The elevator doors close in front of me and I remain in the cab alone. The deafening silence around me is broken only by the agonizing beats of my painfully broken heart that echo in my ears like a bell.

My eyes fill with tears and I stagger backwards, hitting the mirror. From its touch to my right palm, to my back, and despite my suit jacket and skirt, icy cold shivers run through my entire body, as if ghostly fingers brush through every millimeter of my skin.

My head is dizzy from lack of air, due to the suffocating emotions swirling inside me like a raging tornado. I lean forward and try to inhale and exhale evenly. Tears slowly roll down my face. They trickle down my chin and in slow motion fall to the floor, crashing with a monstrous thud that sounds more like the rumble of thunder, and drowns out the beating of my heart. 

Boom Boom Boom 

Every single tear that falls explodes upon hitting the floor with a thunderous roar.

Boom Boom Boom 

The tears and the pounding of my heart are too loud to bear. My ears are already hurting from the sound, my head is throbbing, my senses are overloaded and I'm as cold as I've ever been.  

My breath catches in my throat and I completely lose control of my lungs, no air reaches them anymore and they contract painfully.

I place a hand on my painfully thighten chest and I gasp for air, desperately trying to restore my breathing. My knees buckle and I almost fall. But I refuse to fall. My stubbornness is the only strength left in me, and I am not giving it up, even though it is only enough to keep me standing on my feet. I may be falling apart on the inside, but on the outside I have to stand tall, I can't give up, not now, not here. Not that close to Greg, who can see what he's done to me. My pride won't take it.

"I need to brace myself or I'm going to pass out. And that's not an option. They took away my hope, but I will walk out of this building and this situation with dignity, because I am not the one who wronged anyone!" I tell myself.

"Are you not? Really!? You didn't hurt anyone. Is that what you think, what you're trying to convince yourself, your consciousness of!? Um? Do you really never hurt anyone?" A stern voice asks.

Faster than I think I can, I straighten my back like a string and look around. I'm alone, but have they installed a camera and speaker here?

"W-Who said that?" I ask in an uncertain, shaky voice.

The stern voice barks a gloomy laugh and says, "Turn around and you'll see Rose." The voice spits out my name as if it is poisonous.

I slowly turn on my shaky legs to face the mirror and... the source of the voice. My breath catches in my throat once more, and I start to choke and cough. And she laughs at me like my struggle for air is the funniest show she's ever seen.

And she... She is me. More precisely, my reflection.

I clear my throat one last time and take a step back, now able to catch my breath. I raise my face to the ceiling and focus on it as I'm slowly breathing in and out, refusing to believe what is happening. I would close my eyes for better concentration but I don't do it now. I can't because as soon as my eyelids fall, hiding the light, the image of Greg kissing Megan will emerge out and push the air out of my lungs again. And frankly, I don't know how many times in a row a person is able to cope with losing the ability to breathe normally. I don't know and I don't want to experiment with it.

"No, it's not happening. It can't be happening!" I say, trying to calm myself down.

"Oh, but it can. And it is!" The voice I now recognize as darker version of my own answers. 

I abruptly lower my head, pain shooting through my neck, but I don't pay attention to it, and stare at her. Rose. The reflection-Rose.

"Boo!" Says the reflection-Rose.

 I jump back and she laughs ominously. 

"Oh, did I frighten you? Poor Rose!" She scoffs. "Poor," the fury in her eyes could set me on fire, "little," but instead her voice freezes me in place, "skittish," her words cut like ice, "timorous," she steps forward, "fearful," and then out of the mirror, "pitiful," she comes closer to me, and finishes right in my face with a sneer, "Rose!"

My breath catches in my throat and I squeeze my eyes shut.

I can feel her moving around me. She circles me just like a predator playing with its prey before devouring it whole.

"Poor little Rose, why do you keep your eyes shut? I won't hurt you. Even if I wanted to, I can't. Nobody hurts you better than you, anyway!" She says, her voice eerie and cold.

My heart is pounding in my chest and ears, and I'm trembling like a leaf. My legs quiver, and I could barely keep myself upright.

"Or because you don't want to see the sad, no, the pathetic picture you're now?! Hmm? Is that why your eyes are shut, poor little Rose?"

I feel the tears rolling down my cheeks. I brush them angrily and open my eyes. And she is right in front of me. Taller, with darker red hair, eyes flaring blue with rage, and a face in shadows. She is all in shadows. As if she has made her way through the darkness to me, but she has not shaken off it and now black flames are dancing all over her body, her face is peeking out of the gloom.

She is me, but she is not. She is a nightmare. The darkest part of me, fueled by anger, has come to torment me.

"Go away!" I try to say but my throat is clogged with tears.

"I will, poor little Rose, I will. But not yet!" She responds nevertheless.

"What do you want? No, forget it. Just go. I don't need your torture!" I think, and she seems to hear my thoughts again, and her face contorts in disdain. 

She starts circling me once more.

"Tut-tut-tut. You've become so timorous! Did that little thing with Greg hurt you so bad, break you so much, turn you into such a wreck that..." she says and stops behind me,  I can feel her getting closer and from her body instead of warmth I feel a chilling cold, "that you're afraid of your own reflection?" She whispers in my ear and her icy breath burns my skin.

I shudder, step forward and abruptly turn to face her.

"What do you want?" I shout, finally finding my voice. "Why are you harassing me? Isn't what happened to me enough, so you..." But she doesn't let me finish.

She immediately steps in front of me and her fingers dig into my throat in an iron grip. She lifts me above the floor, the black flames around her growing larger and colder. I grab her wrist with both hands and struggle to break away from her as I kick my legs, but they're somehow too heavy to lift them up to her, to reach her with them, so I just swing them back and forth helplessly.

"Isn't it enough?" She repeats my own question. My eyes water with pain, I struggle for breath and tears run down my temples. Reflection-Rose snarls with an animalistic roar and drops me to the ground so I collapse and fall at her feet. "Of course it's not enough! Nothing is enough or too much for people like you!" She says, her voice filled with disgust and rage.

"P-People... like... me?" I ask choked, holding my throat with both of my hands as I cough and try to take in as much air as possible.

She laughs bitterly and looms over me. "People like you who don't have the courage to face the pain and find the truth. People like you who would rather shove their true feelings down a rabbit hole than face them. People like you who run from the pain instead of facing it and fight. Poor people like you!" She spits the latter out as if it is poisonous. In fact, a lot of what she tells me she spits out like it's poisonous or like she's been holding it in way too long.

I stagger forward, sobbing, and am startled when my hands splash to the floor. I stare down and notice for the first time that the elevator cab is filling with water. The bottom of my skirt is already drenched, and the level is rising faster and faster.

I stand up quickly in a panic and turn to the reflection-Rose, "Help me! The elevator is filling up with water!"

"Nope!" She says, popping the "p" and crossing her arms over her chest.

"How no?" I ask in bewilderment, but then shake my head, refusing to waste time with her, and turn to the doors. I start punching and kicking them, yelling, "HELP! PLEASE! SOMEONE! HELP US!"

I keep on shouting and she starts laughing.

"What? Why are you laughing?" I ask angrily, and I jerk around to face her, my hands balled into fists at my sides.

"I don't need saving. I don't need anything. You do. But... No one will come for you. No one will help you. They are too busy kissing others to care about such a pity little creature as you. You're alone, all alone, and as it is, you'll drown in your own tears!" The reflection-Rose says with cruel mocking voice and disappears, leaving me all by myself.

I blink and look in stupor at the place where she was a moment ago, before I realized what she said.

"Drown in my own tears?!" I mumble.

And then a few tears one after the other roll down my face and drop into the water, splashing with thunderous sounds. And after that, they keep on falling, increasing the level of the fluid which is already up to under my breasts.

I wipe them away furiously, trying to stop it all, but to no avail.

I trudge through the water over to the mirror and start banging on it, crying at the reflection-Rose, who is nowhere to be found, "Come back! Help me! Don't leave me like this! P-P-Please!" I stammer and lose my voice again.

I keep banging and banging until a crack appears on the mirror. By the time I'm aware, it's starting to spread really fast. Sloshing the water, I  turn my back on it and cover the back of my head to protect it from the cutting glass.

Leaning forward, eyes tightly shut, I feel the water tickle my chin and take a deep breath, filling my lungs and cheeks with air, waiting for the inevitable. The mirror explodes, but no pain comes, and suddenly I feel strangely weightless.

I open my eyes to find that the elevator is gone and I'm in the middle of a watery abyss. A watery abyss created by my own tears, which even at this moment continue to flow, I can feel them as incredible as it is.

I start flailing my arms and legs, but I don't move up an inch. And the next moment, a tentacle of darkness wraps around my midsection, black flames dancing across its surface like it was with the reflection-Rose, and panic rises in my chest. I painfully realize that the breath taken is already insufficient and my lungs begin to protest. The tentacle tightens around me and pulls me down. I open my mouth to cry for help, but in time I realize that the idea is a very bad one considering where I am and I clench my teeth tightly. Bubbles of air escape my mouth nonetheless and head for a surface that is invisible and unreachable to me. The tentacle pulls me down and I struggle. I kick and hit the water body with my hands and feet, I vaguely notice my hair floating up like an unquenchable flame.

"I can do it! I can get away!" I tell myself and keep fighting. I keep fighting.

But then my chest is burning, my lungs constrict painfully from the lack of air, and I start to black out. I struggle, but I feel my strength leaving me and despair welling up inside me.

I don't know what to do, how to save myself. My thoughts blur, my chest burns with the need for air. I want to open my mouth, to inhale, but I fight this senseless and dangerous urge. My limbs feel heavy, arms go up begging for someone to save me, but no one appears.

Desperation overcomes me and I resort to the last thing I have left, no matter how hopeless and stupid it is. The tentacle pulls me down and I open my mouth and scream at the top of my empty lungs, "Help! Help!" Over and over. But my cries are muffled by the water, created by my own tears. The fluid rushes into my throat, filling my lungs, drowning me. Its cold heaviness pulls my chest down, heavy like an anchor. It pulls to where the tentacle leads me. And soon enough darkness and cold surround me as I drift helplessly down, down, down...