The Mirror

It was the curve ball I least expected. Dave died a few months ago. Let’s just start by getting everything out in the open. Dave was an asshole. By the time he had said and done all he could say and do, I despised him with every fiber of my being. And while my lifetime collection of interactions with others have led me to strongly dislike a few people, this was an entirely different kind of hatred. Abhorrence. Bone-chilling. To the core of my soul.

Upon realizing how quickly my situation with him had escalated to a life and death scenario, I escaped. I secreted away my new contact info from nearly everyone I knew. I simply could not and would not allow him to find me. I paid off his demands for what I owed him, all in the name of winning my freedom. I needed him to sign away his rights to me. Whatever it took, I would do.

But my freedom would not be allowed. He insisted I exist in a state of utmost awareness of his presence. He pursued me through friends, family, social media, and websites. That was all it would take for me to change my mind about him, right? I would come crawling back, wouldn’t I? I had done it before. But the haze he had previously pulled down over me had cleared. There would be no more crawling.

*******

Now he was dead. I could finally breathe. I would never hear from him again. My friends and family would stop imploring that I command him to stop bothering them. As if I had any power over him. They had no idea who we were dealing with. But more importantly, I could finally stop calling the Sheriff’s office asking them to do something about him. Anything.

I was free. Free at last.

*******

Alas, the notion that I'd finally attained freedom was short-lived. For when Dave had existed on this earthly plane, he was unaware of where I physically resided. But now that he had crossed over to the spiritual realm, there was no safe haven. In no time he found a portal allowing him to furiously renew his pursuit - my bathroom mirror.

A man-sized handprint was left overnight in the middle of the mirror I had just cleaned to a spotless shine days before. I intuitively knew it could only be a twisted message from Dave. “I’m here,” it said. More ominously, “You’ll never escape me,” it declared.

All that he had said and done to me in his lifetime hadn’t been enough. He was determined to continue existing in my realm one way or another. And through death he found his way. Stalking came more easily than ever before. He didn’t have to attempt to get to me by reaching out through friends and family, begging them to tell me what a great guy he was and that he deserved yet one more chance to prove it. He didn’t have to find me online on an obscure website or social platform where I hadn’t yet blocked him and add his inane comments. Now he could come straight to the source. All he needed was a spiritual portal, and he found it in my bathroom mirror.

I groggily dragged myself to the bathroom at 3:00 a.m., only to see a bright white spectre in the shape of a 6’ tall man standing next to the mirror. “What the hell do you want Dave?” I grumbled, but of course I got no response. I shivered, stumbled back to bed, and pulled the covers over my head.

I was planted in front of the mirror before heading to work one day, painstakingly applying my makeup, when I suddenly felt a non-existent hand reach out, landing on my shoulder and giving me a little shove. It only served to remind me of the last time Dave was able to shove me in the physical world, leaving me rife with purple and yellow marks.

I tried all the tricks of the trade to evict him from his mirror portal. I burned sage, frantically waving it all around the mirror. And I loudly invoked a medium’s mantra, “Only spirits walking in God’s white light are welcome here.”

But I quickly learned that narcissism here on Earth can be carried over to the other side. He appears to believe that he does, in fact, walk in God’s white light, while also making his presence frequently known here on Earth. Does God’s white light allow souls the freedom to haunt?

After my futile attempts to evict him, I didn’t need a caffeine jolt to start my morning when I walked into my bathroom and discovered a single word spelled out on my mirror with oils from the finger of a spiritual being – “Retribution.”

“God dammit, Dave,” I shrieked. “Retribution? For what??? What is it exactly that you think I did to YOU?”

But I know exactly what I did to him. I left him. For obvious reasons. Well, they were obvious to me. He was not good for me. He was not good for anyone. And it seems clear he isn’t wanted by anyone in the spiritual realm either, for he has nothing better to do than come through my mirror gateway from his world into mine.

I finally had no choice but to have a conversation with the mirror, making it abundantly clear that Dave was unequivocally no longer welcome in my home, and it needed to stop allowing him to use it as his portal. All has been quiet for several months, but to be safe, I occasionally still beseech the mirror to try to understand all I’ve been through and educate it as to why it needs to take my side in this very lopsided equation.

I don’t believe it’s over yet. Dave is persistent. He will always get the last word in. And he will never let anything go. Not me. Not even himself.