Have you ever stared at yourself in the mirror until the person you see slowly begins to look like a stranger? Until the angles and down-curves and up-curves no longer look familiar to you in the arrangement that you see? As if you’ve never seen the person before in your life and you wonder where the hell they came from, and why the hell are they staring at you with such accusing, piteous, tired eyes as if you are to blame for why they look so shattered. So haggard. So utterly…
…Nobody ever wants to talk about themselves. And why should they? Most people don’t even want to think about themselves. Not truly. They think about what they want. They think about what they’ve done. They think about how to get what they want and the people they want. They want to think about the people they know and the places they’ve been.
Yet they don’t want to look at themselves in the mirror. They spend all day thinking about themselves—or believing they’re thinking about themselves, and then by the end of the day, after spending all bloody day contemplating what they think they know about themselves, when you’d think they would be quite familiar with their identity, they can’t even bear to look in a mirror longer than absolutely necessary. It’s because they think their face is too drawn or too pock-marked, or that they’re funny-looking, or that their stomach is too fat and their arms are too flabby, or that their ass isn’t as flattering as they’d like it to be, or because they slouch when they wished they didn’t, or because they just plain look like an idiot and who can bear to look at an idiot?
How can you spend all your time thinking about something and then not bear to bring your eyes upon it longer than necessary? Does the same principle apply to staring yourself in the face as it does to staring at others? Is there some kind of innate sense within people that tells them it’s rude to stare, even when you’re staring at yourself? Is that why you get uncomfortable? Are you afraid of being called vain? Vanity isn’t a sin, they just say it is as another excuse not to have to look at yourself.
Or are you afraid of the person in the mirror becoming a stranger? Are you afraid that after a time, the things you’ve thought about over the course of the day will matter so little that there is not a lot left to think about except why? Why have you done the things you’ve done? Why do you want the things you want? Why are you here, and not there? Why do you look this way? Why do you behave this way? Why do you speak this way? And why can you now no longer recognize the person staring you in the face? Why?
But you don’t want to think about the why, do you? You don’t dare tread into water too deep and too dark, lest  you not be able to come back out.
Can you do it? Can you stare at your face, let alone your entire body, until you can’t stand it? What will you begin to see after a while? What about your appearance and what you see beyond that will slowly drive you to look away?
But then again, why torture yourself?
How many times has the man in the mirror changed without my leave? Enough times now I think that sometimes on my worst days I’m still faintly caught off guard by my own reflection. It’s becoming easier every day to disassociate myself with the person staring in my face every time I stand in front of the mirror. He seems like a stranger some days. Gods know he was a complete foreigner to me the first time I looked upon him after, by some unexpected (perhaps even crueler than I think) twist of fate, I fled my underground prison of four years.
I had stood waist-deep and stark naked in the frigid water of a meandering river the day after I fled the encampment. The mere touch of the water against my skin had made me cleaner than I had been in the past four years at any one moment. The water was pure and faintly moving. That alone had been enough to flood me over with the realization that yes—this was real. Yes, I was free. Yes, this water was clear enough to drink…
Yes, I had changed.
Shivering through the layer of dry mud and blood, dust, and sweat, I had hugged my arms, rubbing them—almost wanting to rake and claw my fingers through my skin to peel it away so the itching would just stop—and stared down into the reflection I had not seen in all of four years, through solitary confinement, physical and mental torture, starved labor, and sleepless nights and days that melted together and became only a single span of time.
And I don’t believe… that I will ever hold any other concept of my own face in my mind for the rest of my living days on this plane of existence. No matter what is done to it or how old I grow to be, and no matter how many times I look at myself in the mirror in the present, the mental image I hold of my own face has been forever frozen as the ghost I saw in the water on my first day of true freedom. Ashen, sun-starved skin drawn across protruding cheek bones accentuated by the sunken hollows beneath and darkened, ringed pits above from where peered beady, vacant, deadened eyes the color of suffocation and the absolute epitome of lifelessness. A tangled sea of black filth that barely passed for hair anymore draped over the face like a curtain and hung off the jaw and chin and framed the mouth like the pelt of something dead and unrecognizable, almost concealing two crooked scars without origin that divided the brow and left cheek. The disfigured knob of cartilage and bone that protruded defiantly from the face seemed to be the only thing I still recognized—and even it wasn’t as it should have been. The nasal bone protruded like a small lump, several times broken and healed, and the cartilage, smashed in time and again it seemed, bore a slight recess—never reforming quite the way it should have, and left only the vaguest memory of what shape the nose used to have when or if it had ever been unflawed.
But such times from whence I’d come bore no concept or perception of the idea of having desirable features. It was a necessity lost years ago only now stirred back to life by the image of the ghost that stared into my face, dead in the eyes, ages sleepless, and broken of heart and soul time and again.
One thought leads to another which leads to another, and eventually I’d forced myself out of the murk of my thoughts and barred myself entry into them again. I’d had things more important than regret to focus on at the time, such as getting clean, and going through the motions of looking like a human being again. To eat and make less noticeable the ribs protruding from over my sunken gut, like the rungs on a ladder. Perhaps it was some sort of subconscious effort to run away from the pallid wraith I’d seen in the water, or perhaps I had been just so itchy and filthy that I needed to be clean. At the time, I hadn’t given it any thought at all.
In a way it’s funny how automatic the need to look and feel a certain way can become to you. Even after being disallowed for so long to take a real bath rather than being simply rinsed with dirty water, it’s funny how quickly the need to recognize yourself, to feel comfortable in your own skin, to feel clean can snap back to you after being lost for so long. It’s just one more thing that makes us human.
But as I’ve alluded to, recognizing yourself and being able to look at yourself are two different affairs entirely.
Today, I sit cross-legged in front of an unadorned mirror with my slightly callused, gnarled hands rested in my lap in the temporary solitude of a private room, many months after I left that hell. Almost a year, perhaps, since then… for some reason I hadn’t felt compelled to keep track. Suppose I thought the sooner I lost count, the sooner I could forget it, and the sooner I could finally have dreamless nights—as if my nights had ever been dreamless, even before all of this happened.
I’m bare-skinned all the way to my callused and scarred toes, each of which I had broken at least once from one circumstance to another—reminders of how busy my life has been, if I wanted to look at it that way. The shallows in my face have since filled back out from a regular diet, looking more like the (chiseled? Sort of?) oval I remembered from years previous, the cheekbones not appearing to protrude so much as before. The hair has all but been shaved off my face, leaving a short, wiry goatee to frame my chin and the rest of my jaw and upper lip bristly from disinterested, day-to-day neglect. Without the facial hair, the pale, crooked scar is born to onlookers as a sign of a man prone to fights and prone more to winning them (you should have seen the other guy). It begins on the left side of my neck and creeps up and over my jaw line, seeming to reach for the inside corner of my left eye before stopping short halfway across my cheek. The gash points at the second scar marring my forehead over my right brow, partially concealed by unruly hair.
With a more-or-less bare jaw and nest of black hair—no doubt hiding handfuls of gray somewhere in its depths by now—hacked off below the ears with a sharpened knife, I try vacantly to see an entity in the mirror that I remembered seeing years ago. I’d hoped that without the grime and filth he would remind me of someone I was supposed to be. But the eyes have lost it, unfortunately. The dark rings of sleeplessness persist still, deepened yet by the furrow of my angled brows and slope of my forehead. I wonder how long it will be before the creases striking through my brow, cradling my eyes, and pulling away from my bent nose will become permanent.
I make a conscious effort then to relax my brow, to not have it furrowed. I already look older than I am, I don’t need the help of wrinkles too. I incline my head slightly to put more light on my face—so I can see it better? So I can pretend to look civilized or proud? It’s not a look that suits my face. My jaw tightens and my (slightly chapped, thin) lips draw taut when the light almost catches in the color of my eyes—they’ve regained their color a little bit since then. I have seen the looks on my targets’ faces when they stare at my eyes just before I kill them. They always look especially terrified, and I don’t know why. Blue, to me, has always been a comforting color. Does some kind of killing intent or inaudible desire to destroy bleed through my eyes that I’m unaware of that only those within the last seconds of their life can sense? Or is it something else they sense that I’ve only recently become aware of myself?
Then again, I’ve kept captivated many a tavern wench by merely keeping my eyes focused on theirs.
Money savers, my eyes. Brothels can be expensive, it’s best to save money when I can.
…Note to self, see a medicler soon for a check-up.
Tiring of staring listlessly at the windows sometimes even I can’t understand and the restless nights recorded beneath them, I drop my gaze away and stare bleakly at the rest of the person in the mirror, feeling a quiet, bizarre mixture of the recognition of self and the detached apathy of a stranger.
The other scars waste no time in being obvious. The definition of my neck is disrupted by other tell-tale warnings to stay away—lessons not soon forgotten that take the form of two pale, sealed fissures, scars that each only made it halfway across my throat—my life spared by inches not once, but twice, and not by any mercy of the attacker. So much blood, both times, running in rivers, me slowly choking, hearing my own rasping and the slowing heartbeat echo in my skull, the only thing driving me toward help being the fear of what lay beyond should my eyes close for good.
Narrow, pale shoulders and a pale torso display similar mistakes, all of varying degrees. A crooked cross etched deeply across my right pectoral under the entrance wound of an arrow I hadn’t seen. Deep gashes from steel claws engrained across my left pectoral. Sturdy shoulders and (lean but strong) arms, are etched and littered with more scars—most pale and fleshy, others, once deeper, still red as if glowing amongst their pallid canvas.
The forearms bear four black rings apiece. Tattoos, they’re supposed to be called; merely scars of a different light that speak a universal language to onlookers. A message that dictates anyone who glimpses them should do well to turn me in, for what am I but a walking ghost back from a place from which no man leaves. And for good reason. I come from a place of killers and betrayers, of liars and thieves, of regrets and punishment—the walking dead, each and every one. Each for their intent to kill and lie, and kill and lie.
On the contrary, I had been there out of love. Reminders, the black rings be then, of a mistake of the heart. But a mistake I made for her.
Foolishness, carelessness, a lack of discipline, purity of intention, lack of focus, apology, regret—I miss you still, and I wear these rings for you. I would hope to be with you some day, but forgive me for believing that even in death we will be parted.
The torso and back alike are further littered in scars and small scrapes and old burns. Memories of being gutted and stabbed, cut and scraped, thrown and dragged—and the lashes. Learning experiences, every one, is how I try to look at them. Sometimes I remember where each one came from, other times all I see are marks I presume have been there since birth, like freckles or birth marks. Was I born scarred, a walking mistake? Something in me whispers it as truth while something else mutters a contradiction to the accusation— contradictions I used to hear ages ago and now may never hear again, for they lay dead and buried hundreds of miles away. Perhaps they were the lies, because truth never dies—and I saw the contradiction dead and shriveled in a pool of its own blood.
Can’t get much deader than that…
Back away. Get away from there. It’s dark there, and the dark is where the danger lies. Step back, turn around, focus elsewhere.
A pallid stomach that’s not so defined, only flat with vague hints that I exercise frequently, sometimes to exhaustion, most often out of necessity and desire to improve, lest I fall short and regret it. I’m not thick, and I’m not thin. My slouching creates folds just like everyone else. What vague definition there is to my stomach is disrupted by the (less than?) average trail of hair from mid chest to the unmentionable. I am far from being the hairiest man on the planet, but like most of the rest of me, “average” just about sums it up. And as to the details down below, I haven’t given numeric measurements to anything so far, so I don’t feel the need to start now. Rest assured, it’s served me well and there’ve been no complaints.
My legs have carried me far, and so that is where my strength lies. The hundreds of miles they must have carried me, uncountable. There are a collection of old scars across either thigh in various places—across the back, the front—all previous threats from people who knew what they were doing and had shortly after wished I hadn’t. Some threats that were never threats on their own—the bottoms of my feet are like callused rock. I was barefoot for four years, and yes, it hurt, but that’s of little consequence now, is it? My feet are red, used, gnarled, but strong. The beginnings of a harmless fungus returns and sometimes itches when it gets bad. More scars and cuts and scrapes.
Care to touch my feet? No? Good. I don’t like them touched. Or any part of me. I’m mildly phobic of physical touch. It takes work. Not from me, from you.
Major arteries run close to the back of the thigh. Mine had been cut open more than once. Lessons learned for another day, another lifetime: watch your back at all times. Watch everything. Don’t lose focus for a second, lest your knees get kicked in by an assailant you’d not seen previously.
Snap-crack-pop go the knee-caps, the vibration shudders up your leg, the sound echoes in your skull, you shudder, cry out, and suddenly your legs are useless. Stay down and stop wasting my time.
Balance is key. One leg on the ground is all I need. Sometimes not even that. My hands will work just fine to keep me up. Every mile I’ve crossed, every patroller and Guardsmen I’ve fled only gives power to my legs. I can break your spine with the back of my heel, and you won’t even know it until I’m walking away from you. My foot can break your ribs, it can crush your Adam’s apple, it can force your nasal bone into your brain, it can invert the direction your legs bend, upset your kidney function, shatter your jaw—and when I get you on your knees, you’ll know you’re soon to not be feeling anything at all. Because there is the back of your disgusting neck on display. Your spine so close to the surface of your skin. The dip in your neck where the spine tucks into your skull, hidden by all that hair, but not hidden from me, because like all practiced motions, this too is second nature, and I barely have to look at it to know where to put this knife.
So continue to run me down. It’s good exercise for my legs—my body and mind, even. Continue to give chase. Continue wishing retribution, or justice for the things you think I’ve done in cold blood. Continue forcing me to run, my legs to work. Chase me away. Chase me away from safety. Chase me away from restfulness. From ease of mind. Make me a sleepless maniac out of sheer paranoia and fear. Fear only makes cowards stronger. For what other reason would they kill?
Fear of what might happen to them. Fear of starvation. Fear of failure. Fear of pain. Regret. Loss—of themselves, or of others? What others are there other than themselves? None, anymore. It’s just me. The coward, the wretch, in all his pallid, scarred, wiry glory. The coward, the wretch who’s lost it all and still stands. Still walks. Still runs.
The coward, the wretch, who knows nothing anymore except facts and logic and split-second, silver-tongued remarks.
Nothing, including this stranger in the mirror.
I smile. A broad, lopsided one, as if nothing really matters, and that’s okay.
That at least looks familiar.