The Mirror

     It was a normal night just like all the other nights in my life where I got into bed after a long day and curled up under the covers and rested my head on the cool smooth pillow and drifted off to sleep. But isn’t that how all these things start. I drift off and the world fades away and I am left with just my thoughts to keep me company as my brain starts to crank the gears on a production of my next dear as I sit back and watch. But that’s when I see it, a mirror but not a normal mirror, it’s strange, it looks like it contains the whole galaxy behind the glass but as I walk in front of it I see not my normal self with my cropped short hair and freckled face but a skeleton. It stares back at me and moves as I do, shifting back and forth and waving, its old dusty bones move along and its sad dark eye sockets seem filled with emotion but empty like a dark void trying to pull me in. I reach out fascinated by this, curiosity has always been both a strength and a weakness of mine and I remember being told as a child, “Curiosity killed the cat” what a stupid saying. I reach out my hand outstretched toward the mirror, and the skeleton follows and our fingers reach toward each other, then they collide. 

I feel like I have been shot forward on a roller coaster as I am being sucked through the mirror, I am left inside of it. I am spit out into total darkness and pictures flash through my mind and around me of the world in destruction, I see the burnt dry land that outstretches for miles and the flooded streets of towns that used to be filled with life and happiness but are now dead and quiet. I reach out trying to grasp where these images are coming from. I shout to whoever can hear me trying to understand what is going on for this is no normal dream. 

I shoot up in bed, my heartbeat rings through my head loud and clear and my chest rises and falls so rapidly I can barely catch my breath. A cold sweat trickles down my spine sending a cold, spider-like shiver up my spine as I decide to tell no one of what happened that night.

I am sitting in my boring class, drawing on the inside of my desk, my eyes blinking open and close. With each flicker of my eyelids closing and opening, I see it again, that mirror from a few nights prior. Open and close. Each frame of the dream flickering on and off like a stop motion movie. Then I get sucked through the mirror with a jolt and my eyes are forced closed my eyes bolt back and forth beneath my eyelids as the same images flash age.

I am snapped back to reality as I let out a dry, cold gasp. And dart my eyes across the room to make sure no one noticed me. I wait at the edge of my seat for the bell to ring and the second it does I leap from my seat and make a clear sprint for the door.

I am scared to sleep, I don’t want that dream again but I am still ever so curious so I force myself beneath the covers and lie down and stare at the ceiling waiting to slip away from reality.

I am in front of the mirror, I take a deep breath and walk toward it and reach out my hand. I need to figure out what is going on. So I touch the mirror and am jolted into the void and see the flashing images. I notice that they are familiar places, I stare, in shock at these images, and just like the times before I am spit out back to my bedroom to wonder in fear what had just happened. So I jump off the bed, my bare feet slamming to the ground. I run my hands over the shelves trying to find a notebook in the dark. I pull it off the shelf and click the pen as I glide it across the page trying to describe the pictures.

The next morning I pour over the pages, as I take a sick day, trying to figure out what this could mean. I can see my train of thought gliding through the pen lines. I finally figure it out after hours of searching through the pages. It is my future, our future, the future of the world.

My breathing increases as my heart pounds inside my rib cage waiting to break free. How could this come to be? I can not allow this to be my future, our future. I must take action. I run to my computer and rip it open, rapidly typing my fingers effortlessly dancing across the keyboard as I search for answers. This could not be, these pictures are of what will happen when climate change finally really starts kicking us back and the skeleton… My breath hitches as I realize where my train of thought is headed and I slam on the brakes. 

The next day and the many days to follow I research and work. Taking action and spreading awareness might be to come and the dream stops. No more mirror, no more skeleton, and no more images. But none the less I keep working day after day trying to change what is to come hoping that it will pay off.

It has been many months since my last dream about the mirror so once again, I lie back in my bed with the covers draping over me, protecting me, and keeping me safe. I fade away and I see it again, that same mirror. I let out a breath and walk over knowing I must be brave. When I am in front of it, I don’t see a skeleton staring back at me but me, it's me, but older and I look alive not just old bones but a real-life me, and a smile slips across my face as I go into the mirror. The images are no longer what they were before still bad but nothing like they were before.

When I am back to reality I stare up at the ceiling. I know that I have done something but I cannot stop now the work for a better future will never stop and I must keep fighting for the future of all of us and for our world.