Chapter 21
Cheshire Grin
"Juniper!" I heard myself hiss. Bang, Bang. "Juniper?!" I called again from the other side of the room, sounding thoroughly displeased. "For fuck sake Juniper would you ever wake up and get off the ground and stop acting like a big baby?!" I went on furiously, frowning at the cruel sunlight's merciless attack on my poor sensitive eyes, I took in the view. I quickly recognised the water marked and recently smoke damaged ceiling of my home.
"To quote Sirius Black." These words escaped my own mouth in a hoarse tone. "Five more minutes." I grimaced and rolled over to lie flat on my belly, face down on the floor. I felt cracked, a long, broad vowel leaked from my dry mouth as a tremor ran through me, I took in a long breath.
"uuuh…" I was really in no mood to deal with… well anything.
The slow return to reality experienced on the floor of what I took a moment to realise was my flat was monstrous. I was becoming quite accustomed to the idea of being dead but, alas.
"Okay," I cracked. I hauled myself upright. Lying down really wasn't getting me anywhere, not to mention that this was the morning that the escape of Black would probably hit the headlines.
I grabbed the edge of the table with my poorly bandaged left hand and did a double take. My wrist was covered in dry, cracked old blood, but it was working fine. The murderous edges of the wound had faded. I managed to clamber into the rickety, blood-stained chair. I tore the bandage from my arm and marveled. The previously gaping laceration had crudely sealed with a layer of tough, translucent skin. It felt tight when I moved, and was smooth to the touch. It was totally transparent, the anatomy beneath was grotesquely visible. It's not that I'm especially vain, but it would've been nice if that had not happened.
"Euww," my voice blurted from the other side of my room. Oh no. I span to look at what really ought to have been a Jodie sitting in the same chair I was, looking bewildered, instead the insolent mirror-girl had her face pressed up to the opposite side of the glass and was gawking at my arm.
I fell off my chair and did some shrieking like a banshee on acid. A few incoherent words found themselves babbling out of my mouth. The girl watched me for a moment and then rolled her eyes.
"Stop being such a twat Juniper!" the mirror girl called out in a weird sort of tone to hear in my own voice. "Pull yourself together woman, you don't see me gulping down every box of God knows what I can find and then taking naps in the middle of the floor! I swear to Grim, you've done it now." I nodded stiffly and shutup.
I flew up onto my feet. I paused and looked at myself planted on the ground, feeling like I had missed the beat that had brought me up there. I addressed my obnoxious reflection.
"What is happening?" I asked myself, or rather, my other self.
"Have you ever heard of a total psychotic break?" she asked. I looked down at my mutilated arm before shrugging and moving it to run through my hair. My hair was still thoroughly matted with blood. I settled for crossing my arms and then nodded coolly.
"Yeah, I have." I jutted my chin up to myself and really wished I could have practiced in the mirror before hand. No longer an option, I would just have to hope that I didn't look like a deluded young woman attempting a botched Popeye impression.
"Well if anyone tries to tell you that what is happening they don't know what they are talking about." the other me had her jaw set, she removed her forehead from its original place pressed across the mirror and continued to address me with her bizarre white eyes, blood strewn hair and lacerated limbs. We were quite a sight.
"You ever hear of balance?" the other me asked.
"Have I ever heard of balance?" I repeated back slowly in a tone that implied the preposterousness of the question.
"Well when something or someone tips the scale sometimes it can take a while for things to…" the girl jolted, her eyes fixed on a place behind me. Her mouth gaped and she began to tremble. I wanted to turn back to see what horrific sight approached at my back, beginning to quiver myself as a great unsettled feeling passed over me.
Bumps raised on my arms as I felt my hair displaced by a puff of cold air. I whimpered quietly, my veins burned and for the first time since waking up I noticed the absence of my wand. I turned myself quickly on my heel to face whatever threat I may be defenceless to ward off but who I refused to allow to sucker punch me.
My apartment was empty, the large circular window on the centre of the wall opposite still partially open, the Winter sun shining in, reflecting the gruesome and bloody reminder of what had happened. I saw nothing but then, a slow, cricketing old sort of reaping chill. It felt like a hand reaching into my gut and stretching my entrails into two ends. The cold, clinically moving hands began to tie a slow purposeful knot and I cried out. I closed my eyes tight shut and as I did my view was very different.
A Cheshire grin on a red eyed face surrounded by a room full of smoke. Looking down I saw charcoal like hands reaching into my leaking stomach. The blood which covered the hand as they removed themselves from there previous work of binding my insides was shining and white. My eyes, searching behind my eye lids flew back to the shining red beads ahead of me and saw fury. The cracking hands ran up and through my hair.
My eyes flew open and I was greeted once again with my sun-filled apartment but I could feel the grating shivering touch of the black hands scraping over my scalp. I closed my eyes to be only blind, I saw nothing more. When I turned back to my other self in the following instant I saw my own terrified face exactly as it was.
"What…?" but the other girls mouth moved with me and even as I began to pound the glass and call my own name the only sight was the silent moving mouth in synch with my own and a slowly tenderising mutilated hand following my own movements to a tee.
I cradled my unnaturally healed hand to my chest and began to cry. Surely that had been it, my chance, the girl, my only constant in life; I had to find her again.
"Jude?" I asked the crying girl in the mirror and she said it with me. I craned my neck to look around her but then I just met her eyes again.
"She isn't here." We told each other and I felt a thrum by my heart as my organs began to readjust into their preferred state. I placed my hand over my belly gently and sighed. My wand shot from its place by my heart, down my sleeve into my hand. The light in my middle was coaxed to shine a little brighter by the wand. I turned it over in my hideous, monstrous appendage and shrugged.
"Life goes on," I muttered and glanced over at the clock. It was just turning over to eight, only an hour till work and I needed to shower. I had to delay Ollivander finding out if I could.
A/N: Thanks for reading and please review