Freewill?

(continuing with 2011 exchange writing..)

Grace always knew there was something about that mirror in her room. It was one of those old heavy full length mirror with intricate gold carvings by the side. She was convinced it was magical.  Sometimes when she looked into it, into her own reflection, she felt like the eyes in her reflection were looking right through her. One time she even thought it winked at her. Somehow she wasn’t creeped out by it. She felt this strange magnetic attraction, as if she was drawn to it. It felt. Magical. 

So there was this one day, she was up and about, ready to go for an important event event. Dressed to the nines, she was doing up her hair. She realized that she couldn’t actually see how her hair was like from the back, so she decided she needed another mirror to help her with that. She held her mom’s mirror to the back of her head to examine how her hair was like. Whoa, great job, Grace, she thought to herself. Looking straight ahead now, she realized that she could see her reflection, and then reflection of her reflection of her reflection, and her reflection of her reflection of her reflection of her reflection. And there, in the 13^th frame, she saw her own reflection wave to her.

She froze, and rubbed her eyes. NO. WAY.

Before she could even respond, her 13^th reflection reached out, and just like in the movies, like how the mirror surface turned jello like, that was EXACTLY what happened. It pulled her in.

Grace yelled. She yelled so much, but the next thing she knew, she was on her bed, and her mom was shouting at her to ‘QUIT it and to try to be an example of her name.’

“Sorry ma! I just had the strangest, weirdest dream.”

Well, just quit it will you, or I’ll redraw your privileges to control Grace on Sunday alright?”

“Huhh? Waddyou talkin’about mom?” Grace was dumbfounded. What was mom talking about ‘grace’? she was Grace!? “Don’t act like you don’t know how the rules are, Grace. You little rascal. Control her, or she gets to be free, you make the choice alright?” Grace stared at mom. Some thing was strange about her. Mom was right handed. This woman was holding her hair brush in her left hand. Mom had a mole on her left cheek. This lady had hers on her right.

Oh goodness. Grace screamed again. This time, she suddenly noticed that everything around her was a reflection of her house. She burst out into her garden. Her favorite rose plants were on her left. Her car was a right hand drive instead of left. And what ‘Mom’ had said, what did she mean?

She had to find out. Quickly, Grace swapped her right swept fringe to her left side. Luckily for her, she was ambidextrous. On Sunday, she followed “Mom” to the garage, where she got to peek into a screen which she planned Mom’s activities for the next 7 days. Likewise, before her, Grace sieved through an entire archive of what she had done in her Real World before she came to this parallel universe. From the boyfriends that she had, the silly things that she ever did, the music she ever liked. These were all planned by “Grace”.

Freewill.. What in the world was that? Grace gapped at the screen in front of her.

x

hard disk time capsule

unearthed a couple of writings from my 2011 exchange days. they were mildly entertaining so i'm sharing them here!

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Mr Tramp, that was what they called him.  His presence was always felt whenever we saw him around the neighborhood, and by that I didn’t mean it in a good way. He had this swagger. Stumpy, almost troll-like. He had a thick, bushy shrub which overwhelmed his entire face, and only his eyes and nose peeked out from his Amazonian forest. I never really knew how he looked like, but I imagined his face was covered with warts and pimples, just like how they speckled his (also very bushy, but to a lesser degree) arms and legs.

His head of hair was greasy, a poor attempt at taming his frizzy mane with bottles of petroleum. He was the kind who sat on buses and left greasy hair prints on the windowpanes. The kind whom people kept a radius of 5 metres from. Have you ever read The Twits by Roald Dahl? I imagined Mr Tramp took his breakfast just like the Twits- by scouring his Amazonian forest for scraps of food from 3 weeks back. He would smack his lips and grunt heartily feeding on decomposing blueberry pancakes. Ew.

No one wanted to be near Mr Tramp. There was one occasion I happened to when I was a little girl on my way to school. I had swung around the corner and bashed right into his belly and boy, did his breath stink of rotting rats and manholes on a New York summer day. “Ohhh girl, don’t go bouncin’ around, be..” I had scooted off in the opposite direction before he completed his sentence, mom’s warning about not speaking to weird strangers ringing at the back of my head.

Like his name suggested, Mr Tramp didn’t have a home. He was always seen wandering around the neighborhood, draped in his brown, holey patched up coat, sleeping in parks and sieving for scraps in the trash. Mom said that Mr Tramp used to be wealthy, and then he got into the wrong dealings at work, lost his job and house and become slightly bonkers. Well, I didn’t know how far that was true, but he was always mumbling to himself.

About 6 months back, I was stuck outside my house waiting for someone to come home as I had forgotten my keys. I saw Mr Tramp 2 blocks away, buying a bagel from a makeshift cart, only to tear it into half and offering it to a shoeless boy.

And then 4 months back, I was at the café alfresco waiting for my date to turn up, when I saw him across the street, offering a quarter to someone fumbling in her purse to make a call on the public phone.

2 months back, I was on my way home late at night on a winter night, when I heard feet shuffling, and then huffing and puffing behind me. I pulled my coat closer and walked faster, afraid to turn around. The sounds grew heavier and it wasn’t long before I broke into a run. That was when I heard “Hey Missy, your purse!” I stopped in my tracks and turned around. Mr Tramp! He drew out his grubby hand and dropped the purse into my hands. Still in shock, I looked up at him. Oh yes, there it was, the 2 eyes hiding in the familiar Amazon forest. They winked.

And today, Sunday morning, I am out on the park bench in the neighborhood having my coffee and sandwich and reading the papers. The headlines read “Our 10 Million Lottery Jackpot Winner”! Ooh, lucky chap, I thought as I checked out the photograph of the Brad Pitt look-a-like.

Just then, someone swaggers by and does a double take like he recognizes me. I look up from my papers, and.. .It’s.. Him?

“Hey Missy, remember me?” He winks, this time his beautiful face in full glory.