Ch 9. High School Ritual: The Mirror (SepSceneWriMo)

Four high school students encounter an evil spirit. Thoroughly cliched and hopelessly derivative.

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The family started dinner without waiting for him. The bathtub was running and Mikhail was staring in the mirror. Greasy black hair, pale skin, the purple eyes of one who hasn’t slept in days. He had made his plan. Dinner was not the time. When—later. And how? Option two. It didn’t matter how his father treated him, and it didn’t matter how he felt about it. He would show them all how nothing mattered.

He turned off the faucet and listened. He could hear forks and knives clanging against plates, laughter. Why did they laugh so much? Was it normal for families to laugh? Surely not his family. He pulled a shirt on and went to the dining room.

Everyone got quiet. His father said, “Why are you late for dinner? We’re over half finished. Don’t you have any respect for your mother? Every other night, it’s something else with you—”

Mikhail tilted his head and listened with exaggerated interest. “What’s the matter, Colonel?” he asked, helping himself to salad from the bowl nearest his father.

His father started to stand up. “Alright, that’s it—!”

“Frank, stop,” Mikhail’s mother interrupted him and he sat down.

After that, Mikhail was ignored except by his mother, who coaxed him quietly to eat and offered him ice cream if he finished his dinner. He could not help smiling at her. She was the only one who ever made any effort, and maybe it should have been enough. He declined the ice cream and went back upstairs.

Locking his door, he sat down on the floor. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights. Everything was in place. He could see the sky from where he was laying. A single, tiny star twinkled in the black sky. Why did it twinkle? There was no reason to twinkle.

The hour was approaching and he was beginning to get scared. He tried to push these feelings down, remind himself that they were unbecoming. He was trying to work up the courage to complete his purpose when a strange cloud of smoke entered the window. For a moment he thought someone was smoking outside, but something smelled off about it. He got up to shut the window but the smoke billowed and enveloped him, and then he spun around and collapsed.

When he opened his eyes again, he was standing on a blank cliff, as smooth as marble, all horizons hidden in mists, illuminated by an unknown light source. He stared down into a black abyss, and a voice from outside himself, said, why don’t you do it now? He looked around. He didn’t want to do it anymore but the voice insisted.

He was panicking but the smoke and the voice seemed to crawl upwards from the abyss. It touched his feet and climbed his leg. For an instance, he had a moment of clarity—he must do it himself before it dragged him down against his will. Could he exercise his will? But before he could answer, his foot slipped and he fell into the abyss.