“Honey? Are you alright? What
“What’s wrong?”
I began shaking again, and he
“I-I had a bad dream.” I said,
Everything flashed in my mind,
“It was just a dream, alright
He surprised me by biting the
“What was that for?” I asked,
“Did it hurt?”
“Of course it did!” He
“Then you’d know that this
My heart fluttered like a
An abrupt pain causes me to look at my arm, and I stealthily swat the buzzing culprit away. My groggy eyes look up, the eerie silence slowly creeping up to me. It was almost like those cowboy movies were there was a whistle of wind blowing the sand and a tumbleweed would pass by. Except in my reality the wind was caused by a fan blowing very fast(the controls were broken) that it would actually better if I turned it off, and the tumbleweed was the unopened envelopes that were blown by the fan.
I stand up for the fourteenth time since the office closed at eight, and to be honest I thought I was going to lose some weight after standing up for so many times and picking up runaway envelopes. But when I sit back down my belly just protruded itself. I sigh, and I return to sorting out the envelopes. I glance at the clock, and I groan when I see that it has only been two hours since I started. I reach for another parchment, and I notice that it had something heavy inside it. I felt curious, knowing that people rarely sent letters with objects in it. I look around, and I mentally slap myself. No one was here. I’m alone. Very slowly, and clumsily if I may add, I opened the brown covered parchment. I heard a jingle as I reached my hand into it.
“Joel.”
I heard a soft whisper, and my heart beats louder. A million thoughts rushed into my head, the one dominating was someone caught me.
“Joel.”
I hear it again, and goosebumps erupt all over my body. After a few moments everything becomes quiet again, and I gulp down hard then I take out the object from the package. When I look at it, I see my own reflection. For a moment I felt my soul leave my body, but then I realized it was a mirror with a small key chain. I understood where the jingling sound came from, but it still didn’t explain why I heard someone call my name.
“Joel.”
A buff voice called, and I almost dropped the mirror. I shakily looked around, and I sighed to myself thinking that after 5 years of working here every night alone, it was only now that I was imagining things. I shake the feeling off, but then I hear it again. And my eyes widened when I realized where the sound came from.
“Joel.”
With shaky hands, I hold the mirror. I turn it around, and I felt my heart stop for a moment. My reflection, if it was my reflection, was staring right at me. My jet black hair became all white, and I wrinkles that were never there. But that didn’t freak me out. No. It was the fact that my eyes were rolled over my head, so that it only showed the white part. There was blood currently dripping from my nose. My mouth was open, my teeth cracked. And the creepiest part? The blood came out of the mirror and was dripping on my khaki pants. Just when I was about to look away, a haunted laugh rang through the silent office.
“Joel. Silly Joel. You’re stuck here forever.”
The reflection moved it lips, although it’s pupils were still missing and the nose hasn’t stopped bleeding.
“Someday Joel, you’ll look like this.”
I slam the mirror unto my cubicle wall, and it smashed into pieces. Another laugh echoed, and in horror I saw one of the pieces of the broken mirror sticking into my arm. I slowly remove it, closing my eyes as I endured the pain. But when I opened my eyes, I only saw the dead mosquito I have killed only minutes ago. I cold chill ran up my spine, and I see the parchment in front of me, unopened. I hurriedly got my coat and caught a cab home.
The next day, a package arrived.
Someone asked me about you a few days ago. They asked me who was the girl that made me grin like a lunatic. It made me stop and think how to tell them about you. I looked up the sky in hope to find inspiration.
I could have said “She looks like Aphrodite.”
But then that wouldn’t do you justice. So I searched again for the right words, trying to think about you. I thought about your hair, the way it curled at the end. I thought about your lips, how they perfectly melted into mine. I thought about your eyes. Damn your eyes. They would entrance me every time I saw it, and I never wanted to look away.
My friends looked at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. I searched for words again. They laughed at me and told me I was whipped, and I never denied it. The breeze coming from the trees stirred my hair, as we walked back to our office. Then after awhile, I turned to them and said:
“Have you ever been to the beach?”
They all nodded looking curiously at me, and I continued:
“Well she’s like that. Close. When you’re around her you feel a certain breeze float through. You feel relaxed, and the deeper you dig into the sand, the more happier and carefree you would feel. You feel like you could just run all the way to the other side of an island.
Like water she reflects. She can reflect someone’s happiness as if it were her own. At night when everything’s dark, she glows. Every indent a person makes in the sand she takes and she keeps it in her memory. Every wave gentle and she washes up treasures from her own self.
She can make you listen to everything she says, just like how you’d want to listen to the sounds of the ocean. Sure she sometimes turns into storms and wreaks havoc, but she does everything she could to make it up to you. You know what I mean?”
I looked at the three of them, each had a different expression. After awhile they smiled at me, and patted my back. We each went in the building’s elevator, and we pressed our different floors.
“We hope to meet her soon okay man?” One of them said when he reached his floor.
After a while I was alone as the elevator continued to make my stomach drop. As I heard a familiar ding I walked out and proceeded to walk towards my cubicle. My neighbor smiled at me, her gaze kind. I then sit down on my computer and log in. I smile as I see you face, smiling brightly into the camera. You were showing off your engagement ring, a blush on your cheeks. My eyes then look further below the picture, with the text:
My beloved angel,
1988-2010
Beautiful isn’t it? The way we could imagine that somewhere out there, we are meant for someone. Contrary to what people may usually think, being destined to be with someone doesn’t automatically mean romantically. And this old Chinese belief proves that. It simply means that someone out there is meant to be your friend, to be your companion. It means that no matter the distance or the things you do, you will meet at a certain time when fate decides it. It’s nice to think that everything you do has a reason. That the people you meet, the things that have happened to you whether good or bad, the experiences you went through is part of some thought of plan. It makes you think of the butterfly effect. That one thing you do could affect so many things. A smile could make someone’s day, or a spiteful conversation could send someone into a depression. Come to think of it, we really are connected to each other for some reason. This makes you think about what you do. It makes you feel conscious about what you say or do to people because one mistake could ruin someone’s life.
