The Mirror Maze

Content warning: Death of a parent, mental health issues, minor injuries

“Happy birthday, honey!” Her Dad walks to the dining table, hand covering the candle’s flickering flame from the fan’s breeze. He smiles with all his teeth. Sarah wishes the smile reached his eyes. As her gathered friends and family sing to her, she smiles but looks past them, locking eyes with the portrait of her mother on the wall. “1…2…3”

She has blonde hair, light blue eyes, and a dimple on her chin that only shows when she smiles. It feels like staring into a mirror. Sarah barely stops by to visit her Dad anymore; it is too painful for both of them.

“Happy birthday to you,” 

“Save her. Oh, God, please! My darling,” 

“Happy birthday to you,”

The long, droning sound of the heart rate monitor reverberates through the room.

“Happy birthday, dear Sarah,” Their voices crescendo into a high pitch,

“Congratulations, it’s a girl,” The nurse holds the baby toward the father, but he does not reach out to take her. 

“Happy birthday to you!” Her friends pound on the table; Zach scoops frosting onto his finger and swipes it across her nose. She smiles just in time for the flash of a camera. 

She wipes the frosting off her nose with the back of her sleeve. She blows out the candles, not wishing for anything.

They shuffle the door of the squat yellow house a short while later. The thick humidity of late June embraces them. 

“Have fun, kids!” Sarah turns back, watching her Dad through the open slit of the white window shades after he shuts the door. He ambles over to a collage of pictures on the wall. He rests his arm against the wall and places his head in his palm. Sarah turns and runs toward the car. 

Sarah cranks the window of Zach’s old Jalopy down, hoping to ease the damp summer heat and for the breeze to wash away the green creeping up her face.

Her friends’ conversations flow over her, getting lost beneath the sound of the cicadas screaming as the car creeps down the old country road. 

“I’m surprised you want to go to the fair, Sarah. I thought you hated all the rides,” Emily says. 

“I do, but the food is good.” Sarah hated the fair. Almost as much as she hated her birthday. This whole day had been Zach’s idea. 

“The trick is to eat the greasiest food you can find, then you go on the Whirl-Around and vomit your guts out!” Zach’s smile stretches ear to ear.

“That’s disgusting,” Emily and Sarah say in unison. 

She lets herself be led around the fair by the hand, holding food and purses as the others go on rides. As she flips through birthday messages on her phone, someone knocks into her, sending her toppling to the ground. 

“Oh shit, my bad!” The young guy lifts her to her feet before jogging away with his friends. 

As she dusts herself off, she freezes as she meets the eyes of the devil. The creature’s large maw gapes wide in front of her, its teeth glinting beneath the night of the moon. Screams sing through the air to the symphony of crickets. Beneath a haze of yellow grime, its red eyes zip wildly back and forth in search of their next meal.

Her foot moves forward of its own accord. She feels lighter than air as if she were meant to step inside. She belongs in the belly of the beast. Its lolling tongue sits in stark contrast atop the dirt like a red carpet, granting her a grand entrance. 

A pair of strong hands grabs at her waist, causing her to jump out of her skin, breaking her trance. “What are you staring at, babe?” Skin flushing red and prickling with embarrassment, she spins, kicking up dust and bats at her boyfriend’s chest. 

“God damnit, Zach. Don’t do that!” She spins back around on her heel. The feeling of floating gone, she sees the beast for what it truly is.

“Sorry, baby,” A shudder runs down her spine. Whether from the pet name that she hates or the devilish clown drawing hordes of people into its mirrored maze, she couldn’t be sure.

Paying no heed to her discomfort, Zach grabs her by the hand and gives her his infamous puppy dog eyes. He thinks he looks endearing, but she thinks he looks like he’s about to shit himself. 

Her friends were right; she needed to break up with him. They had been telling her that for four years. He chewed with his mouth open, left the toilet seat up, and burped in public. But she didn’t have the strength to leave him. He was simple; she liked that. Behind those large hazel eyes, thoughts were like an endangered species. 

Sarah lifts her nose, turning away from the clown’s mocking eyes. Her gaze lands on a woman hurling green chunks into a trash bin, the putrid scent wafting straight into Sarah’s path.

“Let’s do the mirror maze next,” Zach says.

“Beware, all those who enter shall face the devil within.” Emily reads from the sign and sighs. “Lame, let’s go on the Ferris wheel instead.” 

But Zach was already yanking Sarah’s hand, spinning her back around. He drags her into the clown’s mouth. She cranes her neck, watching Emily and her boyfriend walk in the other direction. “It’ll be fun, baby!” A million reflections of them as they enter the mirror-lined hallways. The maze splits into several pathways. Zach smacks her on the ass and shouts, “See you on the other side!”

Sarah takes the path to her right, holding her hands out in front of her. It takes a few moments to adjust to the strobing lights, each step feeling as though it were in slow motion. A low fog covers the top of her feet. The whir of the smoke machines does little to cover up the overpowering circus music rattling off the walls. She takes several lefts and rights before running into her first dead end. 

Her reflection’s palm meets hers as it rests against the cold glass of the mirror. Then, the mirror’s image changes and morphs. Before her is her mother, a small, sad smile on her red-painted lips. 

Her mother’s lips formed the words ‘I forgive you,’ but the words that echoed around the maze screamed, “How could you!”

“I’m sorry!” Sarah choked out over a sob. She pressed her hands over her ears. The room seemed to be shrinking, mirrors pressing in on every side of her. The artificial smoke filled her lungs with every ragged breath.

“How could you!”

One mirror reflected an image of her mother dancing around the living room in an oversized t-shirt and high-knee socks, rubbing her rounded belly with a giant grin on her face. 

“How could you!”

Another showed her father pacing in the hospital waiting room. He watched as new fathers wheeled out mothers, cooing at their new bundles of joy.

“How could you!”

The last showed her Dad standing over a freshly filled grave, a handle of vodka in one hand and a baby carriage in the other. 

“Stop, please, stop!” Sarah was on her hands and knees now, dry heaving over the wooden floor littered with popcorn. 

“Sarah,” Her Dad’s voice called to her somewhere in the distance. 

“Dad?” Sarah forces herself back onto her feet, stumbling and bracing against the mirror-lined wall. 

“Sarah!” This time, Zach’s voice screeched through the maze.

“Zach?” She was running now, desperate for Zach to lead her out of this godforsaken hell hole. Sarah often had dreams where she never got anywhere despite how hard she ran. The feeling washed over her now, each flash of the strobe light making her feel like her legs were carrying her nowhere. 

“Sarah!” The voice rang out as she smacked into another mirror. She took a step back, blood dripping from her head in thick drops, clotting in her eyelashes. 

A thousand reflections of Zach and Sarah filled her gaze. They were no longer wearing casual fair clothes. Sarah wore a long, white silk gown with no gash beneath the gauzy veil. Zach was in a dark blue suit. Her mother’s face eclipsed her own, flashing in and out with the strobe of the overhead lights. Her father’s face overtook Zach’s. With each strobe, her belly extended and rounded a little more. Sarah raised her hands to her own belly. A claw slides across it, raking her insides.

The smell of smoke fades, replaced by the acrid smell of a medical operating room. Her mother’s corpse lays prone on the cold metal table, blood pooling between her thighs. A baby sits in the pool of blood, untouched by the blood coagulating around her. In her first breath of innocence, she had already committed the grievous sin of being born. 

Then, Sarah is flat on her back, and the cold metal chills her to the core. Her body has been ripped in half. The baby stole everything from her. The doctors and the nurses fuss over the baby. But what about her? She’s been left for dead. Zach strides into the room, a sports game blaring from his phone. He scoops the baby up in the crook of his elbow and walks back out of the room without glancing at her. The table tilts, up and up and up, and Sarah is back on the sticky floor of the maze. 

“Get me out of here!” She screams, slapping her fists against the mirrors. Tears hot on her face, palms burning, she rises on wobbly legs and sets forward again. She had to get out of there. “Please, help me!” Her voice was raw and broken. She could hardly see between the strobe lights, the fog, and the blood dripping from the cut on her head. “Please,” Lighteaded, she wants nothing more than to crumple to the floor and never get back up again. 

Then, she sees a giggling pair of teens rushing past her, whooping in victory. She follows them, desperate to reach fresh air. 

The clown spits her out into the swampy summer heat. Zach is waiting for her, head bent over his phone. 

“Zach,” She croaks. He pockets his phone, cheeks flushing. 

“Damn baby, like a million kids made it out before you did. Get lost? Is my little baby directionally challenged?” Zach wraps an arm around her shoulder, poking her in the side. 

“My head…” Her hand trembles as she lifts her fingertips to her forehead, but it meets smooth, unbroken skin. “The maze it…” She could not get the words out. Her mind was foggy, eyes glazed over. “Can we go home?” Exhaustion sunk deep into her bones. Her temple throbbed, the strobing lights still illuminated behind her eyelids. 

Emily and her boyfriend saunter over to them, arms entwined, face glowing with goofy grins.

“Damn, Sarah, that clown chewed you up good huh?” Emily crows.

“Yeah,” The words slip past her lips, barely a whisper. “We were thinking of heading out soon, I –”

“C’mon baby, we have to make better use of our unlimited ride wristbands! I didn’t pay fifty bucks for nothin’!” Zach whines. 

Over the next two hours, Sarah walks around the fair in a trance. She felt as though she were watching herself from above. Thoughts swam slowly across her mind like a young frog testing its new legs. They were too slippery to get a grasp on.

The drive home was filled with silence, occasionally broken up by sloppy makeout noises from the backseat. After they drop Emily and her boyfriend off, Zach tries to slide his hand up Sarah’s thigh, but she crosses her legs and turns toward the window. The

Sarah doesn’t turn on the bathroom light when she hops in the shower. As she washes the shampoo out of her hair, Zach slaps the light switch on and pisses like a horse. 

“Do you mind?” Sarah’s hands fist in her hair, iron flooding her mouth as she bites into her lip. Zach only grunts in response, and Sarah is doused with cold water as he flushes the toilet.

She steps out of the shower and wraps herself in a towel. She flinches when she sees herself in the mirror. Her knuckles turn white as she grips the sink, leaning forward to stare at herself. “It’s not your fault. It wasn’t your fault. Nobody-” A shuddering sob racks her body, “Nobody blames you.” Sarah had learned a long time ago that no matter how many times she said this, it wouldn’t make it true. No amount of therapy, meditation, positive affirmation bullshit was going to ease the sting of her Dad’s first glance every time he saw her. That every time he opened the door, his eyes landed on Sarah but found her mother instead. Then, the illusion fades, and the cold wall replaces the loving spark in his eye. 

“Fuck this.” She stalks out of the bathroom and grabs her keys.

“Goin’ out? Mind grabbing some beers?” She slams the apartment door behind her. 

The next morning, Sarah throws her covers off and races to the toilet, flips open the lid, and expels all the contents of her stomach. She goes to tie up her hair before the next wave of nausea hits but finds her new hair too short to put up in a ponytail. The sink is stained with red hair dye and littered with tiny hairs she’d need to clean up later. After several bouts of retching, she pillows her head with her forearm on the rim of the toilet. Wiping at the corner of her mouth with her wrist, she staggers upright and lurches back to the bed.

“You feeling alright, babe?” Zach asks.

Blood pooling on a metal table. The flat buzz of a heart rate monitor.

“Fine. Just too much fair food.” She laid back down, as close to the edge of the bed as she could. Zach flops over, placing a hand over her stomach.

Just too much fair food. She was sure of it.

 Her eyes go dry as she keeps them peeled, watching her face in the mirror across from her bed. Every time she blinks, a new set of eyes stares back. 

Mother, Sarah, Stranger. 

Mother, Sarah, Stranger.