• Why can’t I die? Blood snaked down her arm from the self-inflicted laceration just above her pale violet wrist. Her bright blue eyes were fixed on the antique mirror in front of her; reflecting everything in the glass room but herself.

    The clock ticked away, though only the reflection’s hands moved. 11:55. The woman dragged the shard of broken glass against her forearm, cutting deep enough to where her ivory bone peeked through her skin. Then she moved it to her throat; puncturing it to where the artery burst open and coated the floor with its warm, scarlet liquid. Still she wouldn’t die.

    Silent tears rolled down her pale cheeks as the reflected clock stroke midnight, and a familiar image formed in the mirror where her reflection should have been. A child’s eyes stared into her own through the reflective glass; a twisted smile playing on its violet lips. Crimson tears fell from its black, lifeless eyes onto its colorless cheeks. Its tangled hair was damp as its ragged clothing. It laughed.

    “Please forgive me!” The woman cried, touching the mirror with her blood-stained hand. The child laughed again. “But you killed me, Mommy.” It smiled wider as it faded into nothingness; leaving the woman staring into the darkness of the empty room in the mirror once more.

    Suddenly, her gashes disappeared, and the bloody hand print vanished from the mirror. The woman looked at the clock in the mirror. 11:45. She smashed the picture frame of her and her daughter and grabbed the sharpest piece of glass from it. She clenched her teeth together and slit her wrist in the same way as she had before.

    And the cycle begins again…