Excerpt: Erased

“Eric!” She screamed; there were tears running down her face. The sound of her shout vibrated in the walls of the house. Sierra heard a crash downstairs, and wondered if she’d frightened one of the cats.

“Eric!” She cried out again; she stared into the mirror with wide eyes. A shaking hand reached up to touch her face, she felt as if it weren’t her own mind controlling it. In the mirror she watched the shaking hand trace the outline of her eye with its fingers and move them underneath; she watched the color drain out of the already pale face staring back at her.

Downstairs, she heard the crash of feet starting to run; she heard what she thought was the bang of a chair being pushed into a table. Sierra was still staring into that mirror when the feet she heard began to climb the stairs at an alarming rate, pounding steps.

“Sierra!” She heard him shout, but she couldn’t find the words to answer him as she continued to stare into the mirror, her fingers at the corners of her eye. He stepped into the bathroom through the open doorway, coming to stand next to her at the mirror. “Sierra, what’s wrong? Why are you screaming?”

Tears continued to run down her face.

“Sierra?” He asked, whispered really, and touched her shoulder tentatively. “What’s wrong?” Besides the obvious, he thought, but he hadn’t seen her this upset, not even after the bus ride from hell.

She wiped the tears away from her cheeks and turned to look at her brother, taking shaking breaths. She seemed to be looking at him closely, at his eyes, and he turned towards the mirror on instinct, to see if he could see what she was seeing; to see what was appalling her like this.

And he did.

Staring into the mirror together, Sierra whispered the words that would haunt both of the siblings for a very long time.

“We’re changing.”

Staring back at them from the mirror were not the blue-gray eyes that they shared.

Staring back at them were identical bright green eyes; Sierra finally understood what she hadn’t about the picture she’d found. How had they missed it all this time? That was what was different about Nathanial and Audrey’s physical appearance: their eyes were a bright green. She could see it instantly in her mind’s eye, remembering all the pictures they’d passed. Had they not seen it because they hadn’t wanted to? Or was there something else at work here?

“We’re becoming them.” She continued. Was this what everyone else saw when they looked at them recently? Not blue-gray, but green? Were they seeing what their family and friends were seeing?

“God damnit!” She cried out to Eric’s silence, and slammed a fist into the mirror, hardly feeling the pain that accompanied it. Small pieces of glass fell from the mirror, trickling down into the sink and mixing with the drips of blood that had fallen from her clenched fist. Not getting the reaction she wanted, she picked up the nearest heavy object – a bathroom radio – and hurled it at the mirror as well. The mirror had not broken as she wanted it to, like it did in the movies in tinkling tiny pieces. Instead, it fell in chunks. Each piece allowed her to see herself, at least one eye of herself.
In the shards of glass, a thousand copies of herself all stared wide-eyed back at her.