Original: Gemini
This was heavily isnpired by this book I used to read a lot as a child: A Pack of Lies by Geraldine McCaughrean. I remember being really creeped by it, although it really wasn't that scary at all.
Title: Gemini
Word Count: 1000
Author Notes: A quick translation of: Géminis. I'm still not crazy about the ending, but I'm not feeling especially awesome right now to try and fix it.
Gemini
It is raining when Alina looses her reflection.
She’s walking through the streets with a spring dress and winter boots and a red and white polka dot umbrella when she passes in front of an office building and she realizes her reflection is smiling at her, just as she frowns at it. She goes closer to the glass, three steps and a quarter and she’s not so much of a lip reader but the Goodbye her reflection mutters is easy to understand when the other girl turns around and runs towards the other side of the street at the other side of the mirror at the other side of the world.
Alina pushes her hands against the glass, lets go of the umbrella and screams for herself until someone opens a door next to her and tells her to shut up, that people are trying to work. Alina picks up the umbrella, stain of color against the gray day, and keeps on walking with her hair wet and her eyes open really wide in an almost childish expression.
She looks down into puddles and there are only clouds, into her bathroom mirror and there are only moldy tiles, into her toaster and there’s only the distorted and curved image of her fridge.
She feels alone, cut in half, and she takes her hands to her face several times in the day just so she won’t forget what she looks like.
----
The postcards start arriving on March.
At the beginning they’re just cheap postcards with ‘wish you were here’ printed on the front and her own name written in messy handwriting both in the space for the addressee and the sender.
Then they become envelopes filled with photos that show her posing in front of the Eiffel tower and the Great Wall of China and another thousand places Alina has never been to. The envelopes become thicker as the months go by, and then they start holding letters written in bar napkins and torn notebook pages and recycled paper from exotic places, all of them written in strangers’ handwriting dedicated to Alina’s double. There are confessions, dedications, marriage proposals, even autographs of singers Alina has posters of hanging on her walls.
At the beginning they enrage her, the vestiges of a life she’s not living, but as the days go by she starts breathing by them, starts reading them out loud to herself and picturing that it is her the one that is kissing a black-haired stranger in front of the Niagara Falls instead of her runaway reflection.
After some months, she starts waiting breathlessly for the letters to arrive. They’re a world on themselves, a tiny window into a broader spectrum of a life she never actually expected to have.
She dreams about Brazil and Switzerland and Kenya with an extraordinary amount of detail and when she wakes up and discovers letters with stamps from São Paulo or Nairobi, she’s not surprised.
----
She doesn’t use the red and white polka dot umbrella again because she’s scared of just thinking what else she could lose if she ever were to open it again.
----
She picks up the phone on October, and she only hears static on the other side of the line but she knows who it is, and Alina sits down and listens in silence without saying a word either, and for the first time in months she feels complete, as if she finally was able to breathe. She stays more than half an hour like that, sitting on her bed with the phone pushed hard against her ear and she knows that on the other side of the world, another Alina is reflecting her actions.
She’s not particularly surprised when she hears her own voice say Just a bit more, and then the call ends but Alina stands in front of her mirror and smiles at the thought that it won’t be that long until she’ll see herself again instead of the wall behind her.
The letters stop coming on November, and then her dreams become more desperate, almost painful, and Alina knows her reflection is experiencing more of life in some weeks than what she herself has experienced in years.
Then she starts seeing her own figure everywhere: movie premiers and trailing after a celebrity in a magazine and as a witness of some sordid affair in the news and as an extra in a television series. She’s still using the green dress Alina was wearing the day the reflection decided to become independent.
Alina ends up with a habit of wearing the same green dress and look for herself in the toaster, in the bathroom mirror, in her windows, just in case her reflection comes back in that moment.
----
It’s January when she opens her closet door and sees herself in the mirror and she can barely think for a moment of how she’s wearing a red skirt and not the green dress before she presses her hands against the mirror, and then both Alinas smile and put their foreheads together and feel for a moment that they’re complete, that the void in the pit of the stomach has disappeared, and then the Alina from the other side of the mirror bites her lip and says I’m sorry and the real Alina feels afraid but doesn’t know why.
A moment, and then her reflection’s fingers are twining with hers and she feels a pull and an emptiness in her innards and she closes her eyes and when she opens them again she’s become the reflection and the Alina that is now the real one is blowing her a kiss with the tips of her fingers.
Alina pushes against the mirror, tries to go back, but then she realizes that the smile the other Alina is wearing is happier and much more vibrant than her own, and then she sighs and starts imitating the movements of the other Alina and accepts her job because in the end, the girl in the green dress in front of her has always been more alive than Alina ever has been, and the reality is that it was she the one that was always a sad reflection of what she could be.
So Alina waits for the double to look into mirrors, puddles, and toasters, and when she does, she mimics her faithfully and doesn’t run away to see the world because in a way, she feels as if she’s already seen it all.
Title: Gemini
Word Count: 1000
Author Notes: A quick translation of: Géminis. I'm still not crazy about the ending, but I'm not feeling especially awesome right now to try and fix it.
Gemini
It is raining when Alina looses her reflection.
She’s walking through the streets with a spring dress and winter boots and a red and white polka dot umbrella when she passes in front of an office building and she realizes her reflection is smiling at her, just as she frowns at it. She goes closer to the glass, three steps and a quarter and she’s not so much of a lip reader but the Goodbye her reflection mutters is easy to understand when the other girl turns around and runs towards the other side of the street at the other side of the mirror at the other side of the world.
Alina pushes her hands against the glass, lets go of the umbrella and screams for herself until someone opens a door next to her and tells her to shut up, that people are trying to work. Alina picks up the umbrella, stain of color against the gray day, and keeps on walking with her hair wet and her eyes open really wide in an almost childish expression.
She looks down into puddles and there are only clouds, into her bathroom mirror and there are only moldy tiles, into her toaster and there’s only the distorted and curved image of her fridge.
She feels alone, cut in half, and she takes her hands to her face several times in the day just so she won’t forget what she looks like.
----
The postcards start arriving on March.
At the beginning they’re just cheap postcards with ‘wish you were here’ printed on the front and her own name written in messy handwriting both in the space for the addressee and the sender.
Then they become envelopes filled with photos that show her posing in front of the Eiffel tower and the Great Wall of China and another thousand places Alina has never been to. The envelopes become thicker as the months go by, and then they start holding letters written in bar napkins and torn notebook pages and recycled paper from exotic places, all of them written in strangers’ handwriting dedicated to Alina’s double. There are confessions, dedications, marriage proposals, even autographs of singers Alina has posters of hanging on her walls.
At the beginning they enrage her, the vestiges of a life she’s not living, but as the days go by she starts breathing by them, starts reading them out loud to herself and picturing that it is her the one that is kissing a black-haired stranger in front of the Niagara Falls instead of her runaway reflection.
After some months, she starts waiting breathlessly for the letters to arrive. They’re a world on themselves, a tiny window into a broader spectrum of a life she never actually expected to have.
She dreams about Brazil and Switzerland and Kenya with an extraordinary amount of detail and when she wakes up and discovers letters with stamps from São Paulo or Nairobi, she’s not surprised.
----
She doesn’t use the red and white polka dot umbrella again because she’s scared of just thinking what else she could lose if she ever were to open it again.
----
She picks up the phone on October, and she only hears static on the other side of the line but she knows who it is, and Alina sits down and listens in silence without saying a word either, and for the first time in months she feels complete, as if she finally was able to breathe. She stays more than half an hour like that, sitting on her bed with the phone pushed hard against her ear and she knows that on the other side of the world, another Alina is reflecting her actions.
She’s not particularly surprised when she hears her own voice say Just a bit more, and then the call ends but Alina stands in front of her mirror and smiles at the thought that it won’t be that long until she’ll see herself again instead of the wall behind her.
The letters stop coming on November, and then her dreams become more desperate, almost painful, and Alina knows her reflection is experiencing more of life in some weeks than what she herself has experienced in years.
Then she starts seeing her own figure everywhere: movie premiers and trailing after a celebrity in a magazine and as a witness of some sordid affair in the news and as an extra in a television series. She’s still using the green dress Alina was wearing the day the reflection decided to become independent.
Alina ends up with a habit of wearing the same green dress and look for herself in the toaster, in the bathroom mirror, in her windows, just in case her reflection comes back in that moment.
----
It’s January when she opens her closet door and sees herself in the mirror and she can barely think for a moment of how she’s wearing a red skirt and not the green dress before she presses her hands against the mirror, and then both Alinas smile and put their foreheads together and feel for a moment that they’re complete, that the void in the pit of the stomach has disappeared, and then the Alina from the other side of the mirror bites her lip and says I’m sorry and the real Alina feels afraid but doesn’t know why.
A moment, and then her reflection’s fingers are twining with hers and she feels a pull and an emptiness in her innards and she closes her eyes and when she opens them again she’s become the reflection and the Alina that is now the real one is blowing her a kiss with the tips of her fingers.
Alina pushes against the mirror, tries to go back, but then she realizes that the smile the other Alina is wearing is happier and much more vibrant than her own, and then she sighs and starts imitating the movements of the other Alina and accepts her job because in the end, the girl in the green dress in front of her has always been more alive than Alina ever has been, and the reality is that it was she the one that was always a sad reflection of what she could be.
So Alina waits for the double to look into mirrors, puddles, and toasters, and when she does, she mimics her faithfully and doesn’t run away to see the world because in a way, she feels as if she’s already seen it all.