(probably need two more edits on this baby)

REFLECTING MYSELF

Self hypnotism is the secret to my arcane power, the elixir of life that sustains all my magic. It has propelled me into success, opened my mind to hidden mysteries, and delivered me arcane secrets I reveal as revelations in my many books. Author of the arcane; master of magic; wise man among the wise: that is what I my publishers write on the backs of my books. I speak to large audiences for no less than five-thousand dollars per speaking-engagement, and one of my books is a best-seller in the self-help section in bookstores across America.

Everything has gone well for me. That’s what they tell me. Those authors and speakers less successful than me make a lot of money, but I have ascended the mountain. I rule this expanse of New Age theory, and I am rich beyond my wildest dreams.

In all my wisdom I am about to die at the age of forty-three, and I can do nothing about it.

My death won’t be a physical death. There are worse deaths than physical demise. There is the death of hope, of tender love and passion. Sections of cities die and turn into ghettos, and ghettos die and turn into restructured hope. There is a season for every living thing whether it is a city, organization or person. To all these living things comes death in various shades and hues, and each death—although similar—is different from the other.

My concept of reality crumbles before the mirror, and my reflection meets my eyes with a wink. My peripheral vision blurs, my slowed heartbeat thumps loud from the shock, as my reflection acts of its own volition. It winks again with a wicked smirk, and it reaches out and holds my chin. I am forced to look into its eyes—my eyes.

“You always were so strong,” it tells me. “How does it feel to realize you’re not in control and never were?”

The mirror turns black. My breath catches and each heartbeat rattles my chest. The blurriness in my peripheral vision turns dark and I swoon. My reflection crawls out of the mirror, his knee rests upon the basin, and he leans forward to let me down as I faint.

*

“The atman is the human soul,” Jennie explains, “But it’s much more than that.”

A week before my reflection crawls from the mirror, I sit at Denny’s with Jennie, a table in the back where no one will disturb us. Her blond hair reflects sunlight, and the blond highlights shimmer. Blue mascara cradles her eyes, and her smile frames perfect teeth that flash like the twinkle in her eyes. She loves to talk about such topics. She is my best friend and lover.

She is also my greatest competition.

“Your book on the atman is deprived from a Hindu concept,” I state as the waitress pours coffee into my cup. “Right?”

“Yes,” she says and holds her hand over her coffee cup. “No more, thank you.” She adds, “The Hindus believe the conscious mind is not the real person. The real person is the Atman, a deeper portion of souls. It is the Atman that is in control.”

The waitress leaves with a smile. I catch my own reflection in the window behind Jennie. I see my reflected dark curls, and blue eyes pierce into me. I shake my head when I see its eyes look around the room.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Don’t you believe what I say?”

“It’s not that,” I tell her. I grow quiet for a minute. I gaze at my reflection again and it winks at me. I know it’s a trick of the light. “Sometimes I don’t know what to believe anymore. Sometimes I think everything we believe about ourselves is erroneous and wrong.”

“The author of twenty books, ten best-sellers, and you say something like that?” she laughs. “If only your readers could hear you now.”

The sun sets and makes my reflection stronger. I see it move out of the corner of my eye, but when I look at it nothing happens. I position Jennie between my reflection and myself by the position of my seat, and I forget about my reflection and concentrate on her. She makes me smile when she says, “Concentrate, Max! It’s almost as if you’re a ghost of yourself today.”
*
“Did you steal it from him or not?”

Carl’s eyes narrow and he drums his fingers on the dash. I drive my Mercedes and glance at him after each intersection. I sweat in the silence and wish I was back at Denny’s with Jennie.

“You did, didn’t you?” my literary agent accuses. “You ripped Stephenson off!”

“I did the world a favor,” I explain when I turn toward O’Hare Airport. “He’s one of the worse writers I know.”

“Jesus, Max!” He glares at me then turns his head to watch a jet land. “We could get into trouble for this.”

“The world needs to know about his energy theory,” I whine. “Nobody buys his books, but everybody buys mine.”

“That still doesn’t make it right,” he admonishes. “I can see lots of shit hitting the fan on this one.”

“Just pay him off,” I mutter.

“That would admit you did it to a lot of people.”

I cut off a driver to pull into a parking spot. The driver honks three times, flips me the bird, and burns rubber as he speeds off. I chuckle and get out with Carl.

“That’s because I did do it,” I say with a heavy sigh. “I stole his idea so I could give it to the world.”

Carl walks in silence next to me, his pudgy belly bounces beneath his shirt, and he huffs in exertion to keep up. He grins and shakes his head.

“Does Jennie know about this?” he asks.

I glower and say, “Leave her out of this.”

“But does she know?”

We stop before the doors to one of busiest airports in the world. People scramble around us with different dialects and languages. The entire world melts as one at the airport, and ordered chaos is the result: lone lines and grumpy fliers; attendants with plastic smiles behind counters; and the security—everywhere there’s security with their uniforms and gun belts.

“What Jennie doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” I clap Carl’s back as if he’s a co-conspirator. “Besides, she’s all into that white light crap and Atmans—she wouldn’t understand.”

What I don’t tell Carl is I don’t understand, either. It’s like some portion of my soul reached up and made me plagiarize Stephenson’s work. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“I just don’t understand you sometimes,” Carl says as he pulls papers from a manila envelope. “I need you to sign these before you get on your plane.”
*
On the flight the lady next to me drones on about how my book “One in a Million” changed her life. Carl cannot rescue me. He remains in Chicago happy I signed paperwork last minute, angry that I admitted that I am a word-thief.

Stephenson has an online journal. Anyone can access it. He posts everything he thinks, everything he’s working on for his next book. Why should the world wait for him to get his ass in gear and cement his ideas into a book?

Soon I go to sleep, but my eyes rest upon my reflection in the circular window of the plane. I know it’s a dream when my reflection smiles and winks at me. Soon my dreams take me to the past. Grass surrounds the sandbox. Grit sticks to my knees on the hot day. Mom hangs laundry from a clothesline that runs the length of yard, and dad bellows from the backdoor, “Max, get your ass in here!”

I have to pee. I’ve waited too long again. “Why do you always wait until the last possible second?” mom asks when she sees me grab myself. I’m scared because when I have an accident dad punishes me.

“Were you in the basement again?” he demands as I stand before him, and the only presents I got that year—a sand shovel and bucket—hangs from my hands. I drop them when he smacks my face. Tears well up in my eyes, but I don’t break—not yet. “Come inside, Junior… I’ve got to teach you a lesson.”

“Max, no,” mom calls from in front of the wicker laundry basket at her feet. “He’s just six years old.”

“He needs to learn where he can play and what he can’t play, Martha,” dad replies in a cool voice. “Come inside, Junior, and take your medicine.”

The dreamscape shifts. I sit in a chair in an office with dark furniture and walls. A mahogany desk holds thick books between two massive dragon bookends. A bookshelf fills one wall, and plaques fill the other.

“Why do you think you killed your father?” Dr. Benton asks in a calm voice. His eyes magnify behind his thick glasses and he looks nerdy.

“I cursed him,” I reply. I shift before his scrutiny and desk, loosen my tie, and refuse to look at him. “Magic.”

“Magic?” he scoffs. “I’m sorry, Max. Did you say magic?”

His image turns into my reflection, and I realize my eyes are open but I’m still asleep on the plane. I know this because my reflection winks at me.
*
I jolt as the plane lands. Vibrations wash through the jet and my body. On the second bounce the wheels take hold and we coast to a stop.

“Oh! You’re awake?” the woman next to me asks. “Good. I want to ask you what you think about curses. I mean, I know we’re supposed to harm none, but let’s say my ex-husband used to beat me—“
*
The airport isn’t the busiest in the world, but St. Louis isn’t known to be a tiny city, either. An hour later a taxi drives me past the St. Louis Arch as I speak with Jennie on the cell phone.

“Some guy from CNN left a message on your answering machine,” she tells me. “He said a guy by the name of Stephenson insists you plagiarized his website.”

“Its bullshit! This guy called Stephenson is just wants to get some money from me.”

“What will you do?” she asks.

“I’ll pay him off,” I explain as the taxi pulls in front of my home on the west side of the city. I hand the driver a fifty after he drops my luggage at my feet. “Then we can forget it all happened.”

“You mean settle out of court?” she asks. “Isn’t that admittance of guilt?”

“I’m too busy for court,” I sigh. “I’ll pay him and get on with my life, get it behind me as quick as possible.”

“If you’re sure—“

“I’m sure,” I interrupt. I unlock my front door and carry my bags in.

“Yeah, it’s would be good to get it behind you,” she agrees. “While I’m at your apartment up here in Chicago, do you want me to tidy up the place?”

“No, sweetie. I can hit it when I get back in a couple days.”

“Love you,” she whispers goodbye.

I’m glad that’s taken care of. I don’t have to worry about how to handle Jennie now, and all I have to do is pay Stephenson an out-of-court settlement. I look for the number to one of my lawyers—I get their numbers mixed up all the time since I have multiple attorneys—and leave a message for him.

“Yeah, just tell him Max Carnegie called,” I tell his secretary. “I need him to arrange an out-of-court settlement. I want to pay this Stephenson off who’s suing me for plagiarism.”
*
Before I leave to deliver my speech, I enter the bathroom and stand before the mirror. The door is closed, locked, although no one is with me. The phone is off the hook. The ceiling fan muffles sounds of traffic outside, and the heater in the fan fills the room with warmth. I light the apple cinnamon candle and wait for the scent to fill the air.

I stare at my reflection’s right eye. I calm myself, let my breathing slow, and listen to my heart rate. “On the count of three you will become very relaxed.” My peripheral vision becomes fuzzy as I count to three. I mutter each number on an exhaled breath. “One… two… three.” I feel my back muscles slacken, the tightness of stress flows away.

The fan in the ceiling doesn’t stir up enough wind to cause the candle flame to flutter, but it does anyway. The blurriness in my peripheral vision worsens, and I know I am already in the hypnotic trance I seek.

I continue to stare at my reflection’s right eye, and I say, “Max, on the count of three your subconscious will become open to my words.” I count on each breath: “One… two… three.” Invisible cobwebs pass through my head, and I feel pressure between my eyes. “On the count of three you shall fall into a very deep hypnotic trance. One… two… three.”

My reflection’s eye becomes the center of my universe—there is nothing else, save the sound of my words I hear with detached interest. A current flows through my body, but I don’t know what it is. I’ve felt this way hundreds of times. In my hypnotic state I do not care what the current is. I experience it without the comprehension of what it is.

“When you speak tonight, you will flow with inspiration and creativity. You will be a silver-tongued orator, and the people will be amazed at your words. Your subconscious supplies the words you need at the right moment, and you flow in creativity and create a spell of astonishment over the people.”

After my self-induced hypnotic session, I work a magick spell. I draw two circles on a piece of paper, one larger than the other. Within the double-circle I write names of God and angels. I draw a simple pentagram within the double-circle. I push intent and willpower into the double-circle, and call on the names of spirits—some angels and some demons and some just spirits—to aid me in my magic.

After I have called out the names of the spirits, I decree, “Heed my call and give me strength and wisdom as I speak tonight. Let each word be filled with wisdom and power, and help me spellbind the audience to my will.”

I have hypnotized myself in this manner for years, and my belief is strong within. I have followed the constant hypnotism with magical ceremonies for years, and my magic grows.

Hours later I stand before the people in the auditorium. My books are on display in the foyer out front and sales are up. There is an air of expectancy, and I see smiles and nods as I talk into the microphone. I don’t follow my notes; I go with the flow.

“In conclusion,” I tell the audience, “Einstein proved that energy equals matter and can be changed from one form to another. We can split an atom and create tremendous amounts of energy, either for destruction or to empower entire cities.

“What if we reversed the process and learned to transform energy into matter? How you ask? Prayer has always affected our lives as has magical spells. People use their own personal energy to affect their lives.

“What I ask from each of you is simple: believe. Faith empowers our will to perform the miraculous. To prove this point I ask each of you to raise your right hand toward me as I pray for the sick. Give me your energy, and we will see what happens. Can our unified faith and energy repair cells and tissue? Will the lame walk tonight? Send your energy and find out.”

The prayer line is long and I pray for each person. I feel the power of the crowd flow into me. Some people report miraculous healings, but many don’t. I am not concerned about it, however, for I want their energy.

Later that night I stand before my mirror in the bathroom. The door is locked although no one is with me. The energy I asked the crowd to give me is still mine. Like Stephenson’s idea about energy, I have stolen the people’s energies. I smile at my reflection and raise my palms, and I feel them crackle with invisible power.

I have done this over a hundred times, and each time my energy grows. I send it forth to accomplish my magical goals, and it hasn’t failed me yet. While I don’t see the demons and angels I conjure, the effects are the same as effects from the wind. The wind blows and I don’t see it, but I see its effects: branches sway; clothes flap; clouds move; and gales push rain and snow.

It is the same with magic.

I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I have already hypnotized myself hundreds of times. Before each speech; before I write each book; for each purpose important to me: my reflection helps me succeed. My reflection has seen me through the worst of times, and he has also propelled me to the heights of success. My reflection is my secret, I whisper before the mirror. I know it is self-hypnotism that drives me to succeed, but I cannot help but think my reflection is an old friend whom has been with me from the very beginning.

The book “Self-Hypnotism for Beginners” is among the many book in my bookcase, and I trained myself in self-hypnotism from that book over a decade ago. Ten years of self-hypnotism in order to force my subconscious to believe what I wished it to believe, until my magic and success flows unchecked.

I count myself down into a hypnotic trance. There is no direction; I do it out of habit. The candle flutters as it always does as if a door opens somewhere. I lose myself in trance, catch a dream about Jennie, and fall asleep as I stand. It happens sometimes, like when I fell asleep with my eyes open on the plane, and when I realize I am in a dream, I wake seconds later—or is it minutes? What concerns me is the reflection of the bathroom in the mirror. It looks realistic with three-dimensions, almost as if I can reach out and touch it.

My reflection is not in the mirror.

I realize I am still in a dream. I tell myself I will feel cool glass of the mirror when I touch it, but my fingers pass through the surface where the mirror should be. I feel my heart thump as it rattles my chest. My arm suspends in the space of another bathroom on the other side of my mirror, and I have no reflection. My breathing comes in haggard gasps and I shake. I know I have discovered something powerful—a revelation, perhaps, or maybe a new dimension. I climb onto the basin of the sink, my knees hurt on the hard surface, and I climb into the same bathroom I leave behind… through the mirror.

I lower myself down. I am in such awe I do not realize I drool until I feel it slide from my chin. I wipe it away and turn toward the bathroom door. A red towel hangs from the hook on the door, same as my door. There is pink soap in the soap dish set into the hollow above the bathtub, same as mine. A blue rug rests before the sink, again the same.

I manage to take a step and force myself to swallow my fear and walk to the bathroom door. The heated fan above me—just like mine—cannot remove the chill upon my soul. I watch my hand spasm as I reach for the bathroom door, and I hear footfalls.

I am not alone.

I do not try to hide. I cannot move fast because my body shakes so. The door opens and I look into my own eyes and face. My reflection stands before me with wide eyes.

“Shit!” he says with annoyance in his—my—voice. “I’m so weak!”

He punches me in the forehead and I crumble. I roll into a fetal position. I hope to be knocked out. It is too much to handle. Nausea sends bile up my throat. I hear heavy tread near my head. Another bout of adrenalin courses through my body. I swallow the vomit and fear that burns my throat and mind.

I’m in shock as he lifts my body. It’s part trance and part consciousness. I cling to nothingness and hope to escape from this nightmare, but a flicker of awareness still burns in my brain. I hear my own voice grunt, but it comes from my reflection as he hefts me to the mirror. He deposits me on the other side, and I roll off the basin onto the floor with a painful thud. Sweet oblivion laps at the borders of my mind, and I surrender.
*
I hold the phone to my ear. No one is there. Still I listen. I sit before the window, curtains drawn, and I listen to the phone. It is early afternoon, but every curtain in the house is drawn. Each door is locked, each window. I check all the doors and windows each hour in case I missed one.

Carl calls me again. Something about Stephenson, but I do not return his call. Each time Jennie or he calls me, it irritates me. I cannot relax. Between calls I listen to the silence.

He is out there somewhere, my reflection. He waits for me. I know he this, and that’s why I hide in my house. No once can touch me here, and my reflection can’t harm me if I don’t look into a mirror.

It’s been a week since I entered the world of my reflection, six days since he reached out and touched me. I’ve canceled three speaking engagements, and Carl leaves rude messages. I no longer listen to the messages Jennie or he leaves. They cannot help me. No one can.

I must face the man in the mirror.

The hallway to the bathroom seems very short. I sweat and try to calm down. My feet feel like cement blocks. I wonder how I will face my reflection as I open the door. He stands before me, my reflection, but this time he is on “my” side. He looks scared and he shakes. I don’t think when I react. I punch him between the eyes, and he goes down with a thump.

The mirror is open again to his reflection-world. I haul him to the basin and prop him there, his butt sticks in the sink, and after three hard slaps he comes to.

“Who are you?” I demand.

“I think you should know the answer to that one,” he groans. “Can I get up?”

I step back, he stands, and he wobbles unsteady. I help him to the toilet seat, and he sits and places his chin on his palm, his elbow rests on his knee.

“I’ve lost control of you,” he says at last. “What a disgrace I am.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He glowers at me with narrow eyes. His mannerisms are mine as are his expressions. The inflection and tone when he speaks are mine, too. Everything he does is a reflection of me.

“Your world, you, all of it,” he says with a heavy sigh, “Is the reflection-world.”

“Bullshit!” I slap him again. “Tell me how you got out of the mirror.”

“Same way you did, idiot!”

I pause because he calls names like I do, and I consider how I got through the mirror. I have no clue. I wonder if he is as clueless as I am.

“I’m what you would consider your Atman,” he explains. “I am in control of you—or I’m supposed to be in charge. Somewhere along the way I discovered you. I think it was all the self-hypnotic trances I put myself in. I fed you, made you stronger, but I didn’t know it at the time. Then you broke away from me. Imagine my own reflection, my shade, with a mind of its own.”

“That’s a lie,” I scoff. “You are my reflection.”

“I’m here to put you in your place,” he says with steel in his voice. “I’ve already hypnotized myself and performed the proper spell. Everything is complete except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” I ask with doubt.

“This!”

He grabs my wrist and says an incantation in Latin. I pull away but it’s too late. I feel his magic—my magic—flow into me. Whatever he did is done.

“What just happened?” I demand as I yank my wrist from his grasp. I pull him up by the collar, my fists clenched beneath his chin. “Tell me what you did!”

“I put you back in your place,” he says with a wink. I feel weak and let him go. I look down and see my hands—I can look right through them! “I didn’t know it at the time,” he continues, “But I fed you power through my hypnotic sessions before the mirror. You became alive by my own power, like a golem or Frankenstein Monster.

“When I realized you began to act on your own volition, I didn’t know what to do,” he says and climbs on top of the basin. He crawls through to the other side. “Imagine my horror when I looked into the mirror and you weren’t there. I realized I had created something and lost control over it. When you came through the mirror into my world—the real world—I knew I had to do something.

“So I waited until you weren’t in the mirror,” he says and drops down in the bathroom in his world. “I waited until you didn’t shadow my movements. I hypnotized myself to give me power to enter into your world, the world of my subconscious.”

“No! This can’t be!”

He lifts his arm and I feel my own arm move with a mind of its own. He grins and winks. I do the same. I try to scream, to shout and call upon the magical forces I have used all my life. It is hopeless. I am trapped, a mere reflection of my true self.

He turns and walks away, and I do the same. I try to control my body, but I cannot. I unlock the bathroom door and walk out, but I hear him talk to me as if he walks beside me.

“All this time you thought you were in control,” he says. “You never were. People in your reflective-world make New Years Resolutions, but they cannot keep them. They try to stop smoking, but they can’t. Do you know why?”

I cannot talk. I can only say and do those things he does, for I am his reflection. I realize it is my voice that speaks, and I talk because he talks.

I have lost control, but I have to wonder if I ever had control to begin with?

“The people in your world cannot do the things they wish because they are reflections, and they live in the reflection-world. You are my reflection. You became strong as I empowered you, and I almost lost control of you.” I smile because he smiles. “I have control of my reflection again.”

I feel myself go through the motions of what I had once thought my own daily routine. I hear myself talk to Carl on the phone and assure him everything is okay. I meet Jennie later that night and make love to her. I watch him control my own body, talk through it.

I am terrified.

“What’s wrong?” Jennie asks after we make love.

I look at her and smile. I want to scream and tell her that our world is an illusion, but I can’t. “Nothing’s wrong, sweetie.” I kiss her and we make love again.

I can’t tell Jennie that she’s not real, that none of us are real. Carl, my books, all of it is nothing more than a reflection of the “other side.” I live inside myself, in my thoughts, and I watch my “true self” control my actions. I can’t do anything or say anything. All I do is mirror his every movement.

There is one good thing that’s happened since he created me: I have my own thoughts now separate from him. I am alive, and I think. And while I mirror his every move, I do not think his thoughts. My thoughts are my own.

Sometimes I forget and think I’m in control. At those times I try to move my body, to go to the store or call Jennie, but I can’t. Instead I remember I am a phantom in a world of illusion, and I do those things my “real self” wishes.

I am a prisoner in my own mind.

The worse times are when I walk to the mirror. I lock the door although no one is with me. I stand before the mirror and see him gaze at me. That’s when he waves and winks. He does that to let me know he’s in charge.

“Almost lost control of you,” he tells me as we comb our hair together and brush our teeth. “That’s why I don’t use self-hypnosis in front of the mirror anymore. It made you too strong.” We talk at the same time, our voices harmonize. “You are my subconscious, and you almost took control.” He smiles and winks again as I begin to cry—he allows me some measure of freedom and control when we face each other. “Don’t look so sad. Most reflections don’t become conscious. You really are something else, my genuine own Frankenstein Monster.”

Afterwards he takes control again, and I mirror his every step. Out of the bathroom, into my car, and I go places I don’t wish to go. I say things I don’t wish to say. But I have my thoughts, and I remember what it was like to take control once. I bide my time for I am strong—he admitted I was strong. I wait until the time comes when I can take control again, for he is weak.

The End

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