Vision2 Read Free

left hand when he noticed that his right hand wasn ’ t moving.
    He jerked it back as hard as he could, but it stayed put. It was stuck to the mirror.
    Roger stared at his hand and then at his reflection, unsure of what to do next. When he saw his eyes, a tremor ran through his body so fast that his teeth clacked together.
    They have to be your eyes. Stop being so paranoid.
    The ghosts of his memory were coming out of their graves on their own, howling and shrieking through his mind. For a second he was on the verge of remembering everything, of understanding his entire life, but that faded as the mirror began to close its cool, confining grip over his hand.
    The grip on his wrist tightened the more he jerked. No matter what he did, he could still see his hand sinking into the mirror. Silky glass slid up and over his flesh, its ice cold touch sending chills up and down his body until he was nothing but a giant patch of gooseflesh. Then there was nothing, perfect dull nothingness as he was pulled into an unseen abyss, until there was nothing left but a bloodless stump left. Roger ’ s body went completely slack as he glided into shock.
    It ’ s just a dream, Roger, just one long, fucked-up dream. That ’ s it, that ’ s all there is to it.
    Roger heard Bear growling, and he immediately turned toward him. Bear ’ s fur stuck out in spiky chocolate tufts and stretched across a bundle of tense muscles, his lips pulled back to reveal a horrible snarling smile. The worst part was the way his eyes gleamed with a combination of fear and hatred that Roger had never seen in any animal before, much less loveable old Bear.
    When he turned back to the mirror, he found that he had put his left hand against the glass, and now both of them had sank through its metallic coated surface. A roar of confusion tumbled through his head, and somewhere in the background he could hear Bear barking frantically.
    Bracing his thighs against the sink, Roger leaned back, every muscle straining against his skin until he was sure they were going to pop straight through his skin. It was no use. The more he fought, the more his body was drawn in. It was as if he ’ d been caught in mercury quicksand. The mirror was only a breath away and both of his arms were now cut off at the shoulders. He watched, his chest heaving with exhaustion and tight with worry, as the mirror reached towards him with a calm, icy fist. It was like watching water in reverse. Instead of sinking in with gravity, it was steadily making its way towards him. The numbing, glassy surface pressed against his face, tightening around each of his pores before sliding across his face and around his neck.
    As soon as his head crossed the silvery threshold, Bear ’ s increasingly frantic noises no longer existed. It wasn ’ t as if they had been silenced, but in the pitch-black world he was now in, it was possible to believe there had never been a Bear at all. Even though he couldn ’ t see anything, he could feel his hands when he pressed them against his face, and he found himself oddly grateful for he fact that he ’ d at least come out whole on this side.
    In one last attempt to free himself, Roger tried to pull back through to the real world, to Bear and even to the horrible wedding invitation. As he did, the passageway closed in around his airway. His mouth opened and closed like a fish struggling for air, but instead of relief, each breath constricted his throat further until his lungs burned with as intensely as lava. Roger felt the fight drain from him as he gave up and leaned into the darkness. The cool air rushed in, and he gulped at it furiously until he felt that he had finally regained some kind of control.
    Oh, did little Roger hurt himself? Is he gonna cry like a little girl cuz the mirror got him? A voice in his head that resembled the long gone Jimmy Bowen taunted him, laughing at the situation and at Roger. The fear had been replaced by something more sedated, a calm