There was a brief moment in my life when I was devastatingly terrified of mirrors because of the concept of "Bloody Mary." The whole idea of Bloody Mary had filled me with such a profound fear of mirrors that to this day, I still stare behind my reflection, almost expecting some apparition to suddenly show its grotesque face. It never happens, not for as long as I remember staring at the reflective glass, yet the irrational fear still remains.
I attribute this to the story of Bloody Mary, which promises visions of a grisly brutish face right before your death, only because you decided to court the mistress in a one-sided affair. The story is, of course, a cautionary tale, designed to warn kids of flirting with the kind of risque, the dangerous, and the taboos that are, rightfully, banned. The ritual comes from the same breed as playing with Ouija boards, knockin' down grave stones, reciting incantations from the Necronomicon, or as Paranormal Activity has shown, messin' around with demons. The lesson is clear, don't fuck with the unknown. Yet, there's a certain appeal, an exhilaration that comes from skirting with unnatural dangers. Maybe its the idea of touching beyond the physical borders, revealing some supernatural plane where ghosts, demons, and angels exist, that gives us a kind of solace in life after death. We go through these irrational extremes as if to confirm our own immortality.
When I first heard of the story of Bloody Mary, I was afraid to go into the bathroom for weeks, especially at night. It didn't matter that I didn't satisfy the conditions for her appearance (lit candles at darkness, and chanting her name several times in succession), because in my mind, she had already appeared. Jaundiced and hollowed out cheeks, fleshy green and yellow mottled skin, crooked, jagged teeth, and dark impenetrable eye sockets, with rivulets of blood streaming out, a sickly grin stretched across her face, arms reaching out from behind the reflective surface, until finally, I am engulfed in her sweet deadly embrace.
It is particularly apt that a mirror is what scares me most since what scares me isn't what I see, but what I imagine seeing. My mind often thoughtlessly invents the most terrifying of visages in some sick contest of creating the most horrifying face imaginable. The train of thought is dangerously linear, relentless in its pursuit of horrific perfection.
