Liz Baumann

When we last spoke of the Monster named Jake, he had discovered that releasing part of his monstery self was not ugly and horrific, but rather appreciated and welcome. Now he felt whole and like everything was right. Only it was not.

True, happiness did visit upon him for a spell, righting some wrongs, but it wasn’t meant to last. Kind words of thanks, warmth, truth, friendship – all good things and they were his for a time, but then the sun dipped low and winter dropped its icy veil. One day he looked in that murky middle mirror separating the past and future, the one of perception, and saw not just one visage but two.

While Jake noticed the extra countenance as his Shadow, he was at first not sure what to make of it. He joked about it, as if he knew what it meant and everything was fine. He shrugged it off like a duck deals with water on its back. Yet on the inside, it slunk past his ego to nag and gnaw at his inner self.

It has been said that the entire world is a mirror, and that what one sees outside is a reflection of one’s World inside. Thus Jake perceived the nagging and gnawing as being outside of himself, and one day he jabbed and grabbed hold and lashed at it. But the mirror smashed and his claws grasped at the thin air behind it. Someone recognized his familiar cry, catching his hand and holding it fast until he could once again steady himself.

The mirror, once whole, now lay broken on the floor, shards glinting in the half-light. He scooped up a few of its broken pieces and recognized parts of himself in them. But there was something else there too and, now reduced to manageable sizes, he could finally see it for what it was. The lens of the broken mirror revealed his Shadow for the truths it represented, for another side of himself that he had pushed away.

Only now he realized he’d had it all backwards. The unbroken mirror, its surface at once both visible and invisible, betrays and distracts by reflecting an orderly but superficial lie. Clarity of depth is sacrificed for greater clarity in two dimensions. Like white light through a prism, the pieces only tell part of the story.

The Man Jake had seen in the unbroken Mirror wasn’t a Monster, he’d been a Shadow of a Monster. Now Jake must become neither; or rather, he must become both and then some. For the only way to truly be whole is to reconcile with one’s parts. Rather than run from it, he needed to take it all in, become won with it. And so he did.

He sensed he would need this to face what was soon to come.

This was part 2 in a series.
Part 1: A Monster That’s Eaten Alive by a Ghost.