Collection of Memories of Another; The Hematite Mirror

By: Benjamin O’Connor-Rose

His “Memories of Another” uses uncanny and surreal imagery to provoke reflection on ourselves and inspire others to tell their own fictional tales. The Hematite Mirror, a story of what one might find their identity to be when all situation and circumstance is stripped away and only they remain. 

As you awake from a restless sleep, you find yourself in an uncanny place, a place that seems both familiar and ever so strange at once. You stand on a dias of carven basalt, gilded with strange illegible runes and symbols, past the dias darkness spans in all directions with no sound other than the occasional drip of a far off stalagmite. Before you, on the centre of the dias a single beam of sunlight illuminates a towering mirror. One whom’s arched frame is wrought of the most ornate and delicate gold. The mirror itself is made of the purest most polished hematite. Its reflective and dark surface shadows dance and twirl as you see reality unravel and spin itself into strange otherworldly forms. You approach the mirror and see your pasts, presents and futures all dissolve and converge. The shimmering umbra of fate twisting you into a myriad of forms. Who do you see within that shining darkness? Who do you become when all possibilities are laid bare before your naked eyes? Who are you?

Illustration by Tito