately kicks off her flip-flops and begins undressing.
“W–what are you doing?”
“What’s it look like, silly? I’m changing into my suit.”
“Right h–here?”
“Sure. It’s a changing room.”
“I’ll wait outside…”
“Why? Look, it’s only me. We’ve been friends for how long?”
Dakota’s eyes met hers. She slowly removed her hat, took hold of her shirt, and began to raise it over her head. Bea slipped off her shorts and paused as she saw Dakota’s chest.
“Dakota? Are you..?”
Horror Library, Volume 5 Page 36