Part Of Me

For Kaspar’s 15th birthday she had received a voice recorder with twelve blank tapes. Of course she had told her parent that’s what she wanted and if she didn’t get it then the dog would go missing. It was her first real birthday present in years and when her mother gave it to her in the unwrapped package she slammed the door in her face and threw the cardboard wrapper on the floor.
At first Kaspar was just playing with it, recording her voice and giggling when she played it back to herself.

“Fuck you Mother,” She would say in a creepy voice, only to laugh in hysterics when she listened to herself. There was a different motive to behind wanting one of these though. She was starting to suffer from what she thought were blackouts and feeling somewhat not in control of her own mind and body recently. She wanted the voice recorder so she could pinpoint times and dates to when she felt different and when she woke up from a blackout. Her outbursts were getting more violent too; she slapped her mother the other day for not handing her cutlery.

“I can remember doing it,” Kaspar started to speak into the microphone, “But I just didn’t feel like me.” She looked in the mirror as she paced the room talking. She’d lost a lot of weight again recently. That was the only thing people would talk to her about at school.

“How do you stay so thin?” One of the typical popular girls would say. Kaspar never answered, she would just stare at her like she was burning a hole into the girls mind with her eyes.

As she stared at herself in the mirror she noticed something about her eyes, they were sparkling even though it was dimly lit in her bedroom. Drawing closer to her reflection, it wasn’t just the sparkling that was strange; they would blink without her feeling it, like they had a mind of their own.
“My eyes are blinking by themselves,” She spoke into the recorder “I can’t feel them doing so, I’m just standing here watching them in the mirror.”

****
From that first night on her 15th birthday, Kaspar had started noticing other little things. It wasn’t just her eyes that had a mind of their own; it was her mouth, her laugh, her hands, even her leg movement. One day she had been walking home from school, still trying to stay within the time limit, when she had stopped to look at a missing cat poster poorly stapled to a wooden poll. Whilst lost in thought starting at the cats face she’d felt funny, as her legs were walking without her telling them or wanting them to. She closed her eyes for a brief second and when she opened them she was sitting in her room, in front of the mirror. She stared closely at herself, examining every part of her face.

“How the fuck do I not remember getting home?!” Kaspar spoke grabbing the voice recording and switching it on. She rubbed her temples, trying to calm the pressure and anxiety building in her head. She questioned herself over and over again running through the walk home and explaining it to the tiny tape that listening to every word. Kaspar hadn’t spoken so much in her life as she pictured every step of this afternoon.

“I must have blacked out,” She thought out loud, “However; it only felt like I shut my eyes for a second as if I was only blinking. The walk home from that poster is at least another 8 minutes.” Giving herself a questioning look in the mirror she realised it was already dark outside and decided to get some food.

Kaspar lay in bed, still clueless about the events that had happened today. She placed her voice recorder on the desk next to her bed and slowly fell asleep.

“Kaspar?...Kaspar?...Kaspar wake up!” A voice yelled. She was sitting in front of the mirror again; her bedroom lights were all switched on. She didn’t look tired, it seemed she’d slept a lot but it had only been two hours since she finally fell.

“Kaspar?” The voice came again. She shot to her feet and searched her entire bedroom. Nothing. Where was that voice coming from?

“Come to the mirror you fucking idiot!” It screamed and she ran to it. To her horror she was grinning without telling herself to. She had nothing to smile about. It appeared that Kaspar had control of only her eyes but no other facial features. The fear she could see coming from her eyes was last seen when she was 3 years old.

“Kaspar,” The voice came from her own mouth, using her lips with no control over it, it was deep and fearless. “I’m Helena.” Kaspar froze.