The World Reflected Back

Something is compelling her to look through her telescope that night at this exact moment though she has no idea what. Expecting to see the usual night sky she always sees, our own Milky Way. Nothing could of prepare her for what was about to happen.  As she leaned towards the eye piece and pulled herself close, she felt her essence leave her body shoot through the telescope into the night sky and reflect back down in to the World below.

`How very odd’ she thinks to herself as she moves her head back away from her telescope and goes to call her partner she realizes everything around her is the wrong way around as if she has been pulled into a mirrored image of her world. It’s so disorientating she begins to panic `Mike, Mike!’ she screams louder and louder as her throat feels like it’s closing from the inside out as her anxiety raises and her head goes into an un-ending spin.

He hastily runs up the stairs a couple at a time `Amy what’s wrong?’ he asks clearly spooked. 

Amy simply stares at him in a complete daze, Mike has a birthmark on his right cheek but it’s now on his left `What the hell is going on?’ she gasps for breath as she only just manages to get the question out there.

Mike looks confused `What do you mean? Amy I’m worried about you.’ 

At this point Amy starts staggering towards the door of the attic which used to be on the left but is now on the right. Moving her arms across the walls as she feels sick and as if she’s swaying on a boat on a stormy sea muttering under her breath `I don’t understand, I don’t get it, where am I? Why is everything back to front?’

Mike follows behind her with his arms out wide ready to catch her if she falls, clearly worried she may pass out at any moment. `Amy do you need me to call someone, a doctor maybe, you’re not making any sense?’ Mike is clearly freaked out by how Amy is behaving and unsure what to do to help her.

Amy continues frantically searching for some explanation to this reversed world she’s entered. `This was there, that was here.’ Rambling on questioning everything, she’s well aware she sounds like a mad woman, who needs to be put in a straight-jacket; gesturing with her hands as she speaks. Turning her head sharply to look back at Mike she snaps `You!  That was this side but now it’s on the other side!’ pointing at his cheeks.

Mike is bewildered `Amy please you’re scaring me. Please tell me how I can help. I want to help you but I don’t understand what is going on!’

`Me neither!’ Amy replies `How can I explain to you when I can’t even decipher it myself. Only way I can think of to try and tell you is I feel like I’ve entered a mirror and am trapped in the other side. The World reflected back.  It’s stifling I feel like the walls are closing in. Nothing is in the right place, everything is opposite.’

She wanders around their home, a home she usually feels at peace in, settled in. She feels her world is torn asunder, she’s stuck in turmoil. The complete opposite of how she normally exists. She makes it to the front door and looks up even the sky looks wrong. Nothing is where it should be, everything is out of place, the stars, the planets, the sun, the moon, none of it.

She’s wandering the streets in her silk nightie and her satin dressing gown is blowing open in the gentle breeze. She looks like someone who has escaped from a mental institution or a woman with dementia, dazed and clearly confused. `What, Why, Where’ so many questions circling in her mind like the birds of prey flying round and round above their unsuspecting dinner on the ground below. Amy is zigzagging across the pavement, Mike is trying to keep up with her but also in his pajamas and slippers he is struggling so he says `Amy please let’s go back home, all the neighbors are looking’  One of the elderly gents opposite opens his front door shouts `Everything ok Mike?’ Mike frantically puts his hand up in the air gesturing in thanks to them as he rushes to keep up with Amy, not having time to stop, explain and not knowing where to even start. `Amy we’ll catch our death out here please love, please come, back with me.  You’re acting as if you’ve lost your mind.’

Finally managing to catch up with Amy Mike flings his arm around her shoulders, she jumps.  He convinces her to do a U-turn by looking her dead in the eye, speaking calmly and concisely `I’m unsure what you are looking for but I honestly don’t think you’ll find it out here.’ He ushers her slowly but surely back to their front door, whilst Amy looks all around and straight through him as if she doesn’t even see him.

Mike sits her down on their front room sofa and goes to get her a warm drink in the hopes that will help calm her. She looks at herself in the mirror of the cabinet analyzing `she looks the same person and in the mirror everything looks in the right place but as she looks back away around the room everything is still reversed. Why is her mind playing this sick twist on her? It’s not funny’. Suddenly, it dawns on her, the telescope must hold the answer, she clambers her way up the stairs almost running up them like a dog on all fours.  She gets to the telescope and realizes that she is looking at the Andromeda galaxy not the Milky Way!  Just as she is about to turn her head away to shout to Mike `it all makes sense now I’m in an alternate reality in a different galaxy to my own’; she feels the same jolt of her essence. Once again through the telescope in to the night sky and reflecting back down to the world below returning into her own body, looking through her own telescope up at the Milky Way. Turning she looks around the room, all is as it should be. `Mike, Mike darling’ she shouts.  `Yes dear’ he answers running up the stairs. She is relieved his birthmark is back on his right cheek. She flings her arms around his neck and squeezes him tightly so grateful to be back in her own reality; thinking to herself `I much prefer this outlook and am so glad to be back the right side of the mirror.’ With a contented sigh Amy relaxes adding one final thought `thank God my head has stopped spinning now that the World is no longer reflected back.’