Perfection

“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. We were camping not too far from here at the time. In fact, the cabin is less than a mile over that hill with the pine tree there. Pretty much a straight shot, actually.”

“Which pine tree? There are pine trees on every hill!”

“Shh! Don’t interrupt. She pointed to that one.” The father patted the young girl’s shoulder and guided her to the indicated hill. “Sorry about that. We won’t interrupt Ranger Kelsey anymore, will we, Turkey?”

“Dad, I told you, I am too old to be Turkey anymore!”

“Okay then, Brittany, just don’t interrupt.” He nodded to me to continue.

“As I was saying, this was when I was still in college; the cabin had been empty for years, but it just so happened on our third night here, we saw a candle light in the window…”

* * *

“What the hell, Kelsey? You said there are no campers allowed in the cabin!” Deb yelled, slapping another bug on her arm. “I still say we should have gone to the beach.”

“The website said the cabin is off-limits to campers because it is unstable, and the registrar told me over the phone we are the only campers here this week! Besides, I either need to lose a few pounds or grow a few inches to get my beach body ready this year. It was a rough semester.”

“Let’s go say hi. Maybe they have more booze,” Sandra suggested.

“If someone hadn’t broken two bottles, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

“Shut up, Deb. It could just as easily have been one of you. Worst case scenario is it is full of squatters or a family with kids and we strike out. Just think if it is full of frat boys! Three hot girls walk in from the woods and ask for tequila: what are they going to say, no?! Ha!”

“You two can go get yourselves murdered. This is why white girls don’t survive a horror movie.”

“Half-Colombian, muchos gracias!”

“Your parents are each half-Colombian, and you took French!”

Sandra shot back, “Two halves of a halves make a full half!” She was already on her way to the cabin.

“Whatever. Just bring back some booze if you don’t get eaten. MuchoTH graTHiaTH to you, too!” She put extra emphasis on Sandra’s slight lisp and sniffed sharply, miming pushing glasses higher up her nose.

“Come on, Kel-ey,” Sandra called back, “That one can—We’ll leave her behind, and we’re not bringing any boo—any alcohol back!”

I brushed myself off, swung my backpack onto my shoulders – in case they gave us cans of beer or something – and hurried to catch up as she approached the door, but then I stopped and turned back to Deb.

“Too much! Boundaries!” I gestured Sandra’s way. “No voice—”

Deb rolled her eyes and joined in and recited, “Yeah, yeah, no eyes.” She pointed to me. “No weight, no spine.”

I rolled my hand in the air for her to continue. She groaned but finished, indicating herself. “No boxes, no ears.”

“Good, so you do remember after all. I thought you might. I’m going to catch up to her. We’ll come fetch you if we find anything worth sharing.”

By the time I reached the cabin, the door was already being swung shut by the spring as Sandra entered. I figured she must have spent some time talking with whoever answered, or maybe she had been waiting for me to come over the hill before she went inside. Either way, I knocked as well just to be polite before I pulled the door open and stepped inside.

“Sandra!” I announced before I ever had a chance to see the interior. That was odd. She could not have been inside for more than a couple seconds, right? “Sandra?” There was a single door on the other side of the room. It lacked furniture and had sparse decorations on the walls. I called out again and started across. The floorboards creaked and groaned under my feet. I was surprised I could not hear Sandra talking behind that other door with her lack of volume control.

I made it only halfway there when I saw a shadow flitting at the edge of my vision as shadows are wont to do. It was nothing to be afraid of: sometimes a shadow is just a shadow, after all – just a shadow, nothing projecting it, no light source creating it, no surface upon which to land. Just a shadow. The candle in the window was snuffed by the shadows, and I was plunged into darkness. I reminded myself that it was just shadows and while they were mischievous, they would not hurt me, and if there was nothing there to hurt me in the light, there was nothing there in the dark either. Just the shadows making the dark darker.

Continuing across the room, something collided with my head. That certainly hadn’t been there before, so I felt around in the air until I found the lightbulb on the cord. Fumbling with it, I found a switch and flipped it.

Flicking on the light shrouded everything in sight and it all became out of sight. I flipped the switch again and the blackness deepened. I flipped it the other way again, and I was all but blind. My heart thudding violently in my chest, I dug out my matches from my bag. Striking a match was blinding not because it was so bright but because it consumed the light. It sucked the world of color and shape and form and melted rationality. It was hastily extinguished, but my vision was gone. The shadows watched me, but I could not do the same to them.

“Where are you?!” I shrieked. “Sandra!” The door had been straight ahead, so onward, I went. Just as I got there, I heard a rhythmic ticking. No, not heard. I felt it deep inside my body, rumbling and lurching as though I were a clock. I grabbed the doorknob and turned it to the left to open the door.

I stepped into the cabin, the interior lit by a candle in the window. Going to the window, I idly wondered where Sandra might be. It was not too much of a concern; she must have gone through the door at the other end of the room, so I could take my time. The sky was dark, darker than it should have been, I thought. No, it was just as dark as it should be. Of course it was; the moon had been eaten by the emptiness. According to the calendar, it should have been visible as a waxing gibbous this night, but instead, it had been devoured. This was nothing mystical, nothing magical, nothing religious, just a simple, consuming nothing, as happened on occasion. It would be spat up again later, as it always was.

There was a mirror on the wall opposite me, showing the door through which I had entered. I stood in front of it and fixed my blonde hair, frowning at my body. Nothing I could do about that right this second. I saw a painting of a mallard reflected on the wall and the way the duck’s expression disapproved of something.

“What are you looking at?” I asked just as the tendrils of shadows closed around the candle and the light went away. Still, I could see enough to know where I was despite the dark. The mirror swirled and twisted the reflections, and watching the walls distort was disorienting, so I readjusted my stance to not fall over. The cabin warped and the painting of the duck screamed as it fell off its hook to clatter to the floor. I bent to pick it up, for it had landed right at my feet thanks to the twisting architecture, but I heard the flapping of wings and decided to leave it there in case the duck came back and was looking for it.

Straightening out, I looked back at the mirror, and there was Sandra climbing over the twisted wreckage of the cabin. Her mouth moved, but I heard no sound. I knew what I would see before I turned, but I had to look anyway. There was nobody behind me to cast the reflection. I turned back around to be sure she was still there. Her upper torso was taking up the entire frame now, and I yelped, though the sound was swallowed. I saw her bend down to put her face into the frame, and her mouth opened in a silent scream, wider and wider and impossibly wide. I watched her throat quiver and turn red and bleed as she continued to scream. Her face warped and black ichor streamed from her eyes and oozed from her nose as her teeth grew. I tried to scream as well, knowing it was the wrong thing to do, but I could not stop myself. Rather than my voice coming out as soon as my lips parted, I gelt the emptiness pour in, and I could not tell whether I was attempting to produce sound or not.

I stumbled away from the mirror and crashed through the door, which crumbled and collapsed, repeating to myself the thought, “That’s not Sandra. That’s not Sandra. That’s not Sandra.” I did not know whether it was true or if there was such a thing as true anymore.

I emerged into a remarkably similar room, so I stumbled straight across to the door. It, too, crumbled at my touch and this time dissolved into dust. I came through the doorway into another similar room and ran across to the door, which dissipated to dust before I ever reached it. I was in the same room again. As I crossed once more, there was a sort of raspy chuckle that clawed at the ears and scratched the skin. As I emerged into the same room again – for it had to be the same room: the cabin was not large enough for this many rooms to exist, and everything I touched crumbled and disintegrated further – and I stopped. I tried to back through the doorway I came through, keeping my eyes fixed ahead, though I was unsure if I could see or if I was inventing all the visuals to keep myself from going mad, and I bumped into a flat surface. I turned and there was a mirror on the wall, though my reflection remained with its back to me. It seemed to be looking across the room at another mirror on the opposite wall where there was another reflection. I was in between two large mirrors reflecting this room back and forth infinitely. The countless copies of me turned up me, those facing away rotating their heads backwards, and their twisted faces melted and molded into drooping shapes like the dripping wax of a candle. The tongues hung all the way to the crooked floorboards. Their limbs stretched and cracked sickeningly, though they hunched to stay the same height as before. Their hands dragged on the ground and their tongues slid along behind as they advanced toward me, an infinite host of distorted, melted perversions of myself.

I told myself that I just had to wait until sunrise, that daytime would come and it would all go away. The twisted mirrors would straighten, the shadows would burn away, and everything would be alright. It would be alright so long as the Sun came up and was not dark instead of light.

These were behind mirrors. They could not get out. They could not get out.

What if they were already out and I was stuck in?

What if the reflections were not distortions at all and that was truly me?

The way out was to break the mirrors. There were no windows, though there had been when I entered; no other doors but the one I had come through… which seemed to have been replaced with a mirror. I had wished not to be without my friends here before, but with those things advancing on me and my way out nonexistent, I wanted nothing more than to be alone.

There it was, the ticking. It thrummed through me as though I were a string pulled tight and someone struck me with a hammer like a piano with no notes, and the door swung in. I would not help but step into the room, for my legs were already moving by the time I realized where I was. There was a mirror on the wall and no windows, though I swore there had been at least one when I looked at the cabin from the outside. Oddly, there were no other doors but the one I came through, but that could not be the entire cabin. Besides, I could not see Sandra in the room, so there must be some other place to go in here.

I just needed to make it to daylight. I knew that with all my being. But then again… Why? What would daylight bring that was not already here with me?

I licked the floor, for my tongue was there. My lanky arms were twig thin from being stretched like a rubber band that would not snap back to place.

Break the mirrors. The laughter tore at my grotesque body and made my ears bleed a black goo. I knew the truth then. That was Sandra in the mirror, and those were my infinite reflections looking at me now from the walls where the door or doors had been, and we could get out together by breaking the mirrors and we would no longer be alone, for even among so many mes, I was still just one me. We could get out and it would be us, and we could show Deb the way to join us and we could bring others in and we could all be reflected and improved.

I saw Deb’s dark skin pulled taught, pulled farther and farther until it became translucent but did not tear. She would not need her eyes anymore – Sandra could have them – because her ears would also be expanded to catch what little sound would remain in the world. Her skin would fuse along its edges and she would take to the skies. She was proud of her skin, and it was already dark, but it could be improved. She could ooze the same black ichor from her pores like sweat and cover herself entirely and be blacker than the antilights and no mere human would ever know she hunted them.

When the ticking started again, I did my best impression of a smile and turned the knob on the door that did not exist and stepped into the cabin. I heard Sandra’s screech from outside and felt the warmth of fluid draining from my broken ears and waited for Deb to figure out the only safe haven from the unknown monster outside was in the cabin where I would be waiting to show her the truth, that the only monsters were the people outside who needed to be fixed. So many imperfections, so many flaws, but they could all be removed. The three of us would decide who to bring here and who was not worthy of looking into the mirrors. The door swung open, and I watched my friend enter. She was in a panic, but I was the same way the first time I had come inside the cabin. When all the walls were mirrors again and there were no doors, I waited for the perfect moment to show Deb the way. She collapsed onto the floorboards and squeezed her eyes shut; that was fine, as she did not need to see. She could not see in the darkness regardless because the shadows swarmed her and weighed the floor down until it collapsed again and again. She crashed through the roof so many times before she at last stopped her decent by accepting she could fly.

Tick, tick, tick… I stepped into the cabin again.

There was Deb on all fours, her glorious wings stretched between her arms and legs, her neck long and bent forward, her spine jagged and nearly puncturing her skin from the inside. She had no eye sockets anymore, for with her enormous, pointed ears – much better than those she had so hated before her transmogrification –, she would need no vision, and she was perfect. There was Sandra with all her eyes and her teeth so long she could not close her mouth – not that she would ever want to – and I gazed at her long claws and the sharp quills along her body, and she was perfect. I looked at my reflection again, and I knew that I, too, was perfect. How could I not be when my curved spine was a boon and not a hindrance and I was at last as skinny as I had always wanted to be?

I dreaded sunrise, for it would burn away our perfection. The world grew darker and no eyes but Sandra’s had any use, but the Sun would be coming up. Of course there are things in the dark that are not there in the light. To say otherwise is a feeble lie. If only everyone could see what the dark could bring. If only the light would never come. But then, without the light to bring back our flawed selves for all to gawk at and judge, how would we bring others here to gaze into their reflections and see just how perfect they can be?

The Sun rose, but it was dark, and there was no reprieve from the nightmare, for it was no nightmare at all, but a real thing that happened, the real world, our real lives. Sure, the light would come back, and we would have a mission, but until then, we would hunt.

* * *

“Daddy, I spilled my juice.” The girl’s voice was barely able to be heard over the crackle of the dying fire. It would be out soon enough whether it was extinguished or not.

“Can’t have that!” Sandra declared with cheer in her tone, though the sound was dampened by the growing darkness. Of course, nothing could completely silence Sandra’s incredible, perfect voice.

“I don’t want to go to the cabin.”

“There is nothing to worry about. We’ll get you a quick change, and you’ll be back here with your dad in no time.” There was no lisp when Sandra spoke, all the confirmation I needed to tell me tonight was the night the Dark Sun would rise again and we would have a single day of wondrous perfection, of void and blackness darker than any normal midnight. Like a queen of the night blooming for only a single day of the year, we would be greeted by the living shadows and would do our work until time ran out, and we would wait patiently for the next cycle, however long that might take.

“Sandra, you stay with the other guests. Come with me. I’ll get you changed up, and you’ll be good as new, absolutely perfect. There is nothing wrong with the cabin. It was just a story.” It was hard to get the words out. I felt like I was yelling, though it sounded soft. I smiled at little Brittany, careful to keep my tongue from spilling out. “It’s been a long night, and it will be longer still. You’ll know what I mean later. Just make sure you don’t break the mirror; seven years is a long time to have bad luck, and we don’t want that for a sweet little morsel like you, now do we?” The heralds of the special night leading into the dark day were gathering around and silently snuffing the campfire where the unimportant, controlling father sat, his voice completely gone, unable to protest even if he tried. He would not have anyway – a girl’s place is to do what she is told and to be what she is told, and that was exactly what his daughter was doing by following us. He would learn soon enough.

The Sun rose, and it was Dark.