The Mirror and I

It's not that bad, really, not getting attached to people. It's easier to let them go this way. 

What I am afraid of is what the loneliness is doing to me. I couldn't stop myself, I couldn't hold back, all I saw was the victory ahead as I ravaged my friend to death. 

El was good at combat and should've had the upper hand with the staff he held while I only used my fists...if only I could feel pain. 

When you hurt someone really bad, like, so bad that some of their limbs become immobile, you'd expect them to stay down, right? If they don't, then something is definitely wrong with them.

That's how bad El hurt me. I couldn't counter any of his thrusts, he was so fast that all I could think to do was raise my hands like I'd seen boxers do, but my lower body suffered.

Eventually, my sorry excuse for defense was broken and I found myself bleeding on the ground, my vision blurring. 

I did mention before that all of us are broken, right? All of us have that one thing that brings back our trauma, a trigger.

Turns out that for me...it's blood, my blood. The blood that haunts me every night. 

When I tried to get up, against everyone's advice which I could see from their faces, a drop of blood fell right next to my battered hands.

And then it came again, first as a whisper. The nightmare I battled with very night came with new tricks up its sleeves.

The corpses could talk. When I got up, my dead parents stood behind El. 

"Are you going to kill him too?" my mother said, "Sure, go ahead, you're good at it, right? After all, you did a bang up job with us."

It felt so real that I kept biting my tongue trying to think of a response as everything and everyone disappeared around me.

"You did this!" my father yelled, "You killed us! Why do you get to live!"

"I wish you were never born."

They shouted as I felt the room slowly get darker.

Rejection, though most of us don't admit it, everyone has a fear of rejection deep-rooted in their minds.

You're afraid to tell the truth because society may reject you, you're afraid to be yourself because your friends may reject you.

It hurts when they do, but what happens when you're rejected by the only people who were biologically programmed to love you?

Easy...you give up. 

Once again my mind was hijacked. Like someone just turned off all my senses.

I heard a loud zing in my ears as everything went blank. Before I knew it, I was back in the nightmare. My dead parents again, their blood on my hands again, six year old me crying again. 

I felt my heart beat accelerate in the midst of that silent dream.

there were distant echoes shouting over each other like ghosts in the dark. 

"Stop, stop! 38, stop!" they kept shouting, but I was so far gone that I just wanted to tune them out but I couldn't.

They were just so loud, so very loud...so I screamed to cover the noise.

I couldn't escape, it was as real as every night it visisted. But to my surprise, he was there again. The me I didn't recognize. 

This time I could see his whole body. He wore some sort of balck high-tech space suit that fit his whole body. He had robotic left arm, but it looked natural on him. 

He walked over to me, went down on one knee and gently held both my blood soaked hands and lowered them.

This time his expression seemed more pained than judgemental. He knew what I was going through, because he'd been here himself. Here in this cold hell that we had built.

He then looked me in the eyes and said to me, "I swear it gets better."

The words I'd been waiting for what seemed like forever for someone to tell me. To me, they were a promise that I was not alone.

With that, the nightmare ended and my senses returned. Shark'o and Sive held my arms as though to restrain me. 

"What the hell are you doing!?" 

Shark'o screamed at me.

"You fucking killed him!"

Sive added with tears in his eyes. 

I quickly scanned the area, and noticed everyone staring at me in horror. El's body laid dead and disfigured right at my feet. 

The first person who made me bleed and I made sure he'd never do it again. What did I become while I was in that dream? 

Thinking about it, I couldn't remember ever getting up from when he knocked me down. In my mind, I had just woken up. 

Bishop checked El's pulse and signaled to Zeus and the doctor, confirming his death. It was then that I found it hard to breathe. 

Turns out it's easier to convince yourself you're not attached to someone, so you don't think about what will happen when they leave. 

When I inhaled the air just got trapped in my throat, not enough of it reached my lungs. I couldn't even swallow it down. 

When I looked at the window, the doctor and Zeus were talking about something on Darcey's tablet. The back of my head felt like it was vibrating again and they looked at me in satisfaction.

After that, nothing was the same. Sure, we had promised to not get too close but it seems what I did still bothered my friends. They began avoiding me, they didn't speak to me and their eyes reflected nothing but hate. I guess we all missed El, though they wouldn't believe me if I told them. He was our big brother.

I was moved to another room and my training changed from everyone else's. It became even more intense which isolated me even more. Everyone thought I'd sacrificed El to get ahead, and my former roommates supported that rumor.

And just like that, I was alone again. I had my own table for meal times where I'd sit and watch them judgement with their eyes. It was easier to pretend I didn't feel anything...yeah, old habits die hard, it's always easier to pretend.

I'd eat my meals under the constant insults they threw at me and then leave to train with the Bishop. I was told that if I could beat him then I'd pass on to the final stage of the program.

The doctor who examined me, who I had now nicknamed Medusa, ordered guards to take me to her office almost immediately after the match. 

It was a small bright room with a desk in the middle, behind which Zeus sat, or maybe it just seemed small because of the bookshelves placed against every wall. 

The doctor stood on Zeus's right side as it wasn't her office and Darcey was on the left. 

"Come in, don't be shy." 

Zeus said as I couldn't get my legs to move in further into the room. My stomach was in knots. 

He kept flicking his fingures and saying, "Come on, a little further." like a father guiding his baby until my sluggish pace finally reached the desk. 

Then he leaned forward under the light of the table lamp as he took off his shades and said, "Marvelous." 

His eyes weren't normal. They were just dark pools with red dots dancing at the center, and looked like these pools were growing roots over his eye lids. 

It felt as though he was looking past my physical body, through my eyes and into my core. I was shocked but I made sure not to react, which is probably what he was testing. 

Then he leaned back to slouch on the leather chair and said, "Do you know why you're here, 38?" 

Flashes of him waving at me before my parents died kept flickering in my mind, but I did my best not to show my mental instability and casually replied, "No, sir. No one ever told us."

"Right, of course."

He then rotated the chair to the left and got up to slowly go around the desk. 

"Let me explain," he said, "I know it may not seem like it right now, but believe me when I tell you that we are the good guys."

As though they had planned it, Darcey taps something on her tablet and a hologram unfolds inside the room as everything else disappeared. Like the whole room wasn't even real to begin with. 

The hologram was a frozen image of my fight with El, what had happened after I lost control. I was on top of him with my raised, ready to throw a fist and I saw a tear in his eyes like he was begging me to stop. 

I felt my dead heart sink, "Why are you showing me this?" 

I asked. 

Then Zeus gestured forward, "Go ahead, take a look at your expression." he said, "The boy was begging for his life, go and see the eyes you gave him."

Hesitantly, I crept around the holograms to the front and bent down to look at my face. I felt my heart pound, and my head spin as I looked into this monster's eyes.

I had no expression, I had no sympathy, no life...and no soul. My eyes were like Zeus's. They reflected no heart.

The image unfroze and the way I hurt El was nothing short of brutal. I looked so much like a monster that I immediately jolted and fell on my butt. I didn't recognize myself.

"What the hell!" I exclaimed. 

"Don't worry, that's not you." Zeus said as he stepped beside me, then he ordered. "Reveal it."

As soon as he said so, the room was illuminated by a blue light, and above the hologram was an actual monster in the same position. 

"It was him," Zeus said, "It calls itself Tenebrosus, we call it J.I.N.X. That's who you should blame for your parents' deaths."

The image unfroze again and this red monster without a face mirrored my movements...or maybe I mirrored his. 

Who was the real me? This sack of flesh, or the devil in the mirror?