I threw my bag in a corner of my room, exhausted. After six hours spent at school, I had just finished two more dance lesson hours, and I still had to go to my volley training. And that because, obviously, the only mad person who chooses to do three different sports, and all of three agonistic, is me.
 

I needed to erase the tiredness, so I decided to use my only free hour to have a walk in the woods that grow behind my house, so that I could breathe fresh air and relax my muscles.
 

But, as soon as I went through the first few trees, I got hit by a terrible feeling, like something that pressed my chest and blocked my breath.
 

Maybe you're just tired, I thought, and I kept walking. However, after a few minutes, my sickness won over me and I was forced to stop and lay my back against a tree. I closed my eyes, starting to take slow and deep breaths, falling in a drowsiness state that lasted quite a lot, and that would have continued, who knows how long, if a scream hadn't woken me up. A terrible scream, spine-chilling, that was imploring help and came from the deepest depth of the woods. I opened my eyes, frightened by the sudden sound, and I found myself surrounded by total darkness, and around me there was an authentic maze of trees, surely not the trees that I was used to know. Before I could even ask myself what was going on, a new scream, identical to the previous one, filled the silence and made my fear grow stronger.
 

I started running towards the direction that I had heard the scream come from, until I arrived in a narrow, dark glade, with four mirrors on the ground, one per cardinal point. For the third time, I heard the same scream, coming from... The four mirrors' places? That's impossible, it's just an illusion of your ears, or it's some strange animal's screech, I thought, but when my eyes looked into one of the mirrors, that little rational part of me totally disappeared. The one reflected by the mirror was me. But not the one who was standing, dazed, in the middle of the glade. It was me, hell if it was me, but my body was tied by ropes, covered in blood and dust, and mostly cut by deep wounds. I turned my sight towards another mirror: still me, thumbtacked with thousand of white, long thorns. Trembling, I fell on the ground.
 

- Oh, look here, we found her. The girl in the mirror.

- Uh, yes, she looks totally like the other two girls...

- Finally! Those two are on the edge of leaving us forever, who knows how much time they can still resist...

- Aaah guys, I don't want to be the rude one, but you are scaring our guest... Come on, honey, don't be afraid, my brothers are only joking... Please stand up...
 

I looked up and, through the tears, I saw the faces of the ones who were talking to me. They were four boys, really lookalike, with dark black hair and... Left eye, red. Right eye, yellow. With no eyelids. Eyes that were staring at me from up my head, with a "poor little thing" expression. Then, one of them (probably the last one who spoke) reached his hand out to me and helped me standing up. Or better, he forced me to stand up, because he lifted me without permission. Then he ordered me to sit on a block, in the middle of the glade.
 

- You see, honey, the truth is, there is nothing to be afraid of. These mirrors are only our houses... And they reflect the fears of people who doesn't dwell in them...
 

While saying that, everyone of them entered a mirror, and widened his arms, maybe trying to comfort me. It was a vane try.
 

- Oh, I guess you are afraid of wounds more than any other thing in the world, huh? Don't worry, these are only shadows that we create to have fun... You know, human mind is kind of interesting... And they keep on being mere shadows, if you don't touch us...
 

For a moment, I sighed in relief. Only shadows... But suddenly something come up to me: I had touched that creature's hand, I had physically interacted with him! What was going to happen to me?
 

I didn't have the time to express my question in a loud voice: a stab hit me in the middle of the stomach, and I fell on the ground, breathless. While falling I saw one of the guys extracting a knife from my reflexion's stomach. I turned towards the other mirror and I felt my back almost cracking: another guy had kicked the other reflexion.
 

- And, as you can see, if you touch us... Uhm... Think about voodoo dolls, you know what they are? Well this works the same way...
 

He took a thorny bush and slapped it on one of the girls' face, like it was a whip. I immediately felt my cheeks burning. The last guy, who still hadn't done anything, approached the stabbed reflexion, with a torch, and stuck it on her hip. The pain was unbearable, and for the first time I let out a whine. Clearly the fact made those beasts happy, and they all started teasing the same girl, everyone using a big safety pin, making holes in her whole body and putting fishlines  through the wounds, as if they wanted to sew them. But, obviously, the fishline only made the wounds bigger, and I was starting to loose consciousness. I wouldn't have resisted the pain much longer, but if I had to choose between collapsing or make them happier with my screams, it was obvious that I preferred to faint and put an end to the torture.
 

- Maybe you want to ask why we are doing this to you, don't you? Well... There's no real reason, to be honest. Ah... What's the phrase that you humans use? Just because. We're bored, and we suppose that your voice begging for mercy would be a beautiful sound... So, just accept it. Your only way to survive is begging.
 

He burnt a long, dry branch, and started shaking it next to a girl's back. I could bear the pain.
 

Another one took some big hooks and began sticking them on the other girl's neck, like he was creating a necklace. I still could suffer in silence.
 

The third one called out some snakes that bited a girl on her wrists. But still, it wasn't enough.
 

The fourth one, instead of hurting me, approached my trembling body, turned it with his feet, grabbed my face with a hand and stuck those terrible eyes of him straight into mine.
 

- Good. You're stronger than the previous girls... If this kind of tortures doesn't work, let's try with something bitter...
 

As soon as he spoke, a lion come out from the woods and approached the girl on the southern mirror, sticking his claws on her chest. Then, with a sudden move, he bited her arm and ripped it. I had hit the limit. I cried, with a quite loud voice. The lion kept on his work, taking arms and legs one by one, until the southern girl totally disappeared. I was a trembling bunch of barely living meat, but I still was firm in my decision: I would never ever beg for mercy. Even if it would have costed my death. That somehow I had experienced. I had felt like all the oxygen had escaped my body for a couple of painful seconds, then I found myself breathing again. Panting, but still breathing. Again, one of the beasts took my face, this time with both hands, his mouth just a few millimetres from mine.
 

- Ooooh, you can resist lions too, huh? This means that we can have fun with you in every possible way...
 

I had swore to myself: I wouldn't have begged for mercy. I'd rather have died. But when I felt his cold hand under my sweater, touching my skin, I felt weak, dirty, and desperate. With a low voice, and crying hard, I gave up.
 

- Please... Please let me free...
 

But I didn't totally give up. That word, mercy, would never ever exit my mouth.
 

The beast let me go. One of them dragged me in front of a mirror and made me stand up. The girl too stood up. She wasn't wounded anymore, whilst I had the whole of my body bleeding. On her face, there weren't the spikes' holes, but only a satisfied and evil smile. In the southern mirror, the other girl had came back, and she was laughing.
 

One of the beasts arrived behind me and put a knife towards my throat. He chopped off the two veins with an only hit, while murmuring in my ear "next time, it will be forever". A third girl appeared in a previously empty mirror.




 

I woke up in my bed, panting and covered in sweat.
 

It was the third time that I had the same nightmare.
 

Thank God, they're only dreams, I thought.
 

I stood up and took my bag, ready to go playing volleyball, ignoring that on my desk there was a big fishing hook.