Gatekeeper

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. Tattered skin hung bloodied and raw, with gashes slashed deep across it's face. Whatever IT was, wanted me to enter into the mirror, into this portal.

"Those eyes.." I thought.

They were the lightest blue I'd ever seen. I couldn't help but think of the Jamaican sun, shining down on my family and I as we had jumped in, flippers first, ready to explore the Caribbean Sea. Crystal clear, those eyes were calling me in.

"Not the eyes you were expecting?" groaned a man's voice from the mirror.

Gasping, I could sense my thoughts were no longer my own.

"I've been waiting years for you, my love," he spoke to me, a smile pulling at whatever flesh was left on his face. I could feel his presence gaining closer. The hairs on my arm straightening to the sky, became thousands of little needles beating into my skin like an endless tattoo shredding away at my humanity.

"Don't resist the pain, love, let it surround you and it will be soon be over," he grunted as I started to scream from the force of the pain. Thousands of images flashed inside my head, mostly memories throughout my life as well as some that I couldn't recognize, yet felt all too familiar.

Suddenly the images slowed and I saw my body laying in a crematory, my skin melting off my body. The walls were white and I could see my mother crying in the other room, my father holding her trembling at the current reality of grief that was piled onto them suddenly.

"Don't fight it, Liala. It will only make it worse." but I didn't - couldn't - as I watched my body turn to ashes. The most horrifying reality suddenly struck me as I realized the body of Liala - - me - - was the 16-year-old version of me that had just been bronzed by the Jamaican sun.

I recognized by the beads around my neck, which I had won at a beach volleyball contest when my family and I were staying at the Royals Caribbean Resort. I was the youngest female player there, really the youngest overall as I remember the boys, who were truly men, laughing as I put all my effort into winning.

I was competitive, there was no doubt about it. Striking the volleyball at any chance I could get, I hadn't minded slamming my face into the sand in attempts to save the match. Giggles surrounded me as girls watched and mocked my tenacity, jealous of the lack of gazes from the males that were now all on me. Though I wouldn't even notice, having to find out hours later when my mother showed me a video she had recorded of me to save for our Jamaica Trip slideshow back home.

"He's cute!" my mother had shrieked as we rewatched the clip, nudging me as I began to blush, feeling humiliated hearing all the girls giggling in the background bellowing how weird I was.

All I could remember is the guy who smirked at me, blue-eyed and beautiful, as he cast out his hand to help me up from the golden sand. My elbows raw from scrapping myself across the weathered rocks turned sand, he stepped towards me.

"Do you mind?" referencing to my face as I wiped off the sand from my kneecaps to reveal a little blood.

"Huh?" I looked up puzzled as he had already reached out to brush the sand off the top of my forehead.

"Nice shot," was all it took for me to turn bright red, which likely made me look even more ridiculous as my Irish pale skin was already chapped and rosy from the sun that day.

I shifted back towards the game as the other team tossed back the volleyball from my recent victory strike. It was an easy shift considering the attention felt foreign to a girl who had never even been kissed.

"Ugh. I should have said thank you. Why am I so weird?" I thought to myself.

I glanced over awkwardly to see if he noticed me fidgeting at my uncomfortability and could see him laughing with a couple of the other guys.

"He must have thought I was a freak."

The match finally concluded, our team winning best two out of three, meaning I'd walk away with a choice of shell necklace handcrafted from a local artisan who visited the resort from time to time. I'd come to find out later that she was also a palm reader, determined to hide my truth as the details bound to my fate, she felt were too graphic for a girl my age. She gestured to my mother that she would tell only her and in time, could relay the message when I was old enough to handle the truth of my hands' destiny.

I glanced down at my hands, covered freshly in blisters, feeling foolish once again at how others treated me. I felt like thousands of years old, yet my youth holding me back from important information was frustrating. I had become too timid to pry further into the matter; or rather I was just too tired of hearing "Because I said so..." I traced the lines of my hands, thinking about my future and this forbidden fate that was being sealed from me.

"She never did tell you, did she?"

The voice pulled me back into the present moment, as I gasped for breath violently being pulled into the portal.

"Remember me, love? I told you we'd be together someday..."

It all came rushing back to me as I was yanked intensely through the broken mirror -- oh, that horrid mirror. The same one I'd shattered at the Royals Caribbean Resort after being thrown into it by Daemon. That voice. I knew it was familiar, but how?

"Aww poor little Liala, can't remember her old lover from the past. I swore I'd do whatever it takes to get you back! But you're a slippery little thing, trying to hide in purgatory! HA! I've got you now, though!"

I began flailing with all my might, flashbacks swarming my mind once again, remembering that night after winning the volleyball match, after learning I was too young to know my fate, and too slow to escape the man following me back to our hotel room after going for a night walk with the man I couldn't help but wail out for now...

"DANIEL! NO" I shrieked, pulling forcefully at my arm as if to bring my knees to the ground, though Daemon's grip was too strong.

"How do you have his eyes? WHY, DAEMON?! How could you?!" Knowing right then and there that I was going back to Hell if I didn't resist Daemon's pull with every fiber in my spirit's temporary body.

"I'm in purgatory..." I thought. "Again?"

Wait. I'm the Gatekeeper.