the inverted world

There is another world waiting for Gabriel every night when he falls asleep, full of eldritch monsters and mirrored buildings and a Voice that won’t leave him alone.

When Gabriel was four years old, his parents took him and his brother Michael to a carnival. Twelve years later, he can’t remember much of what had happened - the one thing that he can still perfectly imagine is the funhouse with mirrors, the type that warped his reflection until the only thing recognizably Gabriel was the faint glimmer of his brown eyes. Michael had been afraid, had cried inconsolably until he’d almost passed out. 

Gabriel hadn’t been afraid. He hadn’t been afraid then, and he hadn’t been afraid the first time he went to sleep and woke up in the Inverted World. Michael would hate the Inverted World, with its cityscape made entirely up of mirrors, with the small creeping animals that Gabriel can never quite catch a glimpse of.

But for Gabriel, the Inverted World is less scary than it is comforting.

===

Something flickers in the reflection behind Gabriel, and he turns around, keeps his eyes along the ground where the Teras are. A few skitter away when he looks at them, form warping so they look more like shadows than tiny animals, and he catches a glimpse of one of their odd orange eyes. One of them runs into the warped crack between mirrored sidewalk and street and the eerie silence of the Inverted World is broken by a faint hissing sound followed by the sound of bones snapping.

The Buh living under the streets is always happiest when xe has eaten something.

There’s an audible gulping sound, and the rest of the Teras scurry into their dark corners where Gabriel can’t quite see their reflections. Really, he’d have thought the Teras would have learned to stay out of the cracks by now.

“They’re stupid,” says the Voice, and Gabriel shakes his head as though he’s trying to get water out of his ears. He used to be able to ignore the Voice, but it’s been more insistent of late. When Gabriel first began visiting the Inverted World, the Voice had been nothing more than a murmur on the edge of his senses, but over the last year or so the Voice has grown in volume and clarity.

“Screw off,” Gabriel says to nothing in particular, knowing the Voice won’t respond. “You’re stupid.”

The Voice, as per usual, doesn’t have anything to say to this.

Gabriel sighs, kicks one of the rocks on the sidewalk in front of him. It rolls away, narrowly missing one of the Buh’s cracks. Stupid Voice. Stupid Buh. Stupid Teras.

...And yet, thinks Gabriel, the Buh and Voice and Teras and the whole Inverted World are better than anything in real life. The Inverted World is his, is Gabriel’s, and he loves it for that.

===

Gabriel looks at his reflection on the side of what would be a department store if not for the fact that it’s a giant mirror, and his reflection looks back.

Well. It isn’t really his reflection - a reflection implies that it looks identical to him, and this image isn’t quite Gabriel. Gabriel has brown eyes, and the thing staring back at Gabriel has orange eyes. The same color as the Teras’, Gabriel distantly notes.

He frowns, turns away slowly. Things changing in the Inverted World is a rare occurrence - the last time had been when the Buh first appeared. But as rare as change is, this isn’t the first time something had become different, so Gabriel doesn’t pay it too much thought.

That is, until he feels a hand land on his shoulder when he starts to walk away.

Gabriel just about jumps out of his skin, whirling and knocking the hand off without even thinking about it. Adrenaline makes his skin feel too hot and tight, and his heart drops into his stomach when he sees what has grabbed him.

The image of Gabriel from the mirror, now most certainly not in the mirror, grins at Gabriel with a very un-Gabriel expression.

“Hello,” says the not-quite-reflection, and Gabriel realizes with a start that the voice of the image is the Voice. “Nice of you to give me a body.”

It’s a second before Gabriel can string two thoughts together, and another before he’s able to respond. “What,” he asks dumbly, “are you talking about?”

The reflection’s face twists like those old funhouse mirrors, smile contorting into a baring of teeth. “Gabriel,” it says slowly, almost chastising. “I thought you were better than this. I’m you, after all. Or at least I will be.” It spreads its arms, voice echoing off the silent mirrors of the Inverted World. “My name is Katoptrizo, and I am everything you could never be. And you will be the one to make me whole.”

“You’re the Voice,” is all Gabriel can say, taking a step back, and Katoptrizo takes a step forward to match, rolling those eerie orange eyes.

“The Voice, your conscious, whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t really matter. I created this world, see. Your...Inverted World. Not really a fitting name,” and Katoptrizo chuckles lightly, “as everything’s right-side-up. But I should have learned not to expect too much from you. I couldn’t have picked a more stupid host.”

The words Katoptrizo says - Gabriel understands them, but they don’t really register. This is something more frightening than the Teras, more extreme of a change than the birth of the Buh. 

“What do you want?”

Katoptrizo wrinkles his nose. “I thought it was obvious. I want to make you great, Gabriel. Everything you dislike about yourself...everything you wish you could change...I can fix you.” When it’s clear Gabriel doesn’t understand, Katoptrizo claps his hands together. “Remember when you fell in third grade, scarred your knee because of how clumsy you were? When you asked out Lily in eighth grade, and she laughed in your face? What about last night, when your parents told you they wished you were more like Michael? I could change that for you, Gabriel. I could rewrite your history. If I help you, you can be confident! You can become everything you want to be.

“All you have to do...is accept me.”

“Accept you?” 

This doesn’t make sense to Gabriel, somehow. If Katoptrizo is everything Gabriel could be, why would he have to accept him? If Katoptrizo knows everything about Gabriel, why would he even have to ask? Gabriel needs this chance, needs to be able to step forward without stumbling and talk without stuttering.

Gabriel needs to be great.

“Accept me,” repeats Katoptrizo. “I am, after all, everything you are not. If you don’t want to be quiet, I will be loud. If you don’t want to be anxious, I will be confident. All you have to do is...take my hand.”

Gabriel opens his mouth to ask what that means, but Katoptrizo has extended one hand out to him, fingers splayed gracefully. Katoptrizo’s smile is back, a little too wide, stretching to the edges of his face. The feeling that something doesn’t make sense, that something is wrong increases. After a moment, Gabriel thinks he knows what it is. 

“If I were to...accept you,” Gabriel says, pulling back from Katoptrizo, “what would that mean for me?”

Katoptrizo blinks, looking genuinely confused. This is an expression that makes much more sense on Gabriel’s face, but it almost feels even more eerie. “I told you, stupid. You’d get the chance to change. To become what you want to be.”

That isn’t what Gabriel had asked, and the bad feeling is getting worse. “Can I think on it?” He asks, because he has a sneaking suspicion Katoptrizo won’t react well to Gabriel saying no.

Katoptrizo narrows his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’d appreciate an answer...soon. I’ve been waiting a while to talk to you like this, see. And now that I’m strong enough...I don’t want to wait any longer.”

Gabriel had never been good at controlling himself, so maybe he can be forgiven for what he says next. Either way, it’s very, very stupid. 

“I said no,” Gabriel says, taking another step back. “I - I don’t want you controlling me, no! I’m leaving.”

Katoptrizo’s smile splits his face further, and his teeth seem too sharp. “I won’t let you do that,” he says cooly, face shifting oddly. “I won’t let you do that.”

Gabriel turns, tries to wake up, Katoptrizo’s face contorts inhumanly, and the moment Gabriel feels the world blur Katoptrizo is moving, crashing into him, and they’re fighting, grappling, and Katoptrizo has a hand in his hair, and -

===

When Gabriel walks past Michael on the stairs Monday morning, Michael stops and turns around. 

“Hey, Gabe?”

Gabriel pauses, doesn’t turn around. “Yeah?”

“Did…” Michael frowns. “Do you have contacts in?”

With a sigh, Gabriel turns around, slouching against the wall. “Yeah,” he says, blinking orange eyes. “Do you like them?”

Michael shrugs. “They’re a weird color,” he says, and walks into the kitchen to make breakfast. 

Gabriel smiles, walks into his bedroom, and the door shuts a little too heavily. 

No one thinks anything of it.

Author's Note

i wrote this in my freshman year of highschool, so please excuse the pretentious attempts at existentialism :/

Reviews

[Mystical Ink]

It's giving me so much of the "us" movie. I enjoyed the read.