I was only young when my mother died. I was only in my teens. She was an artist. She was always an artist. She was a horrible shame to family, but no one could have hated her more than I did.
She was a prim little girl who spoke of art in a manic and know-it-all voice that drove me to a twisted and dangerous hunger. I had this uncontrollable desire to possess everything she owned, or at least the things she had in her house.
She was always in her studio, a small, ugly little room behind the main house where she could paint without interruption. Sometimes she would even let me sit with her and watch. That was the only time anyone was kind to her, because she truly believed that everyone respected her for her talent, unlike me, who only wished to take from her.
Everyone in the family knew that there was never any art supplies, never any money, no formal education and no real friends, besides me. I was the only one who could really see her and so she couldn't lie to me. She had a gift, I could tell, but she couldn't use it, because she was born weird.
She was sallow, thin, covered in freckles and with ghostly long white hair that she kept pulled up in a fishtail braided braid. Her lips always had the same vibrant red color, like always, like she had bitten them fifty years ago, but she never dyed them.
They would always fade to brown as the day wore on, like her endless mourning for a person long gone.
She would hang around the house, hoping I would want her things. She had a large collection of pointless Muggle trinkets that she had hoarded since she was a child. She kept a glass jar full of pennies, because she believed in heaven. The silly thing would be empty by the next morning.
The only thing that would interest me in the ruby wedges and wooden animals was her ornate brass mirror. It was huge and gaudy and hovered above everything else like it was better than the rest.
She would tell me that everything she had in the house was mine, but I knew that was a lie. Her heart was as dirty as mine and she loved nothing more than to drown in a pool of her self-pity, or to see greed consume anyone else. Especially me. Especially when I took the mirror.
It was in her will, so I really couldn't stop myself from taking it. It's hard to believe that anything of her's could have been something I wanted. I took that mirror from her house, the day of the funeral. It was just something I wanted.
I had never had any friends to hold me back from picking up the mirror and hanging it in my own room. I had no family, save for my mother and the rest had been long gone.
It didn't matter if the frame was ugly or if the mirror even worked, I just liked knowing that I took something from her. I liked knowing that I had something that she didn't need anymore. I liked knowing that I would always be the favorite because I took all the best things that she had.
I took the mirror home, kicking and screaming and punching everything beneath me. I took the mirror home in my red and black high heels, kicking my feet into the cool summer air.
I took the mirror home in my mother's navy blue midi skirt and torn tights, my dirty red hair hanging in my eyes like a wild animal, telling myself that I was special.
I took the mirror home and hung it on a tiny little nail before I fell back onto my bed and stared straight into the glass. Everything I saw was distorted: My nails were chipped, my eyes were too blue and my skin was too pale. I painted what I saw, though.
I painted the mirror with a blue background, with a black and red spider web, because I wanted the whole world to know that the spider tends to win. I painted a dark little girl with yellow eyes, because that was what I was. I painted myself as a wicked queen, because I thought I was special and I thought I deserved it.
I laughed at the distorted image and I ran my hands across the mirror. It was cold and the surface was smooth. The mirror felt like glass, even though it wasn't.
I began to ask the mirror questions and I didn't listen to the answers. Instead, I looked at the places that were less distorted and tried to find the perfect angle to see my yellow eyes.
I had never been able to see myself clearly. I had always been too weak, too ugly or too plain. I knew the mirror was special, because it showed promises of greatness.
The mirror would show me that I could be someone. I just had to look into its eyes and I would see everything about myself that I was missing.
I stared into the mirror and I saw a sort of sharpness. I didn't smile though, because that would have distorted the image. Instead, I smiled in my head and tried to think of how I could be better than before.
I could be funnier, or I could have longer nails. I dreamed of those things and I stared harder into the mirror, but none of that ever happened.
What happened instead was the mirror changing. The glassy reflection changed to a picture of a room that I had never been in before. The space was dark and a man sat at a huge, mahogany desk with papers and quills littered across his mahogany desk.
His shirt was rolled up in his sleeves, showing off his golden skin. His skin was perfect and he smiled kindly at me.
I was somehow in his room, the room I'd never been in. I was somehow standing behind him, but I couldn't see his face. It jarred me, because I'd never seen anything so real, so vivid, so tangible in my life.
It was as real at being there, like I had been there for years. I was unsettled, because I didn't want to be there and because I didn't know how I had gotten there.
The man at the desk felt kind, but the candlelight revealed that he was the most handsome man that I had ever seen. He was not beautiful, no, he was handsome.
There was a difference, because he was rough around the edges and too perfect, at the same time. He was real, he was tangible, he was as real as I was.
I wanted him, I knew I did. He was everything I wasn't and everything I'd ever wanted. I wanted him to look at me and remember my name.
