What do you see?

The crisp night wind gently blows Michelle’s curls as she guides us through the sweaty people and cheap tents of the festival. The smell of decay and rot fills the air, as well as the melody of breaking glass and splintering wood. 

I would let her take me anywhere she wanted, from the top of a sepulchral valley to make love under the moon, to the bridge that cuts the sewer, watching her too early demise. Tonight, in particular, each and every step we take leads to the pinnacle of our last night together.

“Smell of cotton candy, urine and rusty toys at night is the kind of freedom that perverts my soul”, she says, throwing her head back for a long breath before chuckling at me with the rosy lips, still warm from our earlier kisses.

“Your soul needs nothing else to pervert it but your own mind, baby”, I argue.

I dreamed of this woman before I met her. Sinister mirror of my core, awakens in me the violent compulsion to devour everything that makes her, her. Her soft, independent laugh, that rises hoarsely in her throat and flatters my ears. Her charming kindness that leaves a trail of roses wherever she goes. Grandiose goals of hers to be everything I know she can be.

But I can't let her be.

The loud music of the caterpillar roller coaster can't overshadow the screams and laughter of the people riding it. But it is not worse than the shoot-and-win stalls, where you can spend twenty dollars trying to get a teddy bear that costs two. The place is packed with long, boring lines for the least interesting games.

“I want a stomach-churning thrill, one that makes your insides sweat cold!” Michelle says, looking genuinely disappointed. “But the closest we'll get to that is the wheel of fortune over there, and the terror of losing five dollars to that scam.” I laugh at her puerile desire to have fun in this frivolous festival.

“I told you, this place only has children's phlegm and, if we're lucky, maybe some accident with body parts flying around,” I say, only half joking.

Michelle drags me along as if she knows the place as the back of her hand, which I doubt. It's that sort of confidence that oozes from her pores that overwhelms you. Closer to the coast there is hardly anyone, but a couple making out in the sand and smoking weed.

We make our way to the final tent, a moss-green monstrosity that looms at the edge of the festival grounds. There's no lighting inside, just a dim glow that seems to seep out from the cracks in the walls. Beside the entrance, a tattered cardboard hand holds an arrow with the words:  “DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO LOOK INSIDE YOURSELF?”

Michelle smiles at me with that degenerate, mischievous glance in her eyes. She knows what I'm thinking, and she wants to go in.

Since we met, Michelle told me all her stories. From the most futile anecdotes to the terrifying secrets of her essence. Like the time, at age eleven, she gave her pesky younger neighbor milk with pepper, who was allergic to the second ingredient and spent two weeks in the hospital. Or that her father would spank her bare ass at night with his black belt when she had been, in her words, a bad girl. It was like no one had ever heard her. In life. And the demand to be read, analyzed, controlled and cared for was an addiction Michelle couldn't fight.

She heard me too. All the barbarities of my past that haunt my present, my instincts to consume her, until there's nothing left. And it was too late for her to want to escape. Our ties were already knots and her spirit depended on mine more than her lungs required oxygen to live.

As we pass through the curtain, the world around us disappears. The only thing I can feel is the warmth of Michelle's hand in mine, and the pounding of my heart in my chest. All other senses dissipate with the light, but after a few steps in, they return again along with the small yellow lamp in the corner of the hall. That instant of seconds was enough for the scent.

We are in a mirror maze. Of all sizes, shapes and colors, all old and grimy. Some go as high as the ceiling, others are enough to reflect only the shoes. Curved, obtuse, black and white. All reflect us, thousands of Michelles Williams and Ezras Parker walking through the slaughterhouse.

Plink. A drop falls from a distant echo, like a poorly turned faucet. 

“Knowing yourself is a nightmare you may not wake up from.” She whispers in my ear, reading the sign above one of the passages and making the hairs of the back of my neck stand on.

“Good thing I know you better than I know myself.” I smile, touching the point of her nose with my index finger.

“That's the danger. I'm just a prettier version of you.” She smirks. 

Michelle likes to think she's like me. I like to make her think she needs to be.

She goes beyond her limits for the sake of my satisfaction and devotes herself to captivating me. The strain of my company excites her like no oral can. With me she feels she is interesting. An intriguing mystery not unraveled. And after us, she knows there will be nothing to quench this thirst to dive.

Plink.

There's no other noise in here but the drip that sounds to be right next to us at the same time as two miles away. We can almost listen to the organs themselves working inside our bodies, the tissue rubbing against each other and our footsteps echoing for an eternity. It smells musty and from here I can only see the glints of her hair and the reflections as twisted as we are.

“Do you dare to continue?” She asks me. The scarf around her neck hiding the purple pattern of my fingers from last night.

“I'm still very interested in seeing what's inside you, Williams.” I tell her, winking and knowing the chill she's been waiting for in her stomach has arrived.

She grabs my hand tighter. Walking towards the inevitable, the unspeakable that has been spoken so many times. Like all seven before her and all the hundreds to come after.

At the dim mirror on the right, against the greenish light, my body behind hers is a beast watching its prey silently before drawing its last breath. The way the enlightenment meets us in the reflection snatch my eyes into a faceless black cloud. Her rib cage rises and falls furiously at the glimpse of this image. An omen that all her cells already know.

Plink.

“What do you see?” She asks me, as I tuck her hair behind her ear with one hand and the other I wrap around her waist.

The stench of the mold is intoxicating, although no stronger than the scent. She feels it too, like a razor floating beside the slight thread holding her life together. The reflection does not deceit. Under the ominous lighting of the labyrinth, the sound of sewage moving inside the pipes of the walls, death rawls and swallows us in the oracle glass. 

“The shadow.” I answer. “Growing from the edges and slowly climbing through the life forms it meets, hungry.” I insinuate this is a joke to spook her, but we both know there's no greater truth than these words. 

The adrenaline taints me like a drug.

“It's curious, Ezra, even with hundreds of us all around, you can only see yourself.” She smirks, dodging my arms and tugging on my hand, leading us deeper into the bent mirrors. 

Plink.

Her slender body narrows through the passageways, and I almost believe she's keeping a mental map of this place. Some hallways are completely dun, like our first step here. Others, the scent is so strong it’s nauseating. She, however, seems very sure of her trajectory. I laugh at the idea. Michelle tries too hard to resemble fearless at all times.

In a corner, like all others, where our macabre bodies stare back at us warped, she pushes us through the image. For a miserable moment, I think we are entering it into a parallel dimension. After so many minutes watching only reflections, it kind of rips you out of reality. But it was just moved to the side and closed again, as we headed down a flight of stairs, where it is not possible to see anything below or above our heads.

“Michelle, baby.” I soothe her, she doesn't have to do this, I already have the perfect place to take her (down). “Let's go to the bridge.”

Plink. (closer)

“Come on, honey. Just a little longer.” Even without seeing her, I can hear the smile on her graceful lips as she asks me so eagerly.

On the last step there is only the scent. The hideous scent of death. Even in the most rotten darkness, you can see it moving through walls, coursing the spine and turning over lunch in the stomach.

Plink. (by my side)

My fingers tighten around Michelle's and with my other arm, I cover my nose in disgust. I hear a click and a flash of light illuminates the place.

It's another mirrored room, but here the floor is like a dirty swamp. Michelle lets go of my hand and fiddles with one of the tables to my right, making metallic sounds, as I glimpse a gurney to what appears to be my left.

Plink. (me)

The red drop lands on my shoulder. Tearing me out of an inertia of hesitation that devoured my reflexes. Muscles icy, as if not responding to my commands, I look up. What I see is more frightening than any figure my imagination has ever pictured. A man hanging upside down from the ceiling like a slaughtered pig showing off fresh meat to butcher shoppers.

In the new mirror maze it’s not possible to know the directions, difference between reflection and reality. Michelle turns to face me, white gloves and a scalpel on her hands. I take two steps back and feel her fingers on my waist, behind me.

“I'm still very interested in seeing what's inside you, Parker.” She whispers in my ear.