Taranheim 181

What happened next was one of the strangest and most visceral moments of my life. The person who grabbed me and pulled me through the mirror was my own mother. I was in a golden room with her on my knees and gazing upon her angelic figure as she floated in the air and sparkled ivory.

“Mother!” I cried with tears in my eyes. “You’re alive!”

“No, my darling. I am not alive. I am trapped in the realm of desire, and I can’t move on until I help you through the trying times ahead of you. I have something to show you to help you along.” Mother informed me.

I was simply overjoyed to see her. “I miss you, Mother!”

I tried to reach her in the air, but she floated away from me. I pushed myself as fast as I could go and I tried to hop up into the air and flutter my wings in an attempt to catch her—but they did not work. She floated away all the faster and tears strung my eyes and I sniffled bitterly as the gold room faded away as did mother.

I was now riding a horse on a green plain toward mountains that seemed to scrape the blue sky.

I rode and rode until I suddenly felt very different. I was normally very careful and reserved on horseback, now I felt courageous. I spurred the horse forward as fast as it would go.

I looked down at my hands. They were pink instead of ivory and hairless as well. All of my deeply ingrained self doubts were gone, my lack of confidence, and my need to be amiable. I was suddenly fearless and craving adventure of any kind. I spurred the horse to go faster and I felt unencumbered by my skirts because, indeed, I was not wearing them. I was wearing britches and a tunic.

I headed to the mountains at top speed and pulled back on the reins just as I was about to run into them. I said to myself, “yes! I get better all the time!”

I gently turned the horse around and started riding toward home—a little hovel in a town in the middle of nowhere--with a feeling of dread in my stomach as shadows began settling on the land.

An unpleasant memory came to mind of what I had been doing earlier in the day. A boy got up in my face and began pushing me around—calling me the son of whore and other cruel insults—he pushed me until I finally lost it and I hit him full-force in the face and gave him a nose bleed. I wrestled him to the ground and punched him three more times in the face with black-out fury until someone hauled me off him and then I took my tan horse and rode off in fear.

I was now riding back and couldn’t remember why I was fearful until I came upon the hovel that made me feel queasy and suddenly all of my confidence melted away as I entered it and I heard a voice speak from the darkness.

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“Terry, where have you been?” The voice said.

I was sweating profusely, but I had nowhere else to stay for the night. There was nowhere to run.

“I was... I was letting Mary stretch her legs.” I replied with a wobbly voice—referring to the horse.

“Oh, is that all? Or were you running away from me because of what you did earlier?” He demanded.

Father stood up and walked toward me slowly.

I fell to my knees and cried, “forgive me, father! I just—I let my anger get the best of me!”

Father loomed over me and then hauled me to my feet. “What will it take to get you to learn, you monster?”

In the darkness he threw a punch at me that stung my right cheek. This was not the old, decrepit man I had met with Terry in the castle. This was his younger self that loomed over a smaller Terry, and his punches stung.

“Father, please, I promise—I promise!” I held up my hands but he punched me in the neck and it knocked the air out of me. I backed away from the terrifying man as he seemed to grow bigger and bigger and loomed over me. I backed against a wall and he punched me twice more for good measure. “Now you know how it feels.”

I knew how it felt long before that kid I punched did, I thought to myself. You don’t even need a reason to hit me anymore.

Father left and I sank to the floor and seethed in rage. The fear I felt earlier melted into an incapacitating anger. I hated that old man. I had a vision of punching him over and over again until he was dead, and I scared myself to death when I couldn’t escape that thought. I covered my eyes and wept angry tears. He was right. I was a monster.

When I took my hands from my eyes, my hands were digging through a pile of gold in a treasury. My hands were no longer tanned and worn, but pale and refined.

I picked up twelve gold pieces and then I approached a boy who was much shorter than myself with blonde hair. “Ah, good, you brought the gold, Paris. I’ll take three and you can keep the rest.”

I felt very shy and withdrawn. I felt fragile and empty and I thought there was something in me that was deeply wrong; something that kept me from understanding others.

I asked the blonde boy, “can we play now, Peter?”

Suddenly, Peter yelled at the top of his lungs after he pocketed the three gold pieces, “father! Paris stole from the treasury!”

And father appeared and seized my wrist with a strong hand around my thin wrists and dragged me to my room where he threw me inside and I screamed in fear. “Please don’t lock me in there again! Please! Peter told me he would play with me if I gave him gold from the treasury! I was just lonely…”

He released my wrist roughly and headed for the door. I ran after him but he slammed the door in my face and locked it.

Cold sweat ran down my face. I screamed at the top of my lungs, “I can’t stand it in here! Please let me out, I’ll be good!”

I screamed to be let out for ten minutes, and then I gave up and sank against the door.

What I felt was pure sadness. A sadness so pervasive it stuck to the sides of my stomach and seeped into my soul until I couldn’t shake it and I just had to accept there was no escape from it.

My hope of escaping that room which was my prison was floating away. I didn’t know how long I would be kept in my room this time, but my hope ringed outside the door.

Peter jingled the key. “Paris, I have the keys…”

I stood up and replied, “open the door! Please open the door!”

“I will soon, don’t worry. I’ll be back and then I’ll open it.”

I was so hopeful that he would actually help me, but as time passed, he didn’t come back and I was left alone. I sniffled and buried my head in my pillow and screamed at the top of my lungs in sadness. Not even mother would help me, and mother was supposed to love me.

I was stuck with myself. It was the worst feeling in the world, to be stuck with yourself when you hated yourself so much. This was not even a hatred perpetuated from my family. It just seemed to exist naturally.