• With my first step into the building the sensation of being dragged under took hold. Jagged pieces of glass littered the floor glinting like a hundred shards of colorful terror, and the wallpaper was slowly peeling to reveal the rotting wood it covered.
    “Mother? Father?” I called, but my voice seemed lost to the silence. I was too frightened to step into the darkness beyond the stairs or doors, too terrified to say anything more. I rushed back outside into the sunlight, a defeated weakling.
    Leaning against the outside walls of the home, my home, I began to cry. Small rivers of tears ran down my cheeks in silence. I knew it was no use to search the town any further for all the people who used to crowd every quarter of the town in pounding voices that echoed down the streets. Now this place was empty hopes, devoid of any future the people, the children, the families had once had.
    I had indirectly killed every friend I’d ever known. They had sheltered me, yet I had destroyed them over one person’s cruelty. Maybe I was the cruel one.
    I gathered energy, prepared to destroy myself, with the same terrible power that had sentenced my world to death. Even if their death had not been by my own hands, my pain was no lessened. There was no comfort to be found here, no support of a loving parent, no protection provided by a caring friend. This place was an empty shell of hopelessness and I needed out.
    I stumbled down the streets, gasping and crying. I fell to my knees at the corner of two long stretches of road and just screamed. My screams echoed down the empty streets. There was no relief. So I screamed more, till my voice grew hoarse and I lay on the ground heaving deep breaths.
    I knew this was useless and stupid and it served no purpose—but I needed to let out the pain that burned within my soul. The dark imprint of suffering that scratched itself a permanent residence in my hands. “I can read it,” I whispered, staring at the palms of my hand, suffering a moment of shock-induced insanity. “They say, ‘murder’. Can’t you hear them singing?” I began to laugh.
    I sat up, leaned back on my hands, stared up at the sky and just laughed. It was the most maniacal laugh I’d ever heard, and was somewhat surprised to hear it escape my lips. That brought an end to my moment of psychosis and I began to cry again, muttering apologizes to the wind.
    I slammed down streets, running desperately through avenues and roads in search of any form of life, from a pet to a person. It made no difference to me, but being alone was something I don’t think I could handle. There are some things a person can’t get used to.
    But these empty houses and cars only furthered this madness. Finally I stopped, finding myself at Emna’s home. It was broken and cluttered with years of abuse and a lack of care on the part of the owner.
    Emna was a strange old woman, with what appeared to be several hundred years under her belt, but was likely only seventy. She had always worn long brown dresses that were simple in design and seemed of no apparent age. With her hair long and tangled and the proud owner of several dozen pigeons, she was well known as the ‘crazy old woman’ of the neighborhood.
    I stared at the decrepit building and paused, wondering. I had an odd urge to enter, as though I expected somehow Emna to have survived. I tried to persuade myself to enter, despite my slight reluctance. Emna, even if she was an acute schizophrenic unable to communicate intelligibly with other people, she was a person who in any horror movie I had seen would’ve survived the apocalypse.
    This left my questioning my own power, was it possibly, though improbable, that it had failed and a single person had survived? My wandering mind began to calm, and I felt an almost pleasant feeling overcome me. Maybe I wasn’t alone; maybe there was someone I could see and touch and know of their presence and them of mine. We wouldn’t be alone.
    I opened the door and rushed inside, calling out Emna’s name in a decently excited manner. But—there was no response.
    My heart beat fiercely within my chest and I was now more uncertain as I stood in the doorway. The house was filled with a dreaded silence, cloaked in an emptiness that my presence alone could not fill.
    “Hello?” I looked around the room, surprised at the tidiness of it. Emna’s trashed yard and psychotic personality had prior led me to doubt her abilities at keeping a clean house. But, while other houses in the area had appeared mutilated by my raging power, hers looked untouched. And then, despite the silence of the house, I felt a roaring surge of optimism.
    “Emna? Are you here?” I hurried through the house, opening doors and looking inside, pausing every few moments to call out her name. But there was no response to my calls, and I was left staring up the stairs with hopelessness in my eyes.
    The searching of the second floor seemed to give me no further assurance of her continuous existence. But, with the slim chance she was there, I climbed the steps. The first door to my right was shut, and I opened it slowly, calling Emna’s name softly as I did.
    The air inside the room was cold and smelled vaguely akin to a hospital. There was a bed in one corner, a vanity across from it, neatly covered in perfumes and make-up. For a moment I was uncertain if this was Emna’s room or a guest bedroom, perhaps even her child’s, if Emna had any children. But a closet in the far side of the room was open and full of the dresses Emna wore.
    I slowly stepped into the room, slightly intrigued by the appearance and scent of the room. Then something caught the corner of my peripheral vision. I turned my head and stared at the most magnificent mirror my eyes had previously laid eyes on. It was simply stunning with a deep intricate design in its light wooden edges. There was a story to be told from the characters etched into the mirrors border, I was certain of this.
    The mirror itself was absolutely amazing, not a bit of dust upon it’s silvering surface. I walked closer and inspected the surface, finding no smudge or smear to interrupt the beauty of it. My wonderment at how this possession came to be so perfect and extraordinary was exponential.
    Then, with a pause and slight terrifying realization, I found I had no reflection. There was a long stretch of the continuation of silence, to which I had forgotten. I stared wide-eyed at the mirror’s surface, unable to locate my image in the mirror’s surface.
    The silence seemed to stretch on for several minutes, as I questioned every bit of the mirror’s function. Perhaps it was not a mirror, of what else it could be I had no idea, but I was certain this was the only reason I could not see my reflection.
    That’s when she entered the mirror’s view; a young girl who appeared my age with long, platinum blonde hair, directly contradicting my short, black hair. I was stunned, and fell backwards, looking behind me vigorously in search of her. But she was not there; her image was only on the mirror’s surface, which further led me to believe it was not a mirror.
    She smiled, and seemed quite content with the room. Then she turned and looked at me, the mirror and paused, her eyes widening in uncertainty and possibly terror. With slow, careful steps she approached and said something, or at least mouthed it, to which I could not hear her voice.
    “Who are you?” I asked, and she looked at me in confusion. The air felt more still and quiet than it had before, “Who are you?” I repeated.
    The girl mouthed something; her lips moving but no sound escaping her lips. She paused, pursing her lips and calmly mouthed something again. I stared, slightly afraid and slightly intrigued. I could not hear her voice, and I doubted she could hear mine.
    Then I came across an idea, quickly formulating in my mind. I grabbed eyeliner off the vanity and a notebook from under the bed-side table. I moved the eyeliner in brisk strokes, writing ‘Who are you?’ on a blank page. Then, realizing my mistake, I crossed the words out and rewrote them backwards.
    Carefully, not quite certain if this was going to further my insanity, I held out the notebook. The girl’s eyes glued themselves to the page and then she went to the similar of places around the room I’d visited and returned with eyeliner and a notebook.
    She glanced up at me as she opened the book, and for a few moments I wondered why neither of us was quite afraid. Perhaps it was my desire for contact with another living creature that had driven me to the madness of talking to the girl in the mirror. Maybe it was my certainty that I was dead, or this was simply a dream, and association with this person was not even truly occurring. Either way, I found myself drawn to her, wondering intensely if she was alone too. And we were each other’s last resort of human connection.
    She held up the notebook with the words: Racchl and your name being…?
    I scribbled ‘Mari’ down on the paper, the eyeliner giving my some trouble, but managing, and held it up. There was a long breath between us, fogging the glass on either side.
    Then Racchl wrote on her paper: Are you real?
    I felt the pain in my chest from earlier return, and I wrote down my response: I am painfully real, are you?
    Racchl seemed taken aback, and then she wrote ‘I think so’.
    I began to laugh, and Racchl laughed too, though I wasn’t sure if our reasons for amusement we’re akin. I was certain my laughing was due to my uncertainty and confusion. The fact that I had so lost touch with reality that I was looking in the mirror and talking to someone who might not even exist, only a figment of my imagination.
    There is something to be said for the person who looks in the mirror, and literally sees another person staring back at them. I’d gone crazy, delusional, completely and utterly mad. But, even if the person I was communicating with was nothing more than a hallucination, I’d rather speak to her than no one at all.
    ‘Are the people on your side gone too?’ she wrote.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘You tell first.’
    ‘I’m not exactly quite sure. They were gone when I woke up this morning. I don’t remember much from before, nothing at all really. In fact, I’m not even sure if anyone ever existed; though I faintly remember them.’
    I thought deeply as I read what she had written. Had her world been destroyed when I destroyed mine, or had it truly never existed? I forced the haunting question from my mind, not willing to consider that I had destroyed another person’s happiness when I rid earth of the people who used to populate its crust.
    ‘I destroyed my world,’ I wrote. ‘There used to be many people, but I accidentally killed them all.’
    Racchl seemed reluctant to respond, possibly slightly afraid, ‘How?’
    To this I wasn’t even sure how to respond, not even completely certain of the answer to which I could respond. I had known prior of my ability to destroy the things I hated. But, I had never meant to destroy all the people in the world. I had only wanted one person to suffer.
    ‘I got very angry at a friend. Or, I thought they were my friend, they had apparently hated me for my ability, and they finally told me. I hated them and I wanted them to die. But…not just did they die, but everyone else too.’
    ‘What ability?’
    ‘I can destroy.’
    ‘You can’t control it, can you?’
    I shook my head and sighed, I didn’t like where this conversation was going. I looked down, at the notebook, surprised to find that the already minimal pages of paper were decreasing rapidly. Emna had filled the first 60 of the 75 page notebook with unreadable writing, and the remaining few, excluding the pages I’d used, was no more than a couple.
    The light in Racchl’s eyes faded and she began writing. ‘Did you destroy my people?’
    I shook my head, ‘it could’ve reflected to your side though, when I destroyed those on mine.’
    She fell to her knees, and stared at me, her large, light silver eyes full of sadness. Then I realized it. We both shared the same face.