A Faded Reflection

        Kip Wilkinson had long known that he was unique in his ability to see the reflection of when people would die, but when he was confronted by his girlfriend, Maddie, about why he had been acting so strange, then, even he was shocked by her reaction.

        “Are you sure that this isn’t just some kind of schizophrenia? Maybe we should take you to see some sort of psychologist about it.” Her tone was completely level and that was what annoyed Kip the most about it. In hindsight he should have seen this coming, after all his mother had had a similar reaction when he had told her that her own reflection was fading, but she had merely acted all worried about him instead of going to the doctor herself. She had died of a brain tumor when he was ten, he hadn’t asked anyone if she would have survived if she had received earlier treatment for it. But in the months prior to her death there was a sad awkwardness in which they didn’t once speak of Kip's precinct knowledge which made it clear, to him at least, that there most likely would have been a better chance of her surviving if she had gone to the doctor sooner as he had advised.

        “Did you hear anything I just told you?! Is my mothers death not proof enough?” He was acting overly sensitive, and he acknowledged this. But there was still something he was holding back from her, something which he didn’t think he could bring himself to tell her lest he shed tears and really made her scared for his sanity. Something that he dared not even ponder on in his head since it was already clear to him that nothing could be done about it. 

        “Maybe you should just take a nap then, it’ll do you little good to die of sleep deprivation, I haven’t even seen you close your eyes in at least a week.” She took a deep breath and continued on to say, “Anyway, I don’t see why it's bothering you right now all of a sudden, that is, if you really have lived your entire life with it like you say.”

        “I-” And that was all he got out before a buketload of tears began to pour out of his eyes and he shut them before huddling in on himself and shaking all though his body. Maybe the cause of his death would be sleep deprivation, caused by his constant worry of his death, what a laugh that would be.

        “Ohh, there now, no need to cry. Just come up now with me and I'll take you to bed.” She took his hand as she stood and he consented as she pulled him along to his bedroom in the dingy apartment on brooklyn avenue. 

        When they got to his queen sized bed she placed him down and then cuddled up next to him as well pulling a blanket over the both of them. She was just treating him more and more like she was his mother as she began to sense his sensitivity to any adult conversations, he couldn’t muster up his thoughts well enough to be mad and so he let her do as she pleased. He didn’t ask her to, but she stayed with him all night. A night in which Kip found himself unable to shut his eyes and sleep.

He decided that the sleepless night would be over when some sun began to shine through the window, and so he slipped off the bed and out from under the cover to go to the one other room of his apartment, which was really two rooms that were separated by a door frame type thing with no door. He made himself some coffee to hold off from entering the bathroom to brush his teeth. When the coffee was done he thought whether or not he would put sugar into it, he almost never did, then he thought of reflections, his reflection in particular, and he almost wanted to laugh at himself but just couldn’t, his heart still felt frozen, as it had been since the last time he had looked at his in a mirror, and seen that his reflection had begun to fade.

        Once he had dumped five packs of sugar into his coffee, he didn’t have creamer, he went over to his couch and sat down. He blew on his coffee, then stopped because he saw his reflection in the liquid, or rather he saw a reflection of himself which was almost halfway transparent. Seeing the reflective liquid his heart beat faster, he brought the steaming cup to his lips and tilted his head back. He wanted it gone, steaminging its way down his throat, bringing him searing pain all the while. He did not, however, give a damn. In a way the pain brought him some sort of relief, and he was glad for its distraction from other things. In the moment he didn’t even realize that, as he drank the smoldering coffee he had begun to make some sort of urgent screaming sound, which came from the back of his throat, and alerted Maddie that something was wrong, which caused her to be there in about ten seconds. Holding the cup in his hand, trying to ease it away, this only caused the cup to splash around making the liquid come into contact with the skin on his face and his pants and shirt.

        When the cup was finally wretched from his hand it went flying across the room and into the wall, shattering into tiny bits which went everywhere. Maddie sat down and held him as he gasped for breath which rushed in, and brought him agony. He tried to make out the words, I’m fine, but instead it came out as sounding like, “ah mh fanl-”.

        “Shhhh… Don’t try to talk.” Maddie whispered in a soothing voice which attempted and failed to calm him. 

        He scooched out of her light touch and sat on the couch looking down at his hands. He tried not to think but he couldn’t help it. And when he thought, he thought that maybe he should go so that maddie wouldn’t be pained by whatever happened to him. He wouldn’t want to cause her any more pain then he had to. At least she still might think him alive if he left.

        He then got up and went to the bathroom dizzily because of the pain running down his throat, it really had been some scalding hot coffee. In hindsight he would have thought to avoid the bathroom at all costs, it being the only room with a mirror, he had seen to that himself, but at that moment he hadn’t been thinking about reflections, and a good splash in the face with some water from the sink sure sounded good in his head, maybe it would clear away the dizziness, and perhaps he’d even take a few sips if he could bear the pain it would bring.

        He got to the sink in the bathroom and even splashed some water on his face before looking up at the reflection of himself in the mirror. The mirror which showed him a faded image of himself. His face contorted, a pitiful attempt at anger at the world which only resulted into a look of a half crazed madman on the brink of insanity. In haste, he grabbed both sides of the mirror which was built onto the front faced opening of a small cabinet as most bathroom mirrors in the city were made. He pulled it off its hinges and threw it to the side, where it hit the wall then the floor, shattering into pieces, with most of them staring back up at his faded self.

        His shaky legs slowly gave way, dropping him into a curled up position on the floor. His body being impaled by tiny, reflective, splinters as he rolled back and forth slowly muttering to himself as tears slowly came down his cheek in singlets. He noticed then that Maddie was talking in a soothing voice on the other side of the door which the soles of his feet were pressed against.

        “...Kip… Do you wanna open the door? I can give you some pain relief pills that I keep with me...I have to leave soon for college though, there's a lecturer coming in today…”

        “Please don’t go…” His voice was a pleading moan, which had much croakiness to it because of his burnt throat. He regretted saying the words the second they were out, and he squinted his eyes as tears continued to crop out of his eyes. He should just let her go, what had happened earlier when he had considered disappearing himself?

        “Well… I might be able to skip it, if it means so much to you…” He heard her sigh and thought that maybe she was shedding tears as well. What was wrong with him, every second he seemed to just cause her more and more pain, maybe he should just end himself now and get over with all the anticipation. After all, he had first noticed his reflection beginning to fade almost three weeks ago now, and if his estimations were correct that still gave him a couple months left at least. But no, killing himself now would only fill the prophecy of his death. And maybe he was wrong, he only really had the experience of his mom's death to go off of, and she had died three months after he had noticed her reflection begin to fade. Maybe he was different somehow though and he still had like, a whole six months left or something, or maybe a whole year! That sounded like a lot to him now… Maybe if it was some sort of disease then he could have it cured still if he went to the doctor then he could still survive, perhaps the fading of a reflection wasn’t as final as he had always thought.

        “No… No, you should go. I'll be fine on my own, in fact, I might need a little time on my own… just to think things over.” He was trying to make himself sound less in pain, and it worked slightly, in the sense that he had made a resolution about what to do.

        “All right, well if you think you’ll really be fine on your own, then I guess i'll just give you those pills and be off then.”

        “Yeah…” He shakily stood up and pulled a washcloth from the now gaping cabinet. He wiped off the blood as best he could while averting his eyes from the pieces of glass on the floor. He then opened the door and stood in front of a pouty faced maddie.

        “Ohhh, you're all cut up, how did…” she looked at the pieces of glass on the floor and her mind seemed to click as she moved her hand behind his back and put him down on the couch, all the while making soothing sounds. She then went over to the table with her purse and took pills from a container, she also filled up a glass with some water. “Here…” She put the glass, along with the two painkillers into his hands, and he avoided looking at the reflection in the water as he downed them both in a painful swallow. 

        “Are you sure you'll be alright by yourself? I can skip one day of boring lectures if I have to.” She said it earnestly, but she clearly was worried about skipping, she had always been afraid of getting in trouble, ever since he had met her right out of high school. He didn’t go to college and most likely he never would, he had been working as a freelance sculptor ever since his senior year of high school. It didn’t pay for much very often, but when it did the rich guys always paid dearly. He was well known among the people who paid lots for stuff that someone else made. Fakers was what his art teacher, and mentor really, had called them.

        “Yeah I'll be fine, like I said, maybe some time on my own could help. He decided not to tell her about how he was going to go to the doctors as soon as she left, since that would beg the question of why he was all the sudden worried about his health.

        “If you say so… I guess I'll be going then.” She came over and gave him a kiss. “I love you.”

        She said it matter of factly, and then she twirled about and was out the door before he could say he also loved her.

        He waited about ten minutes in silence before getting up and going to the door himself. He was already dressed in his clothes from the day before since he hadn’t taken them off before bed the night before, so he didn't bother changing them before the doctor.

        It was about a mile walk through the bustling city to get to the doctor he had been going to for the past five years. His Doctor's name was something german and hard for him to pronounce, he also had a heavy accent. His appearance obviously wasn’t expected, so he had to wait in the small room filled with the occasional cough from the other people waiting in the sickly section of the place. The doctor asked for him after about an hour or so.

        “ Zo, Mister Wilkinson. Is there something pathicular that is causing you pain or stress?”

        “Well… I don’t know about a certain body part that is causing me pain but I haven’t felt very good for the past two weeks, and was hoping for a general checkup just to see if there was something you couldn’t do so that I could get a good night's sleep again.” Of course, he couldn’t tell the man that he thought he was going to die in a matter of months. He didn’t want to end up in an insane asylum.

        “I'll see what I'll see, and iv I can’t find anything then I make extra certain you don’t leave here without some sleeping meduvation.”

        The german doctor did a normal checkup, said everything seemed normal, then sent him on his way with some sleeping pills. Once he was outside he downed five of them, wanting to escape his horrible reality.

        He walked out onto the street, not yet feeling the effects of the pills he had taken, but still feeling delirious with fear of his eventual death. His mind was filled with thoughts and questions, which were thought up in a fearful way. Would he be murdered? How would he die if not by disease? Would it be some kind of horrible and painful accident? The sensible part of his brain was telling him that he shouldn't be thinking such questions, that they were pointless in their desire for an answer. But he couldn’t stop himself, he was slowly falling down a pit of madness that was too sheer to climb out of.

        He continued his way going aimlessly through the city streets, not in any particular direction, but hoping all the same to escape his own thoughts for good. And, as he kept going along, plagued with his unavoidable thoughts which filled him with despair, he started noticing more and more reflective surfaces, which casted a faded reflection of himself back at him. Large vertical windows which were set in arrays along the towering buildings, a hotdog stand which cast a warped view upon him, only made worse by the beaming sun from above, puddles of mucky water which were gleaming all through the city streets… all too many things which reflected a view of himself which was becoming ill with the disease of transparency.

        Through all this madness he took more and more of the sleeping pills hoping for their effects to come into play. He caught sight of a slight gleam from the purse of a passerby. The barrel of something which extended into what appeared to be the handle of a gun. With speed unaccounted for he pulled the small gun out of the purse, the holder of the purse shrieked and tugged on the purse. His hand already had a grip of the gun however, so it came out all the same.

        He ran on, as he had already been doing since his trot had slowly increased, the gun was held tight with his finger on the trigger. He came upon an especially tall vertical window which was especially shiny. Before he knew what he was doing the gun was pointed at his reflection and all that could be heard was:

        Bang! Bang! Bang!

        The first two shots made cracked bullet holes in the window, but on the third one, the entire window shattered into pieces, and his reflection along with it…

        ...Suddenly he was alone on the street, or no, there was no street, there was no city. There was only an infinite nothingness, a nothingness so heavy he could barely breathe. But… he no longer had to breathe, who was he? Did he exist?

        He floated along, he existed, he couldn't however, exist, nothing here existed things just weren't. His reflection had shattered, and along with his bonds to the physical plane of existence.