Transformation
I awoke to the sight of Lyra's back, her movements having roused me. She was walking as if against some sort of strong wind, struggling to keep back rather than to move on. Her body was arched in a bizarre position that made it difficult for me to stay holding onto her, and so I dropped from her, acknowledgment barely flickering very briefly across her face. She didn't appear fearful, but rather very resigned. It was when I looked around to see the familiar corridor in which we stood. Everything was notably different, other than the structure. While the wallpaper changed along with the rug, the hotel still bore the same layout. We climbed some stairs and found ourselves in the corridor leading to our room, that lay dormant at the very end beside a window.
I remember how we arrived home one night to see the contents of our hotel room strewn all over the corridor outside, with chairs and tables pushed up against the door that lay hanging from one hinge. I remember how I was accused for trashing my own room, somebody apparently having seen me do it in person. I'd apparently shot them a few choice words before barging past them and escaping through the door, leaving it in pieces in my wake. When I was accused, and Lyra told, neither of us believed it. Medical conditions aside, I wasn't nearly strong enough as I'd have liked to be to break a solid wood door to splinters. They insisted, though never pressed charges for reasons I still don't know. All the same, I managed to convince myself that I had somehow done it through an act of my condition and as such fell into what can only be described as self-loathing. I didn't know how, and only assumed that I blanked out the memory of ever doing it. Lyra, on the other hand, lost her memory when I consciously harmed her in a more conventional sort of attack. Once again, this was due to my condition, yet I remained fully aware. I now find it hard with hindsight to see how exactly I would block out the memory of trashing a room yet hang onto the repulsive thought of harming my dearest friend. Regardless, here we were, staring at a considerably more deprived rendition of our old hotel.
The wall at the end of the corridor had fallen in, the lights either lying on the floor in barely reflective pieces or instead hanging limply from the roof by a tangle of thin wires. Paintings that I found myself oddly remembering lay on the floor, leaving lighter spaces of nothing on the walls where the grime had failed to intrude, now making up for lost time as it encroached on the remaining clear rectangles of plaster. Fog drifted into the hall through the crumbling hole, the space beyond it filled with the same white nothingness that my eyes were beginning to come frustratingly accustomed to. We inadvertently came ever closer to the open doorway, the same chair lying in pieces against the closed door opposite our open one. Our feet crunched on broken glass as we rounded the corner, arms tentatively yet unwillingly reaching out to helpfully guide us safely over the pseudo-barricade of discarded furniture that barred the way in. I was the last to enter in complete bewilderment. Despite my movements not being my own, I was startled to see that the room was not our hotel room, but instead the same as the one we had been in before. The window, where I had taken my fatal fall, still remained smashed. There was blood decorating vicious-looking blades of glass that remained clinging to the window frame, droplets of the same blood browning around the white frame. I shuddered inwardly at the memory and tried to cast an eye over to Lyra, instead finding her out of my sight and myself unable to turn. In my head I had no idea of my destination, even as my body brought me to it: a tall mirror that my reflected image struggled to dominate even half of.
The pristine glass was held within a yellowing frame of white wood, painted to look like marble. All but a small fraction of the meager paint had fallen in chips from their efforts to cling to the deprived frame, and instead lay in crunching patterns at random all over the rotting floorboards. It was bizarre, to see something so well-treated and preserved amidst a world of deprivation and ruin. The glass was spotless, completely and utterly. Were it to be a French window, it would no doubt be one that I would walk into without the slightest sign of stopping, and subsequently break either it or myself through my clumsiness.
I was afforded no chance to walk into the glass however, let alone break it. My body came to an unwanted halt right before the glass, my reflection staring right back into my eyes as I did so to it. My body raised its hand in a bizarre motion, twisting its fingers into a strange shape that looked tantalizingly close to that of the Illuminati. The reflection did the same, producing a small loop in its thumb and index finger, the others outstretched in what was ever so similar to the iconic '6', but instead looking more like a 'b'. Inwardly, I tilted my head in curiosity, to find that the reflection did the same. I dismissed it, instead staring at the fingers and wondering what on Earth it could mean. The reflection did the same, even adopting the same bemused expression that I, figuratively speaking, also showed. The reflection's hand-my hand-flew to my mouth in surprise, remaining there as I suddenly felt an intense pain in my head. Like thunder and lightning, there was a delay before the unbearable noise of a high-pitched whine entered my head. The hand at my mouth now turned into two, on which I weakly champed down in an effort to keep from crying out. In only a few moments, the pain and pitch of the sound had increased at least thrice fold, the eyes of my reflection watering as she fell to her knees, clutching at her own head and gasping for breath. The last thing that I saw before I turned away was myself curled on the floor, state of consciousness indiscernible from the crumpled mess of hair, clothes and limbs, before oddly my vision faded to black.
From what I can gather, it was only shortly after when I awoke in a darker version of the room. At first, I thought the lights to be broken, but saw that there were none at all. While earlier the wall closest to me was on my right, it was now on my left, with everything having appeared to have slipped over to the opposite side of the room. Upon standing, I was re-introduced to the sight of the mirror, considerably grimier and unkempt in appearance. My sight fixed itself through the all-too-thick lenses of my glasses and adjusted the reflection in the mirror until it was in focus. To put it simply, my reflection looked rather worse for wear. Though still wearing my clothes, hair and glasses, the person underneath appeared truly vicious. Blood near enough dripping from her hands was enough of a hint that something was amiss. I instinctively checked my own hands, and saw nothing but pale skin. On looking up, I saw a cruel grin spread across my reflection's lips before she literally flickered out of sight, appearing off and on a hundred times within one second before disappearing completely. In her welcome absence, I found myself able to relax and observe. I closed my eyes, and opened them once more to the sight of the mirror, though this time finding myself without a reflection completely. Instead, within the mirror, I saw an unclear image of red dominating an entire wall, with a small white blob occupying the center of it all.
I looked down to the floor in search of anything else, and saw the same red pooling around my feet. I lifted them both at the same time with a gasp, clumsily hopping to one side to get out of the viscous blood that was beginning to cling to my shoes. I turned to one side, following the trail of blood with my eyes and threw my hands up once more to my mouth, this time allowing a thoroughly shocked whimper escape from my throat. A tentative step forwards, and another.
I stepped in the blood, not caring and barely even noticing. I didn't care. Before me, at the end of and above the trail of blood, resided the lifeless body of Lyra, bled out through a series of wounds inflicted by the same kitchen knives which pinned her to the wall. She lay limp, fresh blood still streaming from her nose and mouth in a free trickle, gurgling in her throat despite no attempt to speak. She was dead, drained of all but a fraction of her blood by the same kitchen knives I used to first make her dinner.
Lyra was dead.
