The mirror called to her. She stood in front of it and considered what she saw with a detached air, for what she saw she did not recognise. As she fingered the hem of the blouse she was wearing the image did likewise, mocking her. Pulling it over her head she is protected, but vulnerable one second later as it falls to the floor with barely a sound. Once again she observes the stranger in the glass, mirroring its movements. The slim boned hand feels its way across the stomach, concave and pale. It rises up, to touch the ribs through the skin one by one by one by one. It moves past the breasts to the collar bone which protrudes alarmingly from the frame. A flawed design. The indented skin at the shouders creates a hollow, as the bones rise up- trying to escape the confines of the body.
Falling down the strangers hands undo the trousers which hang too low upon the hips- they do not need further encouragement and they drop to the floor to pool around the ankles. The hands run across the sharp point of bone, almost as if it has been carved from marble.
What is this strange creature who stands naked, unaware, unconcerned? Allison reaches out to this sad person, with shadows cast across a marble face. She touches glass and tips of fingers are touching hers, as cold as ice. As cold as death. She gasps, seeing the expression mirrored. She has felt death and it had broken her. Now it taunted her with this stranger in front of her eyes.
"For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
Ironic. Her thoughts should be of a bible passage. Just a book. Just a book. When she was in med school she had read the bible, and people always questioned her- "You're an atheist. You can't read that". She could, and she did. Reading it like any other book- appreciating the poetry and lyricism of the words written so long ago. She found comfort in these words, but it was just a book like any other. There was no God that she believed in, but the power of words was a force comparable to none.
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
Forced to grow up before her time. Taking on the role of student, wife, doctor, comforter. Mourner.
The face in the mirror taunted her.
The glass shattered
Allison could see the shatters laughing, as they caught the light, an eye, an ear.
She closed her eyes and stood amongst discarded clothes and shards of mirror. A bitter laugh which seemed to come from the ruins.
The stranger mocking her
The blood dripped from her hand.