Superstitions - TimeRunner Reprise
Based on the original story by Nikholas "Switch" Toledo
A Church of All Worlds / Gratuitous Theater Project
The real me is already dead.
I know I look like her. I sound like her. I act like her. But
how would you know? Many of you have never even met the real me. She
died before you even knew she existed.
She haunts me, sometimes. Sometimes I dream of her returning,
taking this life that I am living away from me, because it was never
mine to begin with -- I simply took it away from her dying grasp.
I hate mirrors. I hate the thought of breaking one. Not because
of seven years of bad luck -- I never understood those stories, not
even when I was told them to scare me. I need little help to scare
myself.
I've been told many other stories about mirrors, stories of
seeing the face of one's soul mate within, stories of being killed by
who's inside if one said certain words or did certain things in front
of a mirror.
I find it easier to believe those stories.
She's in there, staring back at me, and I'm afraid that if I
ever broke a mirror she would come out and expose me for the lie that
I am.
There are too many mirrors in this house.
Here I am, at the top of the stairs. I'm okay, don't worry about
me. It's not too high up. It's not like I can fall very far. It's not
like I'm not used to falling.
I can still see my body, crumpled up in a heap below me, broken
from the fall from a height easily a hundred times the height of these
stairs...
Wait. That wasn't my body. That was hers. I've been lying to
myself for so long that I'm starting to believe it. I'm not her. I've
never been her.
How did she feel that day, falling... falling... falling at my
feet, her wide, curious eyes glazing over, blood oozing out of her
small head, staining her soft hair, crimson creeping toward me and
away from her in awful, inexorable tide...
Now she watches me from mirrors and reflections, and from the
corner of my eye I can see her, watching, waiting...
I have to tell the others. How? How do I tell them I'd been
keeping the truth from them all this time? What can I say? How do I
even begin? I don't know what I would say.
No.
I do know what to say.
The real me is already dead.
-----
Notes:
This occurs in the OAV continuity, after OAV 6, just like the original,
although the persona has quite changed, hasn't it? Once again, I've taken
liberties with the original to present quite a different tale.
This is more like the way I used to write; I wanted to see if I could still
do it properly. C&C is always welcome.
I hope you liked it.
=====
w.o.m.
TimeRunner's Web Page:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/7482
=====
Writers have to simultaneously believe the following two things:
1. The story I am now working on is the greatest work of genius ever written
in English.
2. The story I am now working on is worthless drivel.
Of course, believing two contradictory facts at the same time is somteimes
referred to as madness -- but that, too, can be an asset to a writer.
-- Orson Scott Card