A Blank Space Where She Ought to Be
Originally published in in LampLight volume 10, issue 1
It’s 8.30 AM on a Monday, and Tess is hiding in the bathroom again, pretending she’s getting ready for school. Mom’s roaming the kitchen and the hallway, probably sipping her second coffee, maybe looking for her phone, likely getting ready to yell at Tess.
The bathroom is small and dingy with white cracked tiles above the tub and a worn, beige vinyl floor. It smells of the Lemon Lysol that Mom uses to clean it every Saturday, and of the pink Dollar Store potpourri she keeps in a glass jar on the counter. Tess breathes in that cloying scent, breathes it in deep. It smells like every day of her life: cheap, familiar, inescapable.
“Fifteen minutes!” Mom calls out, right on time.
As if she thinks Tess has forgotten. As if it’s not the same every day. As if Tess doesn’t stand here in front of the mirror every morning trying to make herself disappear, trying to think of what to say, what to do, so she doesn’t have to go. I’m sick. I’m tired. I got my period. Don’t make me. I don’t want to. Please, Mom.
But words are useless, just like Tess.
Tess pulls at the sleeves of her hoodie, making sure her arms and wrists are covered, and thinks of school. The mind-shattering sound of the final bell when she runs from Mom’s car and ducks inside the entrance. The rough feel of the stucco wall against her back at recess. The corridors and the classrooms, too bright and too loud. The people, too bright and too loud. The kids, the teachers, the counsellor, the janitor, the receptionist. All of them looking at her as if they know who and what she is, as if they’ve already decided she’s not good enough and never will be. Their ever-present eyes and voices, sharp like shards and splinters, slicing through her.
Mom taps on the door. “Ten minutes. You have to be ready.”
Tess doesn’t move. Doesn’t make a sound.
“Tess?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok.”
Tess turns on the tap and pretends to wash her hands. For a moment, just an instant, really, her gaze slips off the sink and into the mirror where her own useless face stares back at her.
She has never liked mirrors. Not just because they show her useless face, but because the glass is like the surface of a lake, depths unknown, concealing whatever lurks below. You have to stare into the glass for a long time before you glimpse it, and then you might catch the shadow of its passing, the quiver of its wake, the viscous movement as it almost, almost but never quite, breaks the surface.
“Tess, are you ready to go?”
Tess feels her voice turn into a razor, “Leave me alone. Can’t I even go to the bathroom without you bugging me?”
Mom mumbles and walks away.
Tess closes her eyes. She wishes she were somewhere else. Or even better, someone else. Someone who fits in. Someone people like. Someone who can talk to others without saying the wrong things. Someone who can laugh without laughing at the wrong bits. Someone who isn’t always too quiet or too loud. Someone who isn’t the one people always whisper about.
She opens her eyes and forces herself to hold her own gaze in the mirror.
A long time ago, maybe it was grade three, at a birthday party, back when she was still invited to things like that, when she still went, she stood in another bathroom with a group of girls and someone turned off the light and said, let’s do it, let’s say it, three times, let’s see what happens, if we can see her.
Everyone else knew the words but Tess didn’t. Everyone else spoke the words but Tess didn’t. Everyone else screamed at the end when the lights came on and said they’d seen her—Bloody Mary, right there!, her face, her mouth full of fangs, her lips dribbling blood—but Tess didn’t. Even so, she did feel the presence of something that day. Has felt it every time she’s looked into a mirror since. Something, waiting out of sight, just beneath her reflection. And ever since, she’s wondered what might surface if she stares at the glass long enough.
“Tess.” Mom’s voice, exasperated now, getting ready to shout. “I’ll be in the car.”
“OK.”
She listens to Mom’s footsteps, holding out for a few more seconds before she turns to go, but the moment her eyes slip off the mirror, the bathroom light goes out, plunging her into darkness. Tess stumbles into the door and grabs the handle. It won’t budge, even though she’s unlocked it. She tries again, jiggling the handle, but the door remains shut.
“Mom!”
Nothing. No reply and no light, except the hair-thin sliver at the bottom of the door, illuminating nothing.
Tess puts her shoulder to the door and pushes, she thumps on it with her fist, but it only makes a dull, muted sound.
“Mom! The door won’t open!”
Still nothing. All she can hear in the silence are her own breaths, quick and shallow, and her pulse, pounding in her ears.
Tess retreats into the bathroom.
In the dark, above the sink, the wide, blank screen of the mirror waits for her, its surface shivering with shadows. Tess shivers too.
Let’s do it, let’s say it, three times, let’s see what happens, if we can see her.
The whispers in her head sound like the girls at the birthday party all those years ago. Impossibly, the rising dread at the back of her throat tastes the same too: regurgitated Cheetos and 7 Up. The room feels suddenly too small, its cracked tile walls and beige vinyl floor closing in around her, the Lemon Lysol and potpourri-scented air clogging her nose. Tess closes her eyes and grabs hold of the sink, trying to calm herself, but when she opens her eyes, the door remains closed, the room remains dark. And when she opens her mouth, she speaks the words, even though she did not mean to.
“Bloody Mary.”
Her voice is surprisingly firm and loud, and the mirror seems to tremble at the sound of it—like a portal, like the surface of a lake hiding untold depths beneath. Tess reaches out, half expecting her hand to slide through, but there’s only glass, smooth and hard.
Say it.
This time, the whisper in her head sounds like Mom, or maybe it’s her own voice.
“Bloody Mary.”
Tess speaks the words again, and unlike in grade three, there are no shrieks and giggles outside or inside, only hissing whispers, or maybe that’s just the rush of blood through her own veins. Her breath hitches in her throat as the darkness collapses around her, folding in upon itself, shrinking to the size of a coffin, a grave, a straitjacket. Tess stares into the mirror, straining to see her face, but the darkness has erased her features, turning her reflection into nothing but a mask: a blank space where she ought to be.
“Say it.”
This time, the voice is not inside her head, but inside the room, right behind her, as if someone’s leaning close to whisper. Tess wants to scream, wants to call out for Mom, but she doesn’t. Instead, she lets her mouth speak the words a third time.
“Bloody Mary.”
The world seems to stop and hold its breath. Even Tess’s heart slows and stutters, and then... Nothing. No muffled laughter, no furtive whispers, no shrieks and hollers, no apparition, either. Tess tries the door, but she’s still locked inside with her own shapeless form waiting in the mirror and the silence closing in around her, stripping her bare of hope and pretense.
Tess inhales the smell of her life, of Lysol and potpourri. She inhales the silence and the darkness. She inhales her fear and loneliness, her anger and pain, until there’s nothing left. What she should do is try the door again. What she should do is call out for Mom. What she should do is bust the goddamned door down. But she doesn’t do any of those things. Staring into the blank space where she ought to be, Tess knows why. Because she doesn’t want to. Because she doesn’t want to go out there. Because she wants to stay in here, where even the mirror doesn’t know who she is.
Tess exhales, and her breath is cold as ice as it hisses out of her throat, as it unspools over her tongue, as it slips between her teeth, as it is expelled into the darkness. She stares, unblinking, into the dark mirror until she finally sees it: the shadow of its passing, the quiver of its wake, the viscous movement of it as something breaks the surface.
As suddenly as the light went out, it comes back on—vivid-bright and blinding. In that sudden glare, the bathroom looks the same, but Tess’s point of view has shifted. She is no longer standing at the sink. Instead, she is looking at the room from inside the mirror, as if through a window. The bathroom isn’t empty, though. There is someone out there, standing where Tess stood before. It looks like a girl but her face is as blank as a malfunctioning TV-screen—a featureless, eyeless, mouthless mask of static.
The girl leans closer to the mirror, to Tess, until their foreheads touch. Tess is held in place by the glass of the mirror and sees her own features ripple over the other girl’s face, steadying as the static fades, becoming a true reflection of herself, impossible to tell apart.
From inside the glass, Tess watches as the other girl opens the door, as she steps over the threshold. Tess sees the familiar hallway, a glimpse of daylight as the front door opens, she even hears Mom calling out from the car, telling Tess to lock the door, her voice far away and fading.
Tess hears her own voice from outside, hears her own laugher, too, hears the car starting, hears it drive away, and she knows that this new Tess will make Mom laugh rather than scowl on the way to school. This new Tess won’t hide in the bathroom every morning, either. She will know how to talk to people. She will know what to say and when to laugh. She will do all these things, and more, so Tess won’t have to.
Tess would smile if she could, but inside the mirror, everything is fading.
Tess’s own features dissolve, until her face is as blank as the touch of cold glass against her forehead. Her memories wane and dwindle. The smell of pink potpourri and Lysol linger for a moment before they vanish, too. She holds on to her name a moment longer—the fading sound and feel of syllable and letters, the trembling of the air shaped by lips and tongue. Finally, she lets it go and her name evaporates, like the wisp of a distant cry in the dark; like a warm breath caught on cold glass and she knows it won’t summon her no matter how many times it’s spoken, because it doesn’t belong to her anymore.
Released: April 15, 2023
Maria Haskins is a Swedish-Canadian writer and reviewer of speculative fiction. Full Bio