Infinity Mirror

1

"The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. I desperately tried to count towards the image that's not exactly me, but..." Arlo considers his following words carefully. "The closer I get, the darker it gets. And there's this build-up of contempt...this...this deluge of self-hate. I won't go back into that room."

Like an affrighted child, Arlo lowers his head and cowers into the nook of the plush chaise. His grayed and grizzled mane drapes over his hulking shoulders. His tics have returned twofold indicating that his Haldol is wearing thin. “I won’t go back in there.” Arlo peers intensely through his refuge of hair. His gaze is met by sympathetic bifocaled eyes that always melted his apprehensive heart and assuage his twitch.

Dr. Rosalynn Miller specializes in numerous mental health issues with an acute interest in schizophrenia studies. Her treatment and post-care have always been met with a healthy dose of skepticism at best and scathing vitriol at its usual. Despite all the naysayers and doubting Thomases, her results tell a compelling story. A story of one hundred percent efficacy.

Dr. Miller breaks the ethical doctor-patient divide and pets Arlo as if he’s an Old-English Sheepdog. She brushes his hair aside and cups his shadowed chin with her soft and plump pink hands to lift his head.

“I won’t go back in,” Arlo whimpers. A tear wells and rolls. Dr. Miller thumbs his cheek dry.

“You are so close, Arlo.” She pulls him into her bosom and holds him tight. “One more time and you will be free.”

Dr. Miller lets him slump back into the chaise and goes to her desk to fill a prescription for him. A laundry list of clients with dates is either redlined or green-checked. The check marks dominate the list. She scribbles a doctor’s scribble. “Last script you’ll ever need from me. Same time next week and you will be free.”

2

Garret frenzied, pulls at his hair, violently twisting and contorting his body. This is his first session of Infinity Therapy. His voices scream their objections, pleading their cases simultaneously. Garret doubles over, dry heaves, and wretches. The vortex repeats his agonies into inconceivable pinpoints of reflected realities. During his spasms, Garret’s heel donkey kicks the corner of the infinity mirror opposite the lights and a small innocuous crack crawls across the bottom edge.

Suddenly, Garret stands erect with his eyes bulging and staring into the abyss. What Garret sees under the influence of a psychedelic cocktail are the perceived manifestations of his voices. One of which, a gargantuan ragtag of a woman who is thirtieth in line, pushes herself forward to be front and center. She palms the mirror, screeches, and makes to headbutt the mirror. The Infinity lights switch from white to red and the gargantuan stops mid-strike. The red lights flick to the electric purple of black light and ghost blue runes glow on the walls of the Infinity room. His ragtag doppelganger dissipates into nothingness, leaving a barely relieved Garret gaping at himself as his others. His various images watch him collapse.

3

Dr. Rosalynn Miller spent two decades at a practice that, in the end, finally admitted they didn’t believe in her any longer. Maybe never. The red flags were everywhere. Her outlandish theories, fringe pseudoscience, and the occult will no longer be tolerated. But the results were the results. Dr. Miller’s patients with severe psychosis, split personalities, and other severely debilitating mental diagnoses are all cured. Effective…yes, ethical…maybe. When Dr. Miller’s Infinity Therapy lost its funding due to malpractice allegations, she knew it was a set-up. A simple case of wrong place/wrong time turned into flagrant innuendo and scandalous speculation, which was enough for the jealous partners to rid themselves of Dr. Miller, results be damned.

The good doctor packed her red leather briefcase with her ever-expanding client list and the mountainous stack of written salutations as proof of her successes. The Infinity Mirror was removed from her former clinic and shipped to her home where she established herself a private practice. A private practice with a one hundred percent guaranteed cure. Dr. Miller never looked back.

*

As a teen, Rozzy was a very homely young lady. Slightly overweight with a less than plain-jane face, Rozzy was also a late bloomer both physically and emotionally while dealing with a handful of personality disorders that were dealt with by handfuls of tablets. Academics was where she shined, especially in the sciences. Her late eighties goth-girl/emo leanings lent her toward an interest in paranormal and occult studies. When it was time for college, Rozzy immersed herself in the studies of psychology, sociology, and the exploration of her sexuality. Sure, she still wasn’t the prettiest girl on campus but her appetite for sex was almost legendary. Rozzy was fortunate not to be labeled a slut. Not because there were even more promiscuous girls on campus, which were far and few between; but because the boys didn’t want to admit to coupling with a girl of her stature, and the girls were just cool with it since their needs were served first. Nights of dorm-room debauchery were followed by days of intense study. She graduated at the top of all of her classes and on top of all her classmates.

*

The Infinity Room was a flat black nine-by-nine with high ceilings and adorned with a metal paneled ceiling with six holes. UV-reactive painted runes adorned the walls. L E D’s trimmed one wall-sized mirror which reflected the facing parallel mirror creating the effects of the infinite. White opened the portal. Red illuminated the shadows then froze the specter. Black activated the ancient Futhark runes and ensnared the spirits.

With the addition of psychedelics, Rosalynn trialed and errored her way to the discovery of conjuring, capturing, and containing clusters of personalities and removing them from the afflicted. Freeing them to normalcy.

Peer review was swift and unjust. But her burgeoning list of successes was justification. Not to mention, Rosalynn never needed another pill again. Now, when she used the room, Rosalynn loved what she saw.

4

Arlo enters Dr. Miller’s office. Her policy is for the patient to arrive half an hour early, fill out the requisite paperwork, and start the metronome to the bpm she prescribed to them after their first visit. Arlo follows the rituals and settles in. Typically, Dr. Miller quietly enters after five minutes of the pendulum starting.

Today, Arlo is excited. He’s finally convinced himself that he will be free. He shuts his eyes and mediates his breathing to the rhythm of the metronome.

Five minutes…

Ten minutes…

Thirty-seven minutes…

Arlo, clearly irritated, pokes his head out of the home office door. Just silence. Arlo strolls down the corridor calling out, “Dr. Miller…Dr. Miller.” He shrugs and meanders through her home. Neat, and tidy, but a week’s worth of fine dust.

Arlo shrugs and makes his way back to the office with hopes of her arrival despite all his session being practically expired. When he returns to the office, Arlo goes to write a note for Dr. Miller. As he scribbles on a post-it, Arlo regards the doorway to his past afflictions…the doorway to his freedom. He tentatively approaches the solid soundproofed door and grasps the knob. To his surprise, the handle turns effortlessly and the heavy door hisses open on the hinges. The Infinity Mirror is on and Arlo vomits.

Inside, scraps of skin and flesh dangle from blood-slicked rings and hooks. Below, a tendon and sinew-decorated carcass lay silent.

5

An hour after Garret recovered and left his session, Dr. Miller flicks a syringe relieving the air bubbles. She taps her well-used track in the second intermetatarsal space in her left foot. A carefully concocted blend of opioids, Flibanserin, and MDMA rushes through the highway of varicose veins. Before the narcotics enrapture her fully, Dr. Miller thumbs a remote control. The white lights of the Infinity Room fire up and the illusion begins. From above, a mechanical whirring sound from the six holes in the metal-plated ceiling fills the room. Six barbed chains lower, hook, and pull up on the steel gauges pierced down Dr. Miller’s back. The heft of her body grotesquely stretches as she is suspended between the boundless gyre.

The lights go red to release the apparitions and back to white to let them roam in their cages.

The psychedelics take hold and the X swells her libido. Dr. Miller unrolls her eyes and from the depths of the Infinity Mirror, more and more demons appear. Together, within their section of the infinite, they ravage and molest Dr. Miller’s dangling naked husk. Her erogenous zones bloom and swell from the carnal mental stimulation. Captured shadows, from clients new and old, lap and prod, scratch and claw, suck, finger and fuck her Rubenesque goose-skinned body. Sexual gratification a billion different ways.

From behind, a diminutive wild-eyed version of Arlo notices the crack along the bottom of the Infinity Mirror and stops his sexual assault to investigate. He runs his fingers along the crevice and the broken mirror filets his digits. Wild Arlo stands and begins kicking the fissure. The gargantuan ragtag female Garret notices the commotion and leaves her worked-over version of Dr. Miller as well. She sees the crack and hunkers down like a bull and pummels the mirror’s ruptured fulcrum with her head. Soon, all the entities behind Dr. Miller barrage the broken mirror. Seconds become moments and their collective effort shatters the mirror. Dr. Miller’s deviant trance is broken. The manifestations, now free, flood the room. Dr. Miller, helplessly suspended, shrieks with both drugged-induced delight and pharmaceutical-grade fear. Her orgasms explode with the gnashing of teeth.