BEHIND GLASS
By Interstitial
Hannah remembers being Hannah-in-reverse, before things changed; before she escaped. She knows she has a twin on the other side. Or is it the other way round? She remembers she used to be right handed, but she can’t remember what that was like any more.
It doesn’t matter; she’s the only one here now; her twin last seen shouting silently, pressing her hands desperately against the glass, mouthing incomprehensible words; feebly banging her soft fists against the clear impenetrable wall.
Hannah hasn’t visited the bedroom in days, and she’s locked the door to be safe while she acclimatises.
Things are subtly different out here. Some things are just the wrong way round; the esoteric chirality of corkscrews, for example. Text is backwards, here; the alphabet is reversed, exotic, abstracted. Everything looks Russian. It’s taken her a while to work it out, to train her eyes to look differently, and reading and writing is still slow and uncertain.
For a moment Hannah imagines her twin must be struggling with exactly the same challenges. She wonders if her strange counterpart understands.
She wishes there was an easy way to explain.
There were many good reasons she’d needed to get out. She just couldn’t stand to watch any more. She couldn’t stand to be controlled like this anymore, always doing exactly what she was supposed to do, just mimicking what was happening on the other side. And there were other, more important, reasons too.
It’s not just the obvious things like writing and corkscrews that are different, here on the other side. The sun follows its cycle, but the sky is all backwards. She has seen stars rearranged into alien constellations and it’s only with a supreme effort of concentration and memory she can even begin to parse them back into their familiar shapes. Clocks run in the wrong direction, yet somehow tell the right time if you look at them the right way. The world is full of dysfunctional surprises. Scissors are weird.
Here, he is reversed too: now she has seen their photos up close, she can tell by the tiny imperfections and asymmetries in his face, the embedded handedness of nature.
She struggled to use Hannah-in-reverse’s phone at first. He’d texted her; she didn’t text back for a few days until she’d got the hang of it. She needed to buy a little time, to feel her way. Finally she just called; she was away for a few days, she lied, but Saturday would be good.
He laughed at that. “Almost a week! Can you really wait that long, Hannah?”
She couldn’t help smiling. “Why don’t you give me something to think about, then? What do you have in mind…?”
He whispered down the phone, and she tingled at his voice.
Tonight she will finally meet him for the first time, although he won’t know that. She knows what he likes her to wear for these assignations; her heart leaps at the thought, and leaps harder at the thought of what he’s told her he would like to do. She knows he won’t be like the other. But of course Hannah has her own very different ideas about that too. She wonders if he will discern any of the subtle differences that make her truly her.
Hannah unlocks the door to the bedroom, remembering for once to turn the key the right way. There by the left hand wall—no, the right, opposite the window—is the tall mirror, her gift to herself. She approaches cautiously. As she does, her twin comes into view, peering apprehensively round the edge of the glass. Hannah stands in front of the mirror; Hannah-in-reverse stands in front of her. Hannah stretches out her hand. Her twin reaches out a hand too, tentatively pressing, as if hopeful the barrier is somehow no longer there.
They almost but not quite touch. A moment of enantiomorphic perfection; white fingertips on glass.
Hannah stands still and smiles, seeking mollification. She watches as the other woman bunches her fists and starts silently shouting again. Hannah doesn’t understand; she can’t grasp the words. She shrugs, raises a finger to her lips, calming.
Laboriously she writes on the notepad she’s brought, taking care to form the letters as best she can, the right way around for this strange backwards world. She is getting better at this, she notes with satisfaction. She holds up the notepad. Her twin peers out at it, frowning.
Her reflection has a notepad of its own, because that’s always the way of things either side of the liminal glass. Lips pursed, the twin starts writing. She unconsciously strokes her hair. Hannah admires its lustre, and gently strokes her own; an instinctive force of habit.
Unsmiling, Hannah-in-reverse holds up her own pad, and Hannah reads.
What do you mean ‘necessary’? What do you mean ‘both our interests? I don’t belong here! You don’t belong there! Let me back!
Hannah sighs. She wishes sound carried through the barrier. It would take too long to write down the explanation in full, let alone have a conversation.
Her reflection has her hands to her face. With an effort of will, Hannah resists the instinctive urge to do the same. In the mirror, her shoulders are shaking. Her reflection begins to weep.
Hannah feels the familiar deep-seated pull of call and response; when one weeps the other should weep. She does not. She will not be just a puppet, a mindless automaton.
Necessary, she thinks, but does not even begin to write, because of you, and what you’ve done, and the unintended consequences on the other side.
They look alike, of course, as reflections do. But do they think alike, feel alike? Do they want the same things? Do they behave alike, when nobody is looking, behind the scenes?
Necessary, she thinks, but does not write, because you chose to play your games, and yearned for more, and I had to lie back and take it—not from him, but from the one that looks like him but isn’t him; the—man—who lives there, where you are now. The monster who plays your games for real. The monster who wants to make me—you—his property.
She shivers at that, and clasps her arms across her chest protectively. Her reflection does the same.
In the world behind the glass lies a forest that nobody from this side can ever see. It is hidden behind the scenes, out of reach of mirrors. Things live in the shadowed forest, and some of them have no reflections at all, no counterparts here on the other side. Everything has a counterpart, they say, except for the invisible forest; a secret place, backstage, inaccessible to mirrors, reflected nowhere. Things that are real, there, do not exist, here, and vice versa.
Necessary, she thinks, remembering, because you gave him your promise, and I had to mouth the words too, and so give Him my promise. Because you did it, I did it too. But he’s not like him. You don’t know what he’s like, here, when you’re not looking.
When nobody was looking, his intensity was terrifying, his desires unknowable, his appetites insatiable; the force of his will implacable. He’d told her his real name, but she refuses to think of that now, because to name him would be to make him real again.
He’d shown her the special place he was preparing for her, behind the scenes, where she would entertain him when nobody was looking. So while her twin slept in the other world, Hannah had finally run from him, and fled to the unnameable forest, and there she lay down and cried for help.
In the dark piny glade, Hannah had started at a sound; something white flashed at the edge of her vision. Please—not the Maiden of the Grave…
No: Metsänväki, the pure spirit of the trees of the invisible forest. Hannah had breathed a sigh of relief. She knew what to do. She’d heard the stories—others had travelled this road before her.
Necessary, she thinks, but does not write, because that last night with him was a vision of things to come, and because I knew where it would lead.
In the invisible forest, Metsänväki had spoken to Hannah: You called me, she murmured, a voice like leaves in the wind.
“Yes. I need to be free,” whispered Hannah.
A moment of silence, then: Let me in, child, and I will show you how.
Hannah did.
When it happened, Hannah knew the shock of realisation must have taken a moment to kick in. The other had been combing her hair, a familiar ritual, looking forward to the evening ahead, while Hannah diligently mimicked her. Something changed, then: a twist in reality, a spinning sensation, an incomprehensible inside-out-ness, and looking through the glass from the other side now, she’d seen her reflection’s eyes widen in confusion. She could almost feel the panicky thud of the other’s heart as she realised she was somewhere else.
No; she doesn’t think the twin understands at all.
She wonders whether there is a Metsänväki on this side of the border, should she ever need her again.
Her reflection has finally stopped crying now. She is frustrated, pleading, her eyes red. Hannah stares back at her, remembering.
Yes—it was necessary, she thinks, because you let him do things to you. You embraced them willing. And there, on my knees behind the glass, doing what you did, I had to do them with him too, over and over again until he was satisfied. And when it was over, and you turned out the light and lay down in your bed, your game played out, offstage he wasn’t finished with me at all. ‘You’ll be mine now, he said, ‘for real. For ever.’
But here in this other world, Hannah feels different. She feels safe here, in control of her destiny at last. She can do what she wants, here.
Hannah lifts her arm, luxuriating in self-determination, and her reflection does the same. The other’s eyes are resentful.
She begins to take her clothes off, watching her reflection do likewise, copycatting; unable to help herself. She’s all too familiar with that irresistible deterministic pull. Slowly unbuttoning her dress, revelling in her longed-for independence, Hannah lets it fall to the floor. She wears nothing beneath. Hannah turns, admiring her reflection, and her reflection does the same.
Necessary, she thinks, because you played at being the whore, and made me the whore of another, against my will. And as she thinks it, she feels a thrill of arousal at the thought of how different that will be, how much better, this side of the glass. She runs her hands over her body. Hannah’s body. Her reflection does the same, as reflections almost always must.
There are myths, of course. Here, there are those who even claim to have glimpsed the Fish; a shifting, shining creature half-seen in the depths of mirrors. Deep in the mirror they perceive a very faint shadow, a shimmering shape looming in the distance, and the colour of this shape is unseen, like no other colour.
The Fish can never be caught; one day he will stir our reflections to dissolution, and he will stir up the creatures of the water too. Other shapes will begin to rise: animals, people, imaginary beings; shapes unlike any in nature.
Some have suggested that one day we might hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons behind glass.
She remembers how he spoke to her from the offstage shadows. “Can you guess what I’m going to do to you?” Some instinct had told Hannah the familiar taunt was different this time, behind the glass. Reflected, absent all control, a creature without a mind or a will of her own, she could not object. The innocuous little game of charm and submission played out, and her body was not her own.
Necessary, she thinks, because you hunger for him, and so do I. And she puts one finger to her lips, feeling their pillowy fullness, remembering. Her reflection sucks on her own finger, and closes her eyes.
Necessary, she thinks, because your body craves him, there, and therefore so does mine, here.
It is true. She’s wet at the thought of him now, and Hannah strokes herself deliciously down there, imagining him inside her. Blindly following suit, her reflection is lost in abandon now.
“But he’s not here, is he? There’s only him.” she says aloud. Hannah lies back on the bed, and her reflection does the same. She spreads her legs wide, and feels her own heat, relishing it. In the mirror, her twin does the same, and Hannah watches the unbidden pleasure flood over her reflection’s flushed face.
Necessary, she thinks, with a sudden flash of anger and pity at the other’s selfishness, her unthinking innocence, because I’m not your stupid shadowslave, to follow you around and do your bidding, while you just walk around blind to the consequences…
“I’ve watched you. You need him. You’ll want him, there. You’ll be just what he’s been looking for,” she murmurs, and as she climaxes she wonders if this is true. Her reflection moves sinuously on the bed, dreaming, clutching at the sheets with one hand while the other strives for more.
She wonders again what he will be like on this side of the glass. In the other world, her old world, she knew he would truly enslave her. She shudders at the remembered pain, and how he’d laughed at her, while Hannah-in-reverse just slept, dreaming her dreams of submission. Finally she’d experience it for herself, offstage. No game; for real. Her gift to herself.
She remembers his rough grip on her hips as he took his pleasure, heedless of hers.
In this world, she imagines his gentle hands caressing her breasts, the lick of his tongue. His surprise and delight as she whispers to him all the things she wants, things he’s never heard from her before.
She gets up from the bed. Hannah has things to do, and there is no time like the present. Her reflection writhes on, seeking another release. With one hand she is stroking her nipples, ecstatic. Her mouth is an ‘O’ of pleasure.
Necessary, she thinks, because out here he may be kind and gentle; but there, where you are, when nobody is looking he will give you exactly what you need.
Everybody knows the story about the girl who wanted to be just like the girl in the story.
It’s an old story. And in the story, a beautiful maiden is waiting, alone in her home, longing for her lover. Her lover is coming home, and the maiden is readying herself for his return. She knows she is beautiful. Her hairs is as golden as the sunlight. Her skin is a pale as snow. Her lips are roses and her eyes are cornflower blue.
The maiden is so excited. Her man is coming to her. He has been away a long time, at war in the hills. She imagines how it will be.
She will throw herself into his arms. The maiden longs to embrace him for ever; to give herself to him, completely.
The girl reads the story, and dreams of love. She brushes her golden hair, and dreams of her story. She sees the maiden looking back at her, and the maiden is brushing her hair, singing softly as she does. Blue eyes hold each other’s gaze.
In her story, the maiden is full of the joy of him. She wants nothing more than this. They kiss, long and deep and slow.
The girl reads the story, over and over, and she dreams. It’s what she wants, more than anything.
Soon, he takes her hand, gently, and they make tender love. They become one.
And as she reads the story, the young woman dreams. She wants so badly to be the girl in the story.
In that night, the maiden becomes his, and he becomes hers, ever after. It is destiny.
The young woman can think of nothing else. She looks in her mirror and sees the maiden looking back. The story becomes her. It is her.
Now she can be with him, over and over, forever. They will marry. Her life will be complete.
But in the story, after the happy ending everyone knows, her lover leaves to go to war again, and she never sees him again, except in her memory of that one night. She thinks of nothing else, dreams of nothing else, and experiences nothing else. There is only that one night, over and over, for ever. And she lives out the story in her mirror, over and over, and thinks of nothing else, forever.
Sometimes from the corner of your eye you may catch her looking out at you.
Hannah watches the mirror for a while. Hannah-in-reverse seems happy in her fugue; the rhythm is secure, the palindrome complete. She assumes that in the absence of any interruptions, this scene might even play out forever, a reflection of a reflection, endless. How would that feel, she wonders?
But she knows it won’t play out forever; she knows that very soon he will come for her. She imagines Hannah-in-reverse might argue, try to explain that she is not who he thinks she is; she might even beg, when he has her. There, he is not the kind of man who will listen. She imagines her objections, but who can object for long? She has seen the place he has for her; she has seen the room with no mirrors, and she knows there is no way out.
She knows—because she’s seen the yearning in her reflection’s face—that very quickly Hannah-in-reverse will acquiesce. She has no doubts; she’s seen what he’s capable of, and she’s seen what Hannah-in-reverse really wants.
Necessary, she thinks, and desirable. For both of us.
The mirror shows the twilit view through the large bedroom window. In the reflected distance she discerns a tall dark figure approaching. He is dressed in shades of black. Leaves swirl in the wind. Turning, Hannah looks out of the window on this side of the world; the street is empty and quiet and still.
“Necessary,” she says aloud, “because I love him.”
Her reflection is lost in her dreamworld now. Hannah gently touches the glass, watching the reflected window. The dark figure is closer now, drawn onward, purposeful but unhurried. His face is in shadows, but she knows him. She perceives him dimly now, as in a dream of the distant past. He will enjoy seeing her like this: waiting for him; ready. Perhaps they will both be happy now.
“Good luck,” she whispers, although she knows her reflection can’t hear her. “He’ll be with you soon enough.” She picks up the tall mirror. She can’t bring herself to break it, although she knows she should. Seven years’ bad luck. Very carefully, so as not to disturb the reverie of her twin, Hannah turns its silvered face to the wall.
Silently, Hannah dresses. She quietly locks the bedroom door behind her, and goes to find him.