Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Turning 53

Something very strange is going on with mirrors.  I haven't mentioned it up to now, because at first it was only a slight change, and then when it began to become noticable, I hoped I was only imagining it, or that the phenomenon was only temporary.  Later, I hesitated saying anything because I feared people would doubt my sanity because what I have to say is so bizarre, I myself have difficulty believing it.  No matter the consequences, I must speak up; what's going on with mirrors suggests something is going radically wrong with the space-time-continuum, something inexplicable that may threaten the very universe.
First, let me describe myself. 
I am five-foot ten inches tall, with green eyes, brown hair, and a 32-inch waist.  I mention my waist size because this will illustrate the puzzling and dreadful change that has come over mirrors.  I am not muscular by any means, but I'm reasonably fit.
When I look in the mirror instead of myself, there's a strange man.  He offers no threat and seems good-natured enough.  When I raise my arm, he raises his just as if he were my actual reflection, but he is clearly not.  For one thing, he's bald.  I, as I have mentioned, have brown hair.  What hair he does have, has a little brownish to it, but it's mostly gray.  I have nothing against bald men; long ago I resolved that if in the fullness of time, I lost my hair I would accept it gracefully, but I decided I would never go bald with two side-walls of hair over each ear and a shiny dome with a few stray hairs clinging to the top, like Larry from the Three Stooges.  And this is precisely the way the man in the mirror is bald, so you can see, it is clearly not me.
Moreover, his face has an unearthly puffiness.  It's almost - not quite, but almost - like my own face, only filled out, as if I'd gained twenty or thirty pounds.  It is not a face that would cause people on the street to run in terror, but studying it closely, as I have had opportunity to do, reveals a multitude of little horrors.  At the corners of the mouth, for example, are these marks in the skin - not tatoos, but little trenches or grooves.  One might almost call them lines.  My actual face is very smooth, almost babyish in fact, so unless a maniacal surgeon has been at work on me while I slept, there is no accounting for this.  Then there is this strange lose tissue joining his jaw and neck.  I do not know what this is, but it looks scarcely human, and leads me to suspect mirrors may have become visual portals to another planet, if not a parallel universe in another dimension.
When I take off my shirt, the result is even more startling.  Again, I am no Adonis, but I am reasonably fit.  In Romeo and Juliet, the nurse describes the handsome Count Paris, as a "man of wax."  The man in the mirror, however, resembles Count Paris if he'd been left in a hot car for several hours on a July afternoon.  There is sort of a melted look around the chest and torso, whereas the middle is thickened, and somewhat jiggly as if a semi-liquid substance were stored there.
If this had only occurred in one mirror, perhaps I might treat it as a harmless, if mystifying novelty: but it is not.  It is all reflective surfaces.  Even digital cameras have been affected.  I come forward with this now, hoping that others who have noticed similar alarming phenomena will speak up.  I don't know what, if anything, can be done, but I do know that we can no longer remain silent.