Chapter 21 : Mirrors lie

“she wants to blow up
all the glass factories
and shatter reflections 'round the world.
Until then she'll just knock her knees
to the cool tile floor
and blast the bathroom sink,
it's the next best thing

to making mirrors extinct."

Making Mirrors Extinct

Lucas Carpenter

A few minutes later a small tap resounded from my door. I looked at my watch and huffed, muttering to myself. It hadn’t even been five minutes. I rolled my eyes as the door crept open a few inches and a pair of hair covered eyes peeked around the corner.

“Hi I’m Bella. Howdy newbie,” Bella chirped her face still hidden behind the door. I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Her voice was still happy and cheerful, obviously not destroyed from her five long months here. This gave me some small hope for getting out of this place sane however I was almost beginning to wander if Bella belonged here at all, she seemed to cheerful for someone who had been cooped up in the mental house for so long


“Come on in if you want. I’m not doing anything,” I said.

Her body slipped in around the crack in the door. Then I understood, no one could fail to understand why Bella had claimed her place in Apple Gate house. Bella was tall and I imagined used to be very pretty. Now she was a shell of her former self. Bella was…thin…Weight around… ???lb, Too thin. Her hips stuck out of her side like knives, her ribs were clearly visible to count through her top and her face was bony and drawn out. I could also tell her teeth where not in very good condition, probably from years of making her self vomit, also her skin was somewhere between the living and the dead with a strange translucent effect to it. She looked like a living breathing teenage ghost. Her mousy hair hung limply over her shoulders drained of all nutrients just like the rest of her body but there was, however, against everything something that tried to bounce back into life. like she was trying to step into our world from another one and she was somewhere shrouded in the smoke halfway through the portal. She could have been no more than 14 and she was the perfect pin up girl for anorexia nervosa.

“I’m Mi,” I said trying to not to act shocked at what I saw standing in front of me and instead engage in conversation, but still something nagged at , Bella had been killing her self to be thin until she entered here and even five months in treatment had only made her look half real, Why would she do that to her self?

“You found out where I was then.” I said trying to shake all the questions out of my mind. Bella just looked puzzled. “I heard you talking to Ingrid out side.” I explained. Bella came over and sat next to me on my bed. The mattress barley moved under her tiny frame.


“Ingrid’s alright.” Bella confirmed. “So is here really. I mean you get used to it after a while, though of course every one wants to get out of here. Eventually. I was nearly there not so long ago but I started loosing again and well they said I had to stay. Well that’s the story of my life really, One step forward, thirty million back,” Bella moaned, and for the first time she looked sad, her eyes glazing over with the same tiredness that I felt somewhere deep inside of me. A tiredness that wouldn’t go away even if you were aloud to sleep for a thousand years.

“They say my mirror lies, that my image is distorted like I am constantly looking into one of those fun house mirrors and maybe that’s true, but everyday I am locked in a maze of those mirrors,” Bella moaned, and her eyes drifted even further away until she abruptly shook her head clearing the fog before smiled at me again.

“Sorry, I go on so, but you’re the only other person in the unit with an ED now. Shannon reached her target weight and left about two months ago and since then it’s just been lonely old me,” Bella laughed her eyes animated again. “Of course you’re here now so…”
“I don’t have an ED.” I said almost defensively, cutting Bella off as the hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. She had no idea about me. I wasn’t ill like her, I was OK, I could survive with out eating much and I was still fat. My mirrors didn’t lie, they told me the harsh truths. They showed my flaws, They made me strive onwards for perfection and purity.

“Oh… Ok, I get it,” Bella said gently, cutting off my inner racing thoughts. “You still think your mirrors speak the truth, but maybe you should think about it Mi. Maybe your mirror lies too.”