*Who is this?

This isn´t me in the reflection of the mirror, is it?

She looks all girly, pumps with heels, white skinny pants, pink buttoned blouse and on top a summer coat. Shiny earrings are dangling from the ears, the neck decorated with a simple necklace and the wrists covered with few bracelets of different pastel colours. Every single thing perfectly matching.

How gross. I hate girlies.

Does this cold silver surface really reflect me?

I reach out to touch the surface of the mirror. My fingertips brush against the silver ever so lightly and I slowly bring my palm closer, so that my hand presses against the cold completely. A light shiver runs up my arm.

I study my own hand against the mirror- since when are my nails cut this neatly and coated with a layer of glossy nail polish? And the unfamiliar weight of the bracelets feels so burdening, so heavy.

My eyes wander over my hand to the hand reflected in the mirror, running up the arm and shoulders and finally stopping at the face. I lean closer to get a better look at that face.

If it were only the clothes, it probably wouldn´t shock me, I mean I can always wear different kind of clothes still being me and in my childhood I used to wear dresses and girlish clothes, this fact just changing with my growing up and experiencing new circumstances...

But I don´t just miss my tomboyish attire. No.

I can´t even recognize my face.

The face that is staring back at me, eyes reaching to my soul through the mirror is covered with make-up - long eyelashes covered with mascara, eyelids with heavy dark eyeshadow and black defining eyeliner, cheeks covered with faint red rouge. The light reflects dance around on the lips in the lipsglosses´ shimmer.

That face looks innocent, like it belongs to a child, but mature at the same time, regarding the fine artwork of make-up on it, only achievable through years trained hands.

While examining the face closer, I can make out that the girl must have bleached her face - definitely a slightly lighter skin tone than mine - and the eyebrows look different, too. Finer and coloured in a brownish tone.

Pffft. Really, who spends their time on make-up and face treatment?

But this all is not as bad as the hair.

That´s not my hair. No, no, no...

Where´s my jet-black, long, shiny and straight hair? The hair I used to treat so well.

My hair - my only dignity and recognition as a girl - my beloved hair. Gone.

All I can see is a short haircut, barely covering that girl´s ears.

Short, messy, honey-brown coloured hair.

Who is this?

She is blinking, opening or closing , tilting or moving her head at the same time as me. The exact same time.

No. Not in a thousand, not in a million years I will accept this as me. Can´t be. Just can´t.

This doesn´t even feel real. It has to be surreal.

I suddenly realize that I also am in an unfamiliar room.

Looking around, I can´t recall ever having seen this place before. How did I end up here?

It looks like it belongs to a teenager, a neat, organized, cute and girly teenager. Somehow the room reflects the girl in the mirror´s reflection perfectly. It is her room, I know it.

I take some steps towards the desk where documents are lying around, maybe I can get some information from them?

I browse through the papers and find a name on almost all of them: Green.

It is sometimes combined with a unknown American male name and sometimes with an unknown Korean female name. Who are these people? What are these documents for?

And one name is striking, it´s dominant. In most of the cases the name "Green" is combined with the given name "Alicia".

Never have I heard of it before. I don´t know this girl.

Alicia Green.

But I have the feeling I still know who this name belongs to.

The girl in the mirror.

But I have the feeling this all is somewhere a part of me as well.

In other words,

that name belongs to me.

 But nothing here is familiar, I feel lost, I feel out of place.

This all feels so wrong.

Tears have started forming in my eyes, blurring out my environment.

Out of frustration, I let out a bitter scream...

... and I wake up screaming and all sweaty. I quickly sit up in my bed and automatically and frustratedly grab my hair tightly.

It feels long.

This was just a dream. Only a dream... Or rather a nightmare.

I feel so strange, just like I am jet-lagged. This is weird.

I am getting out of my bed and I realize that the room looks somehow... distorted?

But it is my room. My room where I spent almost all my life, in the flat where I happily live with my parents. 

I am heading to the bath to take a look in the mirror.

It is morning, but it´s already past the school starting time the clock on the wall tells me, while I cross the hall to reach the bathroom.

Weird.

Did I miss out on a school day again, because I refused to go to school to avoid all the evil there?

I should stop throwing a fit in the morning and worry my mother about my environment in school.

I should face the evil and fight against it and not stay at home cowardly.

But tears roll down my cheeks as I think that I actually am a coward.

A coward that tries to hide what others talk bad about instead of proudly being confident about oneself, a coward that doesn´t face its fears, a coward that tries to please others and tries to fit in, a coward that always runs away and can not do anything right.

But why am I still feeling like this all is a delusion? Like I am dreaming or under the influence of other means I never wanted to undergo. 

When I look into the mirror I am so relieved. Thank God, I look just like my normal self, besides the tear stained cheeks.

No tiny little sign of make-up, my natural skin colour, my natural growing eyebrow form and colour.

I can see my long, black, but messy bedhair. All in its usual place. Nothing out of order...

... but suddenly the mirror starts to stretch and is bizarrely deformed. 

The lighting seems odd and unrealistic, too.

Despite being morning it is getting dark. A gloomy grey is coming down like fog...

Darker.

Grotesque shadows are overcoming me.

Darker.

My sight is becoming hazy...

Darker.

What is this ?

An overwhelming warmth and comfortness is overcoming my body.

Now everything is engulfed in complete darkness.*