Silence. My old friend. She is my only companion in this rotten, forgotten place. At least, she is the only thing I can trust. She isn’t the doubting, fearful voice I hear at night, when the wild things howl and screech. She is the voice that listens for the truth, for instinct and intuition. She is what lets me survive this realm of despair. I call her when I am cold and hungry. I reach out to her when I’m terrified of being here another day — another year! How long has it been?

I can tell when it is day because of the quiet. Though whatever sunlight comes to this place is diffused by the low clouds and gray fog that fill each day. I tried walking for what seemed like many miles in each direction but I only seem to walk in circles. Nothing about this place makes sense. And nothing changes, as far as I walk. Endless marsh, as if this whole world was once flooded with grief and when the waters receded, all that was left was a soggy swamp of tears and regret. No matter how far I travel, each day I am returned here — to the floating mirror — the only portal where I can see into the other world — my old world.

When I look in the mirror it is the demon I see. Not my self anymore. Not really me. It’s who I became in the other world. I stopped calling it the real world because this land of tears is just as real, but must exist as a parallel place. It’s as if this world was always here but I couldn’t see it, until it was too late. It isn’t far from my old world. It’s frightening how close it really is. If I could only reach through it again. But I am trapped here. And all I can see there now is the devil. The creature that replaced me.

To everyone else she must still look like me, act like me. But I can see who she really is — an impostor, a mimic, a shapeshifter. “She isn’t me! I’m me!” I wish I could scream through the window into that world but I can’t. I have no voice here, only the silence and it’s listening — and the scared voice that keeps my mirror image frozen and caged, as if cursed by the darkness within this place; pronounced by the force of evil itself, by despair — the living death.

There is no one to listen here if I could speak. Only the silent days and the long, loud nights. When I look in the mirror I see who I thought I was inside and now she’s on the outside and I’m stuck here with only the taunting of the floating mirror to remind me of who I really am.