To Match My Own
A/N: Just a little Drusilla story, reflections (if you will) on being a vampire.
All alone.
Perhaps the world has ended. For all the silent stars tell me and the wicked moon laughs-it has. The night bugs, fly in and out of the high windows. Still living. Perhaps it is just me and them left in the world; all the people dropped down dead, all the little critters gone/. The big bad demons dead too, deader than before. Even my dear Spike vanished from the earth. I am the only one in the universe now. Just me and the stars and the night bugs flitting over head.
From the endless corner of the crypt skimper-scampers a mouse. Tied to his little tail is the rest of the world and as he skips into the moonlight, existence begins again. Gone is my little world of me. My night bugs seem ugly now. I glare angrily at them.
Spike is out. I love to see him walk; a begrudging symphony on the downy grass. But there will be no music tonight, for he is out. And I am in. Alone.
I look away from existence the mouse and my vile night bugs toward the shimmering far wall. Things often shimmer for me. The floor will spin if I want to sway, clouds happily die to make my blanket, the heavens shatter and burn because I cry. Spike cannot see them, but he knows I do. How often the flowers would have bitten him had I not told them to keep away. He sees the shimmer though. He bought it for me, or stole it or maybe he made it, it doesn't matter to the shimmer. My Spike got it as a present from Rome. I saw it surrounded by pale reflections and pretty Italian frames breaking the wall of mirrors. I knew it was mine.
Spike calls it a mirror, though that's not its proper name. He is out, taken my diner with him. Her limp body was drained of blood, so he took her out to the river where she might float back to her little sister on the beach. Now she will have a funeral, and the mother will throw white lilies on her coffin, while the children ask why she won't wake. She could have been my friend, but Spike wouldn't like to see her rot beside me in my bed. Daddy would have. Or better, he would have left her body hanging upside-down on the staircase with her eyes rolled back and her tongue poking out. A nice surprise for her mummy in the morning. But Spike would rather throw her in the river, because it is closer to pleasant. He cares, I think.
Existence the mouse scurries past me. Pitter-patter, scritch-scratch go his little claws as he chases dinner smells across the room. He would have been dinner once. Spike doesn't like me eating them though. He says rats are dirty. That's why I like them.
Existence can read my thoughts and corrects me crossly "I am a mouse, not a rat."
This is true, though I think both are good for eating.
He scampers in front of my shimmer-mirror. Twitchy whiskers, thin grey tail, brown wire fur and petal round ears are all reflected. Existence does not notice his reflection. Nor does he notice the ragged tabby slip though the window. Hell beast.
Mirror notices though. Perfect in every detail, she remakes everything she sees and keeps it for her own. Mirror sees ground and dirty and stones and blood and leaves and night bugs and existence and hell tabby, but she does not see me.
I wish I still had my dinner to play with. Bad girls play with their food. She had long goldie locks. I could have platted her hair and dressed her in pretty dresses. We would dance around the air together and have tea parties underground with the worms. Until the earth took her flesh and browned her bones. But Spike took her away. Why am I alone?
Goldie-locks was in the mirror. Wide blue eyes watched in fright as I drained her blood. How silly she looked, shivering and jerking away from nothing, straining against the air, because Mirror would not reflect me.
Why does mirror not love me? She closes her eyes to only me, she will look upon everyone else. Am I ugly? Is my hair a vile shade of black? Are my eyes too milky or too sharp? My lips must be broken and bleeding, one to thin and the other too fat. These blotchy cheeks a map of decay. I am a monster. No wonder Mirror hates me.
Existence licks his paws, Mirror's mouse doing the same. Click-click, twitch-twitch, lick-lick. How fast the little mice move. Hell-cat stalks behind him. Tall and dark on tip-toe. Hell is caught by Mirror too. Stalking above mirror mouse, mirror cat slinks towards it's prey. Mirror does not try to warn Existence, but nor does she conceal Hell. She shows the night bugs hovering above and the dead mossy plants crawling over the grey stones. Mirror even reflects the stars thought the open window and the milky glow of the moonshine. Mirror is fair to all creatures.
Except me.
Behind Existence and Hell I am not here; not just invisible, I don't exist. The world has not ended, it's very much alive, and it is I who is dead and gone.
Hell pounces quickly, catching Existence in his toothy jaws. Existence doesn't even have time to squeak. In the mirror, Hell takes two gulps and Existence is gone. His meal done, the cat swiftly leaps out of the window and disappears. I look for my night bugs, but they have followed Hell out the window, waiting for Existence's bones to feed upon.
Now it is just me and the mirror. She will not look at me, though I look long and pleadingly at her. I am so lonely, Existence snatched away by Hell, and even the night critters rejecting me. And in the mirror, there's no mirror me. I'm alone. The world not ended, but simply run away from me, it's most rejected shadowy daughter.