the-magnus-institute

[the-magnus-institute]

Is this blog still taking fan statements?

yes! statements get processed sooner or later, but not instantly because i'm not logged on all the time

[the-magnus-institute]

Untitled - Statement 20071104

Statement of Michael Jones, regarding an unusual trip on xyr friends’ boat, in the Puget Sound near Seattle. Original statement given November 4th, 2007. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

 [CLICK]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Michael Jones, regarding an unusual trip on xyr friends’ boat, in the Puget Sound near Seattle. Original statement given November 4th, 2007. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

I suppose I should start this off by saying I’ve never really believed in the supernatural. Never was one for ghost stories. I was quite the avid denier in fact. A man of science, I considered myself. I guess what I mean to say is, I wouldn’t have believed my own story if I hadn’t lived through it. But I know what happened, and I am completely certain it was real.

It all happened around Christmas, when I was visiting up north in Seattle for the holidays. The whole family was gathering at my grandparents’ house, and we were all planning to stay in the area for several days to celebrate. Now, I’m not sure how familiar you are with Seattle, given that you’re British, so let’s just say hotels in a populated city at Christmas time aren’t exactly cheap. So I phoned an old friend to see if I couldn’t crash at their place for a couple days. They, surprisingly, had no issue with it, and so the morning of Saturday the 22nd I was boarding a plane to Washington.

My friend was a fairly well-off individual, as one has to be to afford owning a home in a city like Seattle. I took a bus to clouds street and walked the last few blocks to their door. Luckily for me, the lights were on, illuminating a variety of pride flags and stickers taped to the windows, including a small braided bracelet made with purple, white, and green threads. I recognized it because I’d been the one to make it.

The door opened before very long at all, and I was greeted by a familiar face, dyed pink-purple-blue hair framing clouds face. “Mike!

“‘Allo, Karl!” I grinned. I would have waved, but I couldn’t exactly do that when I had a suitcase in one hand and my beanie clutched in the other. I don’t exactly know when I took it off, but that wasn’t supernatural, that was just my typical impulsivity.

Karl smiled back and stepped back to let me inside, the slight jingle of beaded bracelets audible. “Great to see you again, Mike!”

I expressed a similar sentiment, then quickly inquired about my sleeping arrangements. Karl led me into a rather nice room, furnished minimally with a single bed and desk- a nice bed and desk, mind you. The walls were an oddly mesmerizing sky-blue with hints of white, almost like clouds. I later found myself staring at them for hours, tracing their faint wisps with my eyes.

“Make yourself at home!” Karl told me welcomingly, before heading out to give me some space, which I appreciated. I’m a pretty outgoing guy, but it had been a long trip and I was tired. I proved this approximately five minutes later by falling asleep fully clothed atop the bed.

The next morning, I woke up to be informed of two things. First, Karl now had a girlfriend, Raven, who was incredibly nice and who I got on very well with. And secondly, the two of them wanted to know if I’d like to go out boating with them.

Since most of my family wasn’t due to arrive until Christmas Eve and would be staying for a bit after Christmas itself, I could easily spare the day to go out and see the city, or at least its waters. I told Karl and Raven as much, and the two were thrilled. Within the hour, I was fed a hearty breakfast of pancakes and herded into their blue Subaru, headed off to go boating.

I can’t say I’m entirely clear on where exactly we were, since I wasn’t really familiar with the area then, and I still am not now. But I do know that Karl and Raven seemed quite confident, and it couldn’t have been much past eleven o’clock when we motored out into the Puget Sound. The sky was bright and sunny, not a dissimilar color to the walls of the bedroom I’d stayed in.

It was altogether quite a good trip. Raven pointed out buildings on the Seattle skyline- did you know the Space Needle really isn’t that tall compared to Seattle’s skyscrapers? Karl smiled and assured me that they’d heard this fact a thousand times before, but didn’t complain as Raven told me all about the city. Karl’s expression as cloud looked at Raven was full of the fondness that one can’t help but smile at.

“Mike, you still like salmon?” Karl asked me once we could no longer see the city. We were still surrounded by forested shores.

“Yeah,” I nodded. I’d always enjoyed seafood, and the seafood here was pretty good, in my humble opinion. We ate a hearty lunch of fish sandwiches and Lay’s potato chips, which I quite enjoyed, and it was clear Raven and Karl did as well. I closed my eyes contentedly, feeling sunlight warm my body as I ate. The only things in the world that mattered at that moment were the gentle breeze, the bright sunlight, and the distant calls of seagulls. We were far enough from the city that I couldn’t hear many cars, so I didn’t think much of the relative silence.

I don’t know how long I sat there, savoring the good weather and relaxing sounds of the waves lapping against the side of the boat. Some time later, after what could have been anywhere from minutes to hours, I opened my eyes again to the sight of blue. Endless azure skies stretched above us and sapphire water surrounded our boat, which felt like a tiny speck in this great blue world. The only break in the various shades of blue were the white clouds high above.

“We should be getting back, I think,” Karl told me. They were right; I had planned to head to my parents’ house that night, and I didn’t want to worry my mother by being late.

“It’s so nice out here,” I remarked to Raven as we motored through the waves, the blue never fading or dimming. I thought we ought to have seen land coming into view by now; the Puget Sound is not excessively wide. “I know, it’s my favorite place to be,” ae smiled, staring mesmerized at the wake coming off the boat as it cut through the water like a knife through butter.

Karl tsked and frowned at the sky, seeming displeased with something. I stood and walked to the back of the small boat, where cloud was sitting in the driver’s seat. “Everything alright?” I inquired.

They shook their head and gave a small sigh of frustration. “There should be land here.” I looked up, not sure what I was expecting, and saw nothing but the same blue water and sky. “And my phone’s not getting any connection.” I glanced at my own phone and found that I also had absolutely no cell coverage.

“Huh, that’s odd,” I said, extremely intelligently.

“Yeah, I know,” Karl replied, biting their lip worriedly. “And we should have seen land by now.”

I simply nodded my agreement and stared out into the deep blue world surrounding us. The color no longer seemed bright and cheery to me, instead it was almost… ominous. Like the sky was going to open and swallow us whole. I don’t quite know where the thought came from, but it felt terrifyingly right. As we continued on through the blue, with no signs of land, I only grew more convinced of this.

I was not alone in feeling that the charming appearance of the sea and sky were hiding a dark, malicious secret behind them. Karl was glancing around and biting clouds lip with increasing frequency, expression not dissimilar to my own. Raven, however, was standing, leaning over the rail and staring into the water mesmerized. As I watched, ae slowly crept along the side of the boat and towards the bow.

I started making my way towards her, unable to shake the feeling that there was something wrong with her movements. Ae didn’t seem quite aerself, moving almost as if controlled by some unseeable force. As it turned out, it was a good thing I did so, since right as I reached her, Raven jumped, and gravity seemed to decide not to work, because she started to float up towards the sky. I grabbed aer arm and yanked aer back down to the deck of the boat. She fought me quite a bit, and it was a lucky thing that I like to wear thick sweaters, because I think that had I not been protected by the heavy wool, her long nails would have torn my skin open.

But I did manage to calm aer eventually, and ae took to simply lying dejectedly on the deck and staring up into the sky, eyes focused on something beyond my sight. Perhaps she was just staring at an interesting cloud, but I got the feeling it was nothing so innocent. Ae seemed… distant, disconnected, like ae barely registered that Karl and I were there.

Speaking of Karl, they continued to drive us through the blue. It felt like hours that we went on and on before suddenly the motor cut out and there was a deafening silence. I turned to see Karl slumped back into clouds seat, thankfully still conscious, but looking utterly defeated. “Are you alright?” I demanded, my own voice sounding utterly miniscule in the great blue world around us.

“I don’t know where we are!” Karl looked at me, face slack with terror. They stared at me horrified, although not at me. More at the situation we were in. “We should have hit land hours ago.”

I nodded sagely and walked over to cloud. “This can’t go on forever, can it?” I asked, trying to be reassuring. But from the look on Karl’s face, I’d only succeeded in making their fear worse.

“What if it does?” cloud asked, voice small and hopeless. I looked out at the waters surrounding us and bit my lip contemplatively. Could this go on forever? Admittedly, it was starting to eat away at me. But at the very least I seemed to be keeping my composure, which was more than could be said for Raven or Karl. I didn’t, and still don’t blame them for what happened, though. I know I’m a bit more relaxed than most, especially when it comes to stressful situations.

“We’ll make it back eventually,” I assured Karl. I didn’t really have any idea of how true this was, but I’m an optimist, and it wouldn’t do anyone any good to cause Karl to worry more than they already were. Karl closed clouds eyes and took a deep breath in, and stared out unhappily into the blue. “Let me drive a bit,” I offered. They nodded and slid out of the driver’s seat onto the floor.

I sat down in the seat and turned the ignition key, and a strange feeling came over me, like removing a weight I didn’t know was there. The crushing feeling of nothingness that had been slowly creeping over me lightened, and I felt drastically more cheery. That’s not to say the heavy feeling was gone entirely, but it was considerably less, which was a relief.

I slowly moved the boat forward again, acutely aware of the gaping blue sky above me. It was bright and sunny, but had a darkness to it, like it was going to open up and swallow us in its lengths. But there didn’t seem to be anything I could do- it certainly didn’t seem like a better idea to jump into the water, although I did consider it. So I kept pushing on, driving the boat for what I assume to be several hours, although I have never really had a good sense of time.

I can’t tell you how long it had been when I saw the beginning of something begin to take shape on the horizon. I admit, I was a bit worried some massive wave was coming for us, or a giant, sentient raincloud. The idea seems silly now, but I was in the middle of some great magic thing, of that I have no doubt. There’s no other explanation for it; there are no stretches of water near Seattle that are this large, and the Pacific Ocean is only accessible through canals which are never wide enough that you can’t see the shore.

The thing that I was beginning to see was thankfully, land. I am not ashamed to admit I let out a loud sigh of relief when I realized what it was. Real, normal land, covered in pine trees and the signs of human life: roads and houses dotting the shoreline and telephone poles poking up above it all. It wasn’t Seattle, but at least it wasn’t endless water.

It was then that Karl stood and came over to me, looking incredibly relieved. “I have service again!” cloud told me giddily. I pulled out my own phone, having not even thought to check it, and sure enough, I had cell. Also, about a million unread messages, which I had no doubt would be a massive headache for me later, when I had the time to check them. That time was, however, decidedly not right then.

And then I noticed the time.

According to my phone, it was nearly 4pm on December 24th. We had left on the 23rd, and even disregarding the fact that there was no way we’d spent that long on the water, there hadn’t been a night. It had been bright and sunny the whole time- but come to think of it, the sun hadn’t moved like it should’ve. None of the encounter before this had really shaken me, but this? It was definite proof that something supernatural had happened to us, and I wasn’t sure I liked that very much.

We did eventually find our way back to Seattle, discovering in the process that our trip had taken us across the Sound to the city of Bremerton. I am not familiar with the geography around Washington, but from what Karl and Raven told me, there was no way it could have taken us this long to get here. This was proven when we made it back in under an hour.

The next few days are a blur in my mind. We went back to Karl and Raven’s house, and none of us had the energy to cook dinner, so we just ordered takeout. I went back into the guest bedroom to check on my things, forgetting momentarily about the blue, cloud-covered walls. I know I froze in the doorway when I saw them, and Karl would later tell me they found me collapsed on the ground, mumbling something about ‘the vast.’ All I remember is a sensation of falling, farther than I should have been able to, and then nothing.

I did end up going to my family’s Christmas party, although I felt distant and I think they must have assumed I was drunk, since they didn’t make too much of an effort to disturb me from my thoughts. Afterwards, my parents gave me a lecture on how I ‘wasn’t the child they remembered’ and how they ‘knew I could do better.’ It didn’t really bother me, since the alternative was telling them what happened and probably making them think I was crazy

I went home that weekend and assured my coworkers that my trip had gone well, despite how it had definitely not. I would later hear that Karl and Raven moved away from Seattle, to the middle of Illinois, I think it was. I could see their reasoning; landlocked, with enough trees to block out the sky. California suits me just fine, but I admit I’ve considered moving out near them. Maybe I will, if the proximity to the coast ever gets too much.

ARCHIVIST

Statement ends. There were not many official records to check that could prove the validity of Mx. Jones’s statement. However, I have had Sasha attempt to contact Karl and Raven Smith, and she has been successful. They confirmed that the encounter Mx. Jones declined to make a statement, and did not seem interested in assisting us with follow-up. Given that there were multiple witnesses, I suppose this cannot be dismissed as a hallucination or a dream. Additionally, the descriptions of falling, mentions of ‘the vast,’ and the sky seeming to swallow people whole do seem eerily similar to several prior statements. However, given the fact that it is impossible to prove that this encounter ever occurred, I am inclined to disbelieve it. End recording. [CLICK]

read this on ao3

tagslist: @felicityphoenix5 @zombiecleo @l-art-stuff-l @darubyprincxx @demon-follower

also tagging @the-magnus-institute

[the-magnus-institute]

Bells - Statement 20170630

Statement of Dominica Smith, regarding her godmother and her religion. Statement given on the 30th of June, 2017. Included with original statement was enclosed a sharp, white feather and two printed images of two hands.

I want to start this out by saying that she isn’t actually my godmother. I have to say this every time I talk about her, which I’ll admit, isn’t that often, but I am very adamant about people knowing that I am not religious. I didn’t even have a baptism, thank you very much.

It’s kind of complicated, and honestly I am not entirely sure, come to think of it now. Last time I asked my mother she said Godmother was Grandma’s sister, I think. She helped Mum a lot when I was little, and so got the honorary title of Godmother. She is the sweetest person I’ve ever met, she knows languages I can’t even pronounce, gets on with anyone, and makes the best apple turnovers.

And I think she wasn’t always Catholic. She married Godfather and converted for him. Grandma said it was quite the shock, to see a woman who studied theology and specifically Christianity through and through pick up a new faith. And to me, it was strange to hear that such an ardently Christian woman had once been agnostic.

She was surprisingly good at being religious. Better than most of them, I’ll be honest. She went to church each Sunday, and sometimes I went with her, when I was staying at her house through the summer. I dangled my feet in the pews and watched her pray, watched her clutch her aging hands together, and always got the feeling that this was a game to her. Have you ever played a board game with someone who had read the rules like– well, excuse the joke– like they were scripture and knew them from heart? Those types always take great pleasure in winning too. She was like that.

She said grace, she went to mass, loved her neighbours, all that. And it will be no surprise to you that when the first symptoms of dementia crept up, she prayed twice as hard.

Godfather had passed long ago, and I was the only family she had in town, so bringing her to live with me was natural. I loved her like she had been my mother, and I was more than glad to care for her. The idea of sending her to some elders’ facility was something I wouldn’t even entertain.

I helped her move in, we decorated her room with dried herbs and old pictures, but she insisted something was off. We sat on her bed with our chins in our palms and thought long and hard about it. I think it was the wallpaper, or the curtains, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter. We put up the wallpaper, hung the curtains and from that day on it was her house too.

There were difficulties, of course there were. I had been taking the night shift before Godmother moved in, but to be able to efficiently care for her I had to switch. And I won’t lie, coming home starving and having to sit through grace before a meal was excruciating. But going on walks with her on the weekends and feeding ducks in the park made it worth the irritation.

I would wake up twenty minutes before her, count out her pills, and make sure there was a hot pot of water for her to make tea in. She was always very particular about it and insisted on doing it by herself. At least until she had an accident and got a good deal of boiling water on herself. Accidents. There were a lot of them and they got more frequent as time passed. First slipping, stuttering, spacing out. Then bathroom related ones. Then one day I couldn’t find her, only the door ajar. It was fine in the end, she had only wandered a few streets up East. I still tried to keep the door shut after that.

Years passed, and she got worse. You know, when you read about it, watch movies about it, it never quite gets through. Even here, in writing, I cannot convey the pain I felt. There is no way to describe the slow descent, the hope we felt on better days and the despair we did on worse ones. And really, the worst part is that it took years. When it flashes on the movie screen in a well edited montage, it doesn’t really sink in. But this person who I deeply loved was slowly dying, and even though I knew it would happen, I could not stop it, only hand her over to Death. Or the Lord, I suppose. That always made me feel slightly better.

She would repeat morning prayers and insist on going to Sunday mass, even though it was a Tuesday. There was a sinking pit in my stomach, the first time she asked for Godfather. I sat down next to her and asked her where she thought he was. “On a business trip,” she said, I think. I just nodded and told her she was right. And surprisingly, that was one of the very few times I remember her asking about him. She didn’t speak much towards the end.

But her thing, her thing, was angels. Each morning I’d walk in, draw her curtains open, help her dress, and ask how she had slept through the night. Sometimes she’d call me by my mother’s name, sometimes by her sister’s. But always, and I mean always, she would say that “the angels” had visited her.

This was interesting to me, and usually my one chance of having a conversation with her during breakfast, so I often posed questions to her. I never believed that Gabriel or whichever one was actually visiting her, but it made us both happy to hear her talk with such mirth, so I encouraged her to keep having conversation with her angels. I thought they were just dreams, or hallucinations, and she wasn’t hurting anyone or herself, you must understand.

She started to get cranky when she lost sleep, so we implemented afternoon naps. She told me with a dazed grin that she really liked those, because it meant she got to have afternoon tea with her angels. I just smiled and tucked her into bed. To think I left her alone in her room each day…

It happened when I accidentally left my phone in her room, and realised halfway through her nap that I was expecting a workplace call. I had been working from home at the time, and my computer was at the mechanic, so I did what meetings I could from my phone and felt awful for not attending the rest. But everyone at work was very understanding about our situation, and my real concern wasn’t missing the call. I was waking her up.

If I didn’t let her wake up on her own, she would often become disoriented and panicked. And it had recently gotten a lot more difficult to calm her down. There was a faint jingling coming from her room, and I thought that the phone had just rung. So as quietly as I could, I hurried in.

It was looming above her. It was looming, or floating, or bending, or– I don’t know. I can’t know. But it had a face, at least one, or a hole in my vision in the shape of it. And it was less than a centimetre away from my Godmother.

She, in her ramblings, had said the angels had the faces of handsome young men and pearly hair, maybe wings made of cardboard, I think? I– It had none of that. It– you’re going to think I’m fucking with you, but I swear, it was entirely made out of eyeballs. And gold. And feathered wings with claws at the ends, thousands of clawed fingers, in fact maybe it had claws instead of feathers. I– it might have been nails. And I could feel the space it occupied staring at her. It was too bright.

I don’t know which of my braincells thought that attacking it would be a good idea. But there I was, leaping to tackle the thing. It had halos, or teeth, or maybe spines wrapped into a loop and it sent sharp pain shooting across my palms. I tried to kick it, maybe even bite it? And then came the sound of bells.

It was so loud that I fell to the floor. No, I threw myself onto the floor and scrambled to cover my ears. And it just rang and rang and bellowed as it throned over my Godmother. And she slept right through it.

I woke up on that floor next to her, laying on my back. And I would have dismissed it all as a nervous breakdown or a dream, if it wasn’t for the scars still bleeding on my hands, and a single, large, white feather on Godmother’s forehead. She just told me she had had a wonderful chat with her angels, and although slightly shellshocked, I put on a pot of tea. It just seemed like the right thing to do, and I tried to forget about the accident the best I could.

I think her being gone is why I came to talk about it. Why I feel like I can finally talk about it. You see, she never took kindly to her angels being talked badly about. And each time I tried to bring it up, she got upset. I couldn’t do that to either of us.

The… angel accident was two months ago, and she died last week. She wouldn’t wake up when I went into her room, I checked her pulse, and she was gone. She’s buried in the church cemetery. The grieving isn’t easy, even though you’d think I would have gotten a headstart on it.

You won’t believe me, that’s fine. But I did bring you the feather from that morning, and I let your assistant take an image of my hands, just in case you want to at least try.

I don’t go to church, especially not after all this, so I have no priest to confess this to. I think this is as good of a place as any: I wholeheartedly hope that my Godmother is in Hell right now. Because if Heaven is full of those things, I dare not imagine what they are doing to her.

[the-magnus-institute]

Pinch - Statement 20141210

Statement of Abby-Lynn Grace regarding her experiences with an anomalous mirror. Statement recorded by the Usher Foundation, directly from subject, October 12th, 2014. Statement transcribed on 24th of March, 2019.

—

[Statement Begins.]

My mama’s always called me a bit vain. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve liked to look at myself— in spoons, in windows, in the bathroom mirror. My brothers used to tell me to get out of the shower when we were school-age. I’d just turn the water on and let it run and run while I sat on the counter and preened.

It wasn’t always self-indulgent. Sometimes it was like a– a compulsion, I think Frankie called it. That’s my husband, Frankie. He’s always been real good about keeping my head on right, God bless him. He’d come in sometimes, find me cryin’ in front of it. If you look at yourself long enough in the mirror, things start to warp, look all out of sorts. Your face stops lookin’ like a face and starts lookin’ like a problem.

This all started a few months back. That’s why I’m here. Frankie’s been worried, says I haven’t seemed myself lately. To be honest, I haven’t felt it, either. I think… Now, this sounds silly, but I know you all hear all manner of silly things, so I’ll come on out and say it. I think it’s the mirror’s fault. No– I know it is. I know it’s that mirror’s fault.

Me and Frankie got married in April– you see this ring? He bought it himself, I told him not to get one this big, but he insisted. I’ll get him somethin’ real nice soon, make him treat himself. Anyhow, we moved into my granddaddy’s old place. It’s small, but it’s real nice, especially in the evenings. All the lightning bugs and the crickets come out, you can sit on the porch swing and listen to the whipporwill. We had fun paintin’ all the walls bright colors, plantin’ trees out front, diggin up Granddaddy’s old garden beds. We even cleared out his old attic, made it into a nice guest room, just in case, you know. It gets awful hot up there, we’ll have to keep company strictly to the fall and winter [laughter].

But, ah. The attic is where I found it.

It’s this big ol’ mirror. Taller than I am, wider than I am, too, though I’ll outgrow it soon enough if June Harris keeps makin’ lemon bars for the church potlucks. It’s got this pretty gold border, all swirls and roses. Frankie said it was gaudy, but Frankie gets the basement for his model trains, so I got the mirror in our closet. I keep thinkin’ about what might have happened, if I’d just taken it to the Goodwill, left it on the street, smashed it to bits and buried it.

But I didn’t. I used it to get my face beat in the mornings– before church, before my shift at the Piggly Wiggly, takin’ all my makeup off at night before bed. Sometimes, I’d see somethin’ out of the corner of my eye in the mirror, but my imagination’s always run a bit wild, and so do the cats, so I didn’t think anything of it.

It hung there for weeks, until they turned into months. I noticed– well, no, that’s not quite right. It was Frankie who noticed. He told me I was lookin’ in the mirror too much, that he was worried I was havin’ one of my moments. That’s what we call them– my moments. When I look at myself too much, and it makes me miss church and meals. I’ve got help for them, so I told him he was bein’ overprotective, and that I was fine.

But then I started noticing, too. I’d be talkin’ on the phone– you know how people walk around when they use the phone?– and I’d end up smack in front of that mirror again. It’s not like it’s easy to get to, either, it’s in a closet I get to through the master bathroom. Two doors, and I’d breeze by both of them like they were nothing. 

I’d clean, and there I’d be, wipin’ down the mirror like it wasn’t already shining. Sitting in front of it after I was done beatin’ my face up pretty, just staring. If I stared for long enough, it felt like I would fall right through.

I started doing odd things. I’d eat in front of it, when Frankie was out of the house, then when he was in the house. He noticed– I told him to mind his own. I’ve been awful to Frankie, he’s been onto this thing since the beginning, but I only just– 

[Soft breathing, sniffling]

Anyhow. I’m fine, put that away. I’m fine. 

It was a couple weeks ago, I think. Right after Suzanna’s baptism. I went into the closet at night, and I just sat right down on the floor in front of it.

At first, it was just like normal. I looked like me, a bit more tired, a bit less sunburned, but I was me.

I kept lookin, and it started to do that funny optical illusion. My nose started lookin’ a little too big, my eyebrows started seemin’ all wampus. I started pushin’ and prodding at my face, and… it stuck.

Look, here, my nose. It used to be crooked right here, and now it’s straight as an arrow. The mirror did that. My eyebrows are thinner, my lips are bigger. I was ecstatic; Kathy Lee spent three grand on her nosejob, and I’d just gotten one for dirt cheap. Cheaper, even. 

Frankie looked at me a little weird, that next morning, but I was over the moon. I’d go into the closet, push and poke, and come out a little more perfect than I had before. It got to be that I couldn’t go an hour before lookin’ at myself, making sure it’d stuck, that I looked alright. 

Then, about a week ago, I had one of my moments. 

I woke up, and I could tell it was gonna be a rough day. Frankie was already off to work at the power plant; he leaves early on Wednesdays. I didn’t bother makin’ myself pretty. I put on Frankie’s old sweatpants and my college hoodie– they’re my favorites for when I have my moments. They hide me away in folds and bags, and Frankie knows it’s my outfit for bad days, so we usually cuddle up on the easy chair and watch whatever’s on.

But the mirror was close, and I wanted to see if it worked on all of me. I wouldn’t have done it except for that I’d been cryin’, and I was all puffy, and nothin’ felt right.

It was hangin’ there, same as ever. I lifted up my shirt, sucked in my stomach, and… it stuck. No battlin’ with crunches, nothing. I turned, and it’d really stuck. That’s when things started goin’ wrong.

I started small. Just little pinches, like sculpting clay. Tuckin’ things in, pokin, lifting. I didn’t want Frankie to notice anything too different– he knows me, he’d notice if I suddenly looked like a Wal-Mart Megan Fox. I started to get frustrated; I pinched harder. My left leg wouldn’t match my right, I had to make ‘em even. I got so mad, I…

Lord, help me. I scrubbed my hands over my face. I didn’t mean to, it was just habit.

I screamed when I opened my eyes back up.

I looked like I’d melted. My nose was stickin’ straight up, my cheeks were dripping like candle wax. My eyes… You know when little boys get mad, and they pull their bottom eyelid down? Like that, but stuck, and I reached up, and that’s what they felt like, too. 

My heart was fixin’ to burst. I tried my best to fix it– I got out my phone, looked for a photo of myself. I tried to put everything back right, set my face back, but I’ve never been a very good artist. I look off. Like a twin, or a sister.

I went to bed early. When Frankie came in, I told him not to turn the lights on, that I felt sick. He believed me. 

He screamed, the next morning. He thought a stranger had snuck into his bed. I had to talk to get him to believe it was me. I told him everything– he broke the mirror. He wants to take me in to a doctor, one of those psychiatrists. Told me it’s for the best, that I need to talk to someone professional. Lord knows we don’t have the money to burn on useless things like that.

That’s why I’m here. I figure… you all have heard all manner of odd things. Surely I’m not crazy. 

[Cell phone buzzing]

Oh– that’s Frankie. I’m supposed to meet him for dinner. I’m trying to get out more.

Don’t tell him this, but… I’m not proud of this. I couldn’t take the chance. I have to be able to fix myself, somehow.

I stole a broken piece. It’s fitted into this compact blush. I need to fix it– I’m gonna. 

It can’t hurt, right?

[Statement ends.]

[the-magnus-institute]

Recording produced on the 23rd of October, 2022 by Archival Assistant Noctua.

Warning: If you are a twin, PLEASE take care when reading this!

Statement of Juno Russel, regarding the replacement of their twin sister, Charlotte Russel.

Statement taken February 21th, 2015 at The Usher Foundation, Washington DC

Yeah, I know this sounds weird and unrealistic as hell, but please, hear me out.

Charlotte and I, we were the twins who always looked near identical. We weren't COMPLETELY identical, like I was shorter, she had a thinner face, ect. But there were ALWAYS adults that could just never tell us apart, no matter how long they've known us.

This nightmare started when Charlotte started dating her fucking boyfriend, John.

He never sat right with me, even from day one. John started at school back in mid-November, and from day one had a thing for Charlotte. And for some reason, she had a thing for him back, which was VERY out of character for her. That wasn't the only weird thing about this situation. Every time I try to picture John, I see nothing. All I see is a vague humanoid shape in the back of my mind, which is NOT normal for someone you see every day. I don't even think he has a last name, just John.

I thought that was really fucking weird, and I told Charlotte as such, but she just blew me off and said I was just biased since I wasn't really attracted to guys.

Anyways those two started dating, things changed. I never really saw Charlotte as often. She always sat with him at lunch, was always on dates, and just in general not in the house as often.

Then two days ago, on the 19th, John invited Charlotte over to his house for the night, and that's when it all went to shit.

I immediately told Charlotte "no, don’t do it" but she told me I couldn't tell her what to do. I told her that if I couldn't get her to decline, that she should at least text me when she got there. She agreed, and went to go find John.

And that was the last time I saw her. Well, not technically, but I'll get to that.

Anyways, I went home, and waited for the text. It should have only been 30 minutes TOPS, but then an hour passed. Then two. Then three. I was getting very nervous by this time, and then my phone vibrated. Charlotte finally texted me HOURS LATER. But the text I received was the furthest from ANYTHING my sister would write.

Charlotte’s texting style has always been lowercase and full words, with an unintentional type here and there. The only texting acronym she’s ever used is “lmao.” This text? Near illegible. What was sent could probably not even be considered English: “im @ J’s. ttyl b.” Then I thought she did it just to fuck with me, that she was still pissed that I didn’t want her to go. Looking back, I should have known something was terribly, horribly wrong.

I spent the rest of the night doing what I always did on a Thursday night: homework, dinner, ect. I never got another text from Charlotte before I went to sleep that night.

I woke up feeling something was “off.” I couldn't place it, so I just went to school like normal. I waited for Charlotte at the front gate to our school building, but at three minutes till homeroom, I gave up.

Charlotte still wasn’t there when the bell rang. Our teacher, Ms. Jones, started calling role, and when she got to “Charlotte Russel” the door opened, and in walked somebody I had never met before, but felt like I should have. “Sorry, Ms. J, time just slipped away from me this morning.” Ms. Jones' next words will haunt me for the rest of my life: “It’s okay, Charlotte, just don’t let it happen again.” The girl sat where my Charlotte always sat, and everything sunk in all at once. That girl was supposed to be my sister.

My Charlotte had semi-curly light brown hair that went about mid back and dressed like a twelve year old boy. She had glasses too, brown plastic frames that were rectangle-ovalish, But this one? This girl, this not-Charlotte, I guess. looked NOTHING like the person I grew up with. She was a natural blond, with pin-straight hair almost hitting her ass. And there were no glasses in sight. And her clothes? Probably cost more than our RENT.

The rest of the morning I tried my very very best to avoid not-Charlotte as much as I could. I succeeded. Until lunch. I went to our normal table and started eating, and not two minutes later she appeared in the lunchroom. Everyone acted like they knew her, which was really odd, because I was pretty sure none of us had seen her before that morning. We locked eyes, and I felt my stomach drop as she made her way to where I was sitting.

Those next moments were probably the worst five minutes of my life. Not-Charlotte said things, things that only my Charlotte would know, things nobody else knew. When I asked her what sick game she was playing, her exact words were, “Ever since I got here this morning from John’s house, you’ve been treating me like I’m a complete stranger. What did I do wrong?”

And that was it. That was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. I packed up my things as quickly as possible, grateful I never actually used my locker, and got the fuck out of there.

I got home in record time, thanking every deity out there that my parents weren’t home. I ran around the house, trying to find every family photo we owned, seeing if I was somehow the crazy person.

Every photo I found was the same: my mother, my father, a brown-haired child, and a blond. Picture after picture depicted the same, and I was slowly losing it. Until I opened my polaroid shoebox. Where picture after picture was of the familiar dumbass I grew up with. I broke down right then and there, grateful that my Charlotte wasn’t just an illusion, and confused why these polaroids were the only proof.

I stayed in my room the rest of the day. At about 4pm I heard the front door open and close, then the door to Charlotte’s room. I stayed completely silent, not wanting to draw attention to that thing that replaced my sister. Then my parents called us to dinner, and I had no choice but to interact with it.

I observed my parents during dinner, seeing if they noticed not-Charlotte. They didn’t. They interacted with it that same way they always had with Charlotte. And I think that's what scared me the most; my parents treating it like it like it was their daughter.

And that was the last meal I will ever share with them.

That night I packed up my backpack with all the essentials, waited until I thought everyone was asleep, and got the fuck out of there.

And now I’m here, in Washington DC, giving my statement to a bunch of stuffy academics who may or may not believe me.

I hope you’re happy.

Archivist notes: attached to the statement are two photographs: one obviously printed at a drugstore, the other a polaroid. They look to have been taken just moments apart, but there is one major difference between the two. The polaroid depicts two teenagers, obviously twins, both smiling, the photo as clear as a polaroid can be. The drugstore photo, however, depicts two wildly different people, without context you would never guess that they were siblings. The different person in the photo looks blurry, almost like it was a bad photoshop job.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Out of all of the 15 Powers, The Stranger has always been the one that has affected me the most. When I was younger, I was DEATHLY afraid of mannequins, taxidermy, ect. When I was 8 - 9, I had a dream about mirrors and didn’t look in a single one until I was around 11 - 12.

I’m not as afraid of these things now as I was earlier in life, but I still haven’t looked in a mirror the same way again. And full taxidermy can not, under ANY circumstances, be in a full environment behind glass. It can be just the critter, no landscape, but add in a backdrop, foliage, ect? It's too Real™ and I have to nope the Fuck out of there.

And to make matters worse, I am a twin. My biggest fear is that one day I will wake up and they are no longer the person I shared a room with for 17 years. 

So I wrote this fic. It hurt like a motherfucker to write, but I did it.

[the-magnus-institute]

Einstand - Statement 18490312

Statement of Maria Vaszoly Né, regarding her involvement in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-49, and the oddities encountered there. Original statement written sometime in the second half of 1849, and delivered to London via mail. Statement retrieved from the personal letter collection of Jonah Magnus. Printed transcript made in 1997.

---

Dearest Jonah.

I pray to the Lord above that this letter finds you well, and that it finds you at all. I also pray that in the slim chance that it does, you may be able to read it, for tremblements haunt my limbs. The winter is only starting to soften, and I am not welcome anywhere, not anymore.

There is no explanation in Heaven or Hell for what happened to me, for it has been such a series of preposterous happenings that not even the greatest hero would believe them. So I came to you, Jonah. You have a mind like no other, I have read your letters to my husband and back, it can wrap around such wondrous and complicated things. There must be something in that library of yours that speaks of the horrors I have endured. I desperately need you to tell me I am anything but alone in my experiences. I would rather be told I am mad, than that I am the one lone soul who must live through this.

I can barely recall how it started. The human mind is such a strange thing, isn’t it? It can get used to any kind of torture, if only it exists in it for long enough. It fools you to keep you alive, a horrific thing the mind is.

I had no part in starting the revolutions last year. Especially if the habsburgs ask. None at all, in fact I believed it was better to let things remain as they have been. You know I do not fancy the habsburgs, no more than anyone on these streets, but were we really in a state to complain? We weren’t. And regardless, we did. I had no part, but you know how the youth of Pesth is, they read their poems and sing their speeches, climb up onto monuments and struggle until the whole city can see them. And when you do see them, you fall enamoured and amazed, and the next thing you know, you’re being dragged along, shouting and chanting.

It was through several instances of being dragged along, that I ended up part of the regiment, which was set on claiming the Castle of Buda as our own once again. They were rather unfortunate instances, I can see that clearly now, I can see what a fool I had been, to let camaraderie and pretty words of heroism tame me. I left Gergely and I left our son, in favour of being able to say that I had taken part in our liberation.

The revolution was not meant for me. Stubbornly, I ignored this, and forced myself into the crowd, into front rows, into fights, until suddenly I had known the revolution better than the gentle life I had led before. I haven’t worn a dress in months, and it must have been even longer since I cared for corsets. For a short while I bandaged my chest and hollered like men do; it made little difference. I was someone willing to fight, and they needed as many hands as they could get, even if they were what they called “lady hands”, soft and manicured. They did not stay like that for long. This was how- in spite of my womanhood- I became a son of the revolution, through blood and sweat.

The siege of Buda was a long fight, going on for sixteen miserable days and fifteen miserable nights. The castle is a poor old thing, it had already been crumbling away in the last century. It is in no shape for war, but the habsburgs had nested in there. You are familiar with vermin making their home wherever they can, yes? They stuck their weapons out through the keyholes and rained bullets onto us. Many great men met their death on their way up the mountain.

It was us, at the bottom of the hill, and the habsburgs, in the castle we had built. It is our castle and it broke my heart to see it bombarded by our own cannons, to see it shot at by our own sons. The enemy was resilient, but they were the ones locked in there, trapped, like rats in a cage, and so we pushed forward. It was at an excruciatingly slow pace, but we pushed and we persevered. We crushed what we could, and the glorious flag had once again flown over Buda Castle.

We took prisoners too. You and I both know, Jonah, that in war all is fair, and you know me, and so you know I was itching to throw them off the mountain and see how far they would roll in one piece. But the biggest, dumbest one in our squadron said not to, so I didn’t. It didn’t stop me from eyeing those devils, though. 

They were all habsburg boys, little kids with golden hair and big doe eyes. They could have been mine, or yours, they looked like they had never held a sword in their lives. I sat and watched as they squirmed in the corner, and I smoked. It was the last of good tobacco I had, the last of what I had sneaked from Gergely’s bureau. I know you have always told him it was poison for the lungs, and the only reason I tried it was because I had expected a bullet to pierce through me, or a sword to pin me to the ground.

There was one of them, one of the boys, who I could not dismiss as easily, though. He looked like the rest, golden and azure, with an upturned nose, freckles, and ears like shovels on either side of his head. But there was a singe in the air around him, and I swear to the Lord above I heard the sound of bells jingling in the distance each time I looked at him. I felt the Devil tingling up my spine, and I could not but notice how his comrades cowered from him as well. Unlike them, he sat completely still, and stared. He stared. And stared, until I could not but bark at him.

“What’s your name, boy?” Was what I must have asked. “My name’s Maximillian.” Was what he replied, and he must have done so in butchered Hungarian, because I remember spitting and repeating the phrase back and forth until he got it right. I have gone soft, Jonah.

I should have known there was a reason why they sent schoolboys into our arms. And I did suspect, although my guess was kingdoms away from the grotesque truth. I had speculated that it was to remind the soldiers of their own youngling; it certainly worked on me. I had to kick myself several times, to treat the lad worse, to treat him like I would never even dream of treating my own son. I should have been wiser. But you, of all people, surely know how quick and easy power gets to people’s heads. 

He kept talking, quieter and quieter, and now I see that he was steering me closer to himself with the volume of his voice, like a sick beast. And closer I crept, like a fool. And then he asked me whether I knew what einstand was.

I spat again and said of course I did, it was what their hog kind lived off of, that and blasphemous, inscenstious, damend relations. Einstand is– I’ll write it here for you, Jonah, before I run out of ink, for you are too just a westerner– a simple rule of nature. Whoever is stronger, gets to take what he wants from the weak.

I said that, flicked him on the forehead so it hurt, and took his hat from him. It was a shitty little hat, coming apart in all its corners. It was strange, the quiet that suddenly overcame him and his peers. Like the quiet before a storm.

And he asked again. Do I know what einstand means.

I looked down at him again, and the boy was gone. I found myself staring back. He took my face, Jonah. There is no better way of saying it. 

She had my eyes, my brown hair, even my clothes, I could even see the chain of the necklace I keep my son’s hair in. I felt frozen into place, and could only watch as she easily undid the knots, and freed the soldier boys. She then grinned, took my pipe from me, waltzed out of the room, and the kids followed after her, like a pod of golden ducklings. She walked like me too, like she was used to much lighter boots.

I do not know what she did, Jonah. I do not know what she told my comrades to make them hate me so. They came for me with swords and guns, and shouted until I ran. I ran out of the newly claimed castle, and I ran until I could no more.

There, I saw her in the crowd. It was undoubtedly her, I swear it to you and to the Lord both, Jonah. I jumped at her, held my knife, and I slashed. My teeth still hurt from gritting them so tight. 

I saw my own face spurt blood, turn pale, cough, wheeze, and die. It is not something that any human should see. It is not something we are meant to remember. I felt my own hands clutch at my wrists and good God, I feel that I will be sick again. I feel as if I had died the moment I killed her, and now I must continue life as a corpse.

None of my comrades dare talk to me. The habsburgs won’t talk to me. Gergely won’t talk to me. He has taken our son to his mother’s estate. I do know that I am in no place to ask for favours, but if you can find the time, I beg you, talk some sense into him.

I’ve been spending my time on the streets, doing what I can, living from day to day. There have been moments, evil, cowardice moments, when I thought of delivering death unto myself. The city is forever cold, and people are cruel to a woman with no husband and no comrades. And the Danube is always right there, so easy to drown in.

But Jonah, it’s not something I can do.

You couldn’t either, if you had seen your own face distort upon death.

[the-magnus-institute]

thanks for making this blog! im going to write a statement for my creative writing class final project, so i need plenty of examples of other people doing the same to get inspiration - and when the project has been graded i'll be able to submit it to you :D

Of course! Encouraging fan creation and interaction was exactly why I made this blog, and I am so so glad it's getting traction already. Good luck on your assignment, and I look forward to reading your statement!

[the-magnus-institute]

Snowfall - Statement 20201122

Statement of Alice Whittaker, regarding a sudden snowstorm. Original statement given November 22, 2020. Recording produced on the 23rd of October, 2022 by Archival Assistant Noctua.

[the-magnus-institute]

Snowfall - Statement 20201122

Statement of Alice Whittaker, regarding a sudden snowstorm. Original statement given November 22, 2020.

---

It just seemed like a regular day, y'know? Woke up, headed outside, there’s untouched snow on the ground, and it’s simply peaceful. There wasn’t much for me to do, you know how it’s been lately, so I thought I would head into the woods for the day. I’ve been doing that a lot recently, just enjoying myself in the wilderness. See, I haven’t been able to keep in touch with many of my friends, but being in the woods was… it’s hard to put into words, “peaceful” isn’t quite the right one. “Fulfilling”, maybe? 

Oh, I’m getting off topic. Anyways, I went into the woods, intent on exploring my usual haunts and excited about seeing them in the snow. There’s just something magical about fresh powder coating everything, the silence filling the air and the cold on your skin. I love just wandering through and seeing everything just slightly changed, looking at familiar trees, with the snow adding something more.

I… I don’t know how long I was out there, actually. I vaguely noticed when it started snowing again, filed it away in the back of my mind, but I was more focused on my trek through the woods and taking it all in. At some point though, it started falling faster and heavier, and when I couldn’t see my footprints after backtracking I knew I was in trouble. The forest I was in wasn’t small by any means, it’s a good 30 miles in any direction, and I didn’t know where I was. I just had to pick a direction and hope. So, I did.

It was difficult to tell what I was doing at some points. The wind had picked up, tossing flurries in my face and I had to constantly squint. It would blow so hard that I’d stumble backwards into a tree that I had passed, and I had to concentrate solely on putting one foot in front of the other. Time passed, and I had no way of telling it, other from the soreness of my feet and the stinging in my eyes. 

At some point I noticed that I wasn’t seeing any trees anymore. Eddies of snow were curling across my vision, so I couldn’t tell if I was just missing them or if I’d stumbled onto a neighbor’s field. I was exhausted, though, and I just stopped where I was. The storm could take me for all I cared, I couldn’t do it anymore. 

And then the wind and flurries were gone. All I saw around me was snow. Pristine, untouched, for miles and miles. Which simply wasn’t possible. None of my neighbors had a field this size. There was just a flat surface to the horizon. Not a single tree in sight, not a single plant breaking the surface, not even my footsteps that I had just taken.

I was alone.

I’ll admit, I was scared. Completely. I had been walking for what must have been hours through a storm, and now it was unnaturally gone. There weren’t any signs of civilization. There was just me, and the snow. I had a gut feeling that staying and hoping someone would appear was useless, and trying to find someone myself was equally useless. Whatever had happened, whatever was playing tricks on me, I just had to wait and see what would happen next.

I think it really hit me then. Just how alone I was. Not just being away from other people, but how far I was from everything in the world- no, in the universe. We don’t understand much of our world, do we? So how can we expect to know the universe? We’re ants, scurrying over the playground of giants. That’s what I had stumbled into. I was just an ant, cowering in the middle of everything. Insignificant in the course of the universe.

And I was strangely alright with that. I’d been scared just moments before, but it just felt right all of a sudden. Like a switch had flipped. I was tiny, but so was everything else. Just a constant variable in the equation now. Where before the endless snow had been frightening, I now took comfort from it. 

I stood there for a long time. The vast emptiness made me feel strangely at home. The endlessness of it all was like nothing I’d seen before, quiet overtaking everything and leaving nothing in its wake. The sky was dull gray, but open and welcoming nonetheless. I lost myself in the view, feeling that it was mine, and mine alone.

I don’t remember much after that. The wind picked up again, snow eddied from the ground, and when it cleared I was back in the woods. I recognized the old split oak I was next to as being a few minutes from my family’s house, and just went home. The rest of my day has seemed normal. Although, I don’t know how I found this website, but it felt right to write everything down. There should be some sort of record of my experience.

I think I’m going to go back to the woods today. I have a feeling I’ll learn something new.

[the-magnus-institute]

What’s the best way to deliver statements to you? I may have one I wouldn’t mind you holding on to…

You may use the submit button on the desktop site and follow the instructions there (this method is preferred, but only for aesthetic reasons). You can also post your statement onto your own blog and tag the us in the notes, if that's more convenient. We are excitedly awaiting your statement!

[the-magnus-institute]

OH i thought this was something that's been here for a long time nsnfejjd yeah i was just thinking bc I've been interested in recording fan statements for a bit and i love the collection here! Do you know if one would need to ask the author for permission to record?

If you are going to post it then most definitely! I ask for permission before reblogging, since I often change the description, add statement numbers, excetera, and also since fan-written statements can be very personal to the writer.

Also on that note, if you do record some and post, I would love to reblog them! We could be like "statement xyz, recorded by xyz, assistant archivist at the Magnus Institute, London". I think it'd be super fun to get more people involved in this blog.

[the-magnus-institute]

Archives!!! Do people ever record statements you collect here, for archivist enrichment? And if so is there a tag for that?

The archives are currently lacking the equipment, manpower, and time needed to produce audio recordings of statements. Not enthusiasm though, and if we do get to recording audio, we will announce a tag for it.

[the-magnus-institute]

Yup! All submissions are welcome, or you can also tag us if you post a statement to your own blog and want us to reblog it!

I’m curious… Have you or anyone else ever tried writing their own statement?

When I listen to this episode, and Dominic talks about how he could fall into the night sky page of Ex Altiora, I have an idea to write my own statement about that. I LOVE the Vast so much but especially the episodes in space! 🌌

I've seen plenty of original statements as fics on ao3, can't remember the tag (probably 'original statement' or something) but you're welcome to search there. Plenty have also been posted on tumblr too over the years

Also! I just saw that someone decided to start compiling people's original statements recently!

The blog is called @the-magnus-institute . Looks like a cool project you're welcome to submit something there and help them create a compilation!

Does anyone else know of any other original statement projects? Sound off in the comments!

[the-magnus-institute]

Untitled - Statement 20140710

Statement of Keenan Waterbury, regarding an encounter with Margaret Fairchild. Original statement written on October 7th 2014.

Gooood morning TMA fans I understand we're in a bit of a content drought rn so have a statement I wrote regarding some of my TMA Ocs which if it gets any interest I can build on!! By all shapes and gadgets it should logically be able to fit into the canon without even bothering the main cast and I'm proud of myself for building something that manages to fit so well- Anyway it's a bit of a read but I thought I'd share and if you take the time to read it know I love and appreciate you so much 💙

.

Statement of Keenan Waterbury taken October 7th 2014 regarding an encounter with an old friend

I suppose I should start from the beginning. I was born and raised in East London, though not in any of the nicer parts. It wasn't the best, but my family made do. It was just me and my mom then, my dad having left soon after my birth. It wasn't easy, being a person of colour as well as gay, and in a poor neighborhood. I was the brunt of a lot of jokes. It was like that for a long time, you know? The bullying, the cruelty, people are wicked when they want to be. I almost killed myself more than once. But I didn't. I didn't have any friends for most of my school career. It was something I was accustomed to, and being alone became what I was good at, in a way. I never thought I'd have friends growing up, I just thought I'd go on for the rest of my life alone until I met a nice man and settled down and became happy. 

Then, secondary school rolled around, and that's when I first met Margaret. Met is a vague term, I only actually talked to her when I was in my eleventh year, but that's besides the point. Margaret Winters was the same age as me, and new to the area. She was strange by all means. She had white-blonde hair, and eyes so pale of a blue, that for a long time I thought she was blind. Her skin was so pale, that if she didn't move so much, I'd have thought she was dead. Honestly I thought a lot of things about Margaret before I met her, purely because she was such an anomaly. Seeing as I spent most of my time alone I did a lot of people watching, and Margaret's interactions with everyone completely mystified me. She was always wearing clothes too big for her and putting on makeup that made her look like she was some old waitress from the 60's, all red lips and purple eyeliner. Despite this, all the boys flocked to her, even the most popular ones begged to be her date but she always declined. She'd look at them over the top of whatever big book she was reading, and bat her long eyelashes, and then say something in that quiet voice of hers that I couldn't quite hear, and the boys would turn on their heels and walk out, no questions asked. It was incredible.  

When Margaret sat beside me in Biology class, it was totally unprompted. We had never talked before, and I knew for a fact she had friends in that class that she would've much rather have sat with. Yet, she pulled up a chair beside me, and asked "Mind if I sit here?" And I, by some strange force of will, said yes. Would it be wrong to say I really cared about her, after what I saw her do? I mean, she was my best friend. We kept talking after that encounter, and then she invited me to sit with her and her girlfriends at lunch, and it was… well it was really nice. I hadn't had much human interaction other than being kicked around. To make actual friends was a new experience to me, but knowing people actually cared about me was such a wonderful feeling. I got to know Margaret more, and she told me how much she hated how the guys objectified her, and how she would never love anyone. She wished they’d all just die and leave her be. On the days we would lay in the back football field during break, she'd tell me that the clouds were the ones she loved, and they loved her too. She had sketchbooks full of drawings of clouds, and she had photos and posters all around her room, detailing the different types of clouds and what they meant. She knew them all too, off by heart, and she'd spend hours talking to me about them. It was a little weird, sure, but I wasn't one to judge. I still don't understand why she chose to be my friend, or how it happened so quickly, but I'll always be grateful for her no matter what, she saved my life. That didn't mean I didn't think she was weird sometimes though. There were days when there were no clouds, that she would look up and squint at the sky, like there was something wrong. And there was the time that a storm rolled in, and thick fog flowed into town. I asked her what she thought of the fog, thinking they were some type of cloud. She honest to god spat on the ground, and hissed something along the lines that the fog was a mimic of clouds. She said the word fog with such hatred that I didn't dare bring it up again. 

We promised we would keep talking after school ended, and we tried, we really did. It didn't turn out though, Margaret went to some big college in Paris to keep learning all about the clouds she loved so much. I didn't have the money to become anything spectacular, so I took a job as a grocer and went on my way. I didn't think about Margaret when I booked the trip to Paris, I swear. We hadn't talked in years, and I was just going there to clear my mind in all honesty. My boyfriend at the time, Xavier, had just died in a motorcycle accident and I was pretty shaken up. I couldn't walk around the house without breaking into tears, so I resolved to get myself out of there and into a new setting. I feel kind of embarrassed writing it here, but I decided to go to Paris because of their bakeries. I've always been a sucker for baked goods, and the idea of eating my sadness away in piles of pastries sounded pretty alright by my standards. I booked a cheap hotel so that I could spend all my money on the aforementioned pastries, and flew over to Paris for a well earned break. And that was that, I spent my days visiting cafés, eating, and feeling more at peace than I had in weeks. It was really nice, not having to worry about anything and just being able to be somewhere where people didn't feel the need to tell me they were sorry for my loss every time I saw them. I was completely and utterly unknown, back in my environment, a place of loneliness that seemed almost normal in it's own quiet little way. I didn't think about Margaret until my fourth day in Paris. I was leaving my hotel, and was just down the street from it, when I saw a familiar shock of white-blonde hair turn the corner. It wasn't long and wispy like it had been before, rather it had been cut to shoulder length and now floated around her head in an airy mess. I didn't see her face, and I hadn't even thought of her in years, but somehow I knew deep within that who I was seeing was Margaret. It was such a strange sense of knowing, like a force drawing me towards her… So I followed her. Not to be creepy, that wasn't my intent, I just wanted to make sure it was her, to see what she was up to, and maybe to talk to her if I felt like it. I didn't notice anything strange then, but looking back on it, her movements were oddly smooth, and I can't remember if her feet actually touched the ground.

When I noticed someone else was following her, I had been walking behind her for about four blocks or so trying to work up the courage to say something. The man was big, like really big, a huge hulking figure that was bald and had ears that stuck out too far, and shifty eyes that made me uncomfortable. He eyed me as he passed, before stepping ahead of me and behind Margaret. He followed her for about 3 more blocks with me behind him before Margaret made a sharp turn down an alley that I hadn't noticed before and the man turned to follow. I didn't know what to do, if this was some sort of drug deal or what, so I tried to lean as casually as I could against the wall beside the alley, listening to what was happening. The people that walked by seemed to ignore me and the alley completely, so that gave me some confidence. I listened in, and for a while it sounded like an oddly normal conversation to be having in a dingy alley. Pleasantries like "How's the family?” and "Enjoying the weather?" though they were laced with sarcasm. This all placated me into some sense of false security, so I made the bold decision of poking my head around the corner to see what was going on. Margaret stood at the back of the dead end alley, her arms crossed. I could tell it was her now, her purple eyeliner a dead giveaway. The massive man blocked her exit, dwarfing her in his huge shadow, and I suddenly got the feeling I shouldn't be seeing this. "Enough of this chatter, Fairchild, you know the deal. My folks want you dead. I'm here to make sure of that." The man snarled, and I swear that his ears started to sharpen like those of a bat. I stepped into the alley in that moment, thinking that I had to stop this man, I had to do something. It was a rash, stupid decision, but I think it gave Margaret the time she needed. I shouted something like, "Hey!" Which probably wasn't that intimidating but it did make the guy turn his head, showing me his sharp yellow eyes. They bore into me with such precision that I stumbled back a little. The man then spat at me, "Piss off, rat". I remember him saying that, because not only was it so absurd given te situation, but it was also the last thing he said.

Margaret was fast. Her arm shot up so quickly I barely saw it happen. She grabbed the man by the throat, and squeezed. It was gradual at first, the man began gasping and clawing at her hand, but then his hands faded and I realized he was disappearing. I cannot stress this enough, it wasn't fog he was fading into. He was becoming white, fluffy, patches of clouds right in front of my eyes. A smile wider than it should've been was stretched across Margaret's face, and as I looked at her pale blue eyes I saw clouds reflected in them making them seem like an endless sky. I don't know when the man fully disappeared, but I do know I couldn't run as much as I wanted to. When he was gone, she took a step forward and looked almost sad. Almost. "You fell back into them." She said in that soft voice of hers, and I suddenly managed to stumble backwards. "I tried to save you, I really did, but I should've known." She was walking towards me now. So I ran. I turned and ran, and didn't stop running until I was back in my hotel, curled on the floor, gasping for breath. I left the next day and vowed to never go back to Paris. I don't want to go back. Not if she's there, doing whatever cruelties she's involved in. I sometimes think I should've called the police, but I know they wouldn't believe me. Even if they did, they wouldn't have been able to stop her, and I know that for a fact. I hate to think she's out there still, looking for me, looking for others. Is it selfish, to think she's still looking for me? I don't know, I just hope she never finds me.

That was two months ago, and I still live alone. My mom knew someone who used to work at this place, told me it was somewhere good to talk about my experiences. So here I am. I hope that you read this, and have some idea of what it means. Some idea of what to do about her. I can't help it. I keep looking to the sky. I keep thinking I see faces screaming in the clouds. I can't help but feel that one day that's going to be me too. I hope it won't be me too.

[the-magnus-institute]

Untitled - Statement 20152102

Statement of Juno Russel, regarding the replacement of their twin sister, Charlotte Russel. Statement taken directly from subject on February 21th, 2015 at The Usher Foundation, Washington DC. Statement transcribed on 12th of September, 2017

Warning: If you are a twin, PLEASE take care when reading this!

Statement of Juno Russel, regarding the replacement of their twin sister, Charlotte Russel.

Statement taken February 21th, 2015 at The Usher Foundation, Washington DC

Yeah, I know this sounds weird and unrealistic as hell, but please, hear me out.

Charlotte and I, we were the twins who always looked near identical. We weren't COMPLETELY identical, like I was shorter, she had a thinner face, ect. But there were ALWAYS adults that could just never tell us apart, no matter how long they've known us.

This nightmare started when Charlotte started dating her fucking boyfriend, John.

He never sat right with me, even from day one. John started at school back in mid-November, and from day one had a thing for Charlotte. And for some reason, she had a thing for him back, which was VERY out of character for her. That wasn't the only weird thing about this situation. Every time I try to picture John, I see nothing. All I see is a vague humanoid shape in the back of my mind, which is NOT normal for someone you see every day. I don't even think he has a last name, just John.

I thought that was really fucking weird, and I told Charlotte as such, but she just blew me off and said I was just biased since I wasn't really attracted to guys.

Anyways those two started dating, things changed. I never really saw Charlotte as often. She always sat with him at lunch, was always on dates, and just in general not in the house as often.

Then two days ago, on the 19th, John invited Charlotte over to his house for the night, and that's when it all went to shit.

I immediately told Charlotte "no, don’t do it" but she told me I couldn't tell her what to do. I told her that if I couldn't get her to decline, that she should at least text me when she got there. She agreed, and went to go find John.

And that was the last time I saw her. Well, not technically, but I'll get to that.

Anyways, I went home, and waited for the text. It should have only been 30 minutes TOPS, but then an hour passed. Then two. Then three. I was getting very nervous by this time, and then my phone vibrated. Charlotte finally texted me HOURS LATER. But the text I received was the furthest from ANYTHING my sister would write.

Charlotte’s texting style has always been lowercase and full words, with an unintentional type here and there. The only texting acronym she’s ever used is “lmao.” This text? Near illegible. What was sent could probably not even be considered English: “im @ J’s. ttyl b.” Then I thought she did it just to fuck with me, that she was still pissed that I didn’t want her to go. Looking back, I should have known something was terribly, horribly wrong.

I spent the rest of the night doing what I always did on a Thursday night: homework, dinner, ect. I never got another text from Charlotte before I went to sleep that night.

I woke up feeling something was “off.” I couldn't place it, so I just went to school like normal. I waited for Charlotte at the front gate to our school building, but at three minutes till homeroom, I gave up.

Charlotte still wasn’t there when the bell rang. Our teacher, Ms. Jones, started calling role, and when she got to “Charlotte Russel” the door opened, and in walked somebody I had never met before, but felt like I should have. “Sorry, Ms. J, time just slipped away from me this morning.” Ms. Jones' next words will haunt me for the rest of my life: “It’s okay, Charlotte, just don’t let it happen again.” The girl sat where my Charlotte always sat, and everything sunk in all at once. That girl was supposed to be my sister.

My Charlotte had semi-curly light brown hair that went about mid back and dressed like a twelve year old boy. She had glasses too, brown plastic frames that were rectangle-ovalish, But this one? This girl, this not-Charlotte, I guess. looked NOTHING like the person I grew up with. She was a natural blond, with pin-straight hair almost hitting her ass. And there were no glasses in sight. And her clothes? Probably cost more than our RENT.

The rest of the morning I tried my very very best to avoid not-Charlotte as much as I could. I succeeded. Until lunch. I went to our normal table and started eating, and not two minutes later she appeared in the lunchroom. Everyone acted like they knew her, which was really odd, because I was pretty sure none of us had seen her before that morning. We locked eyes, and I felt my stomach drop as she made her way to where I was sitting.

Those next moments were probably the worst five minutes of my life. Not-Charlotte said things, things that only my Charlotte would know, things nobody else knew. When I asked her what sick game she was playing, her exact words were, “Ever since I got here this morning from John’s house, you’ve been treating me like I’m a complete stranger. What did I do wrong?”

And that was it. That was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. I packed up my things as quickly as possible, grateful I never actually used my locker, and got the fuck out of there.

I got home in record time, thanking every deity out there that my parents weren’t home. I ran around the house, trying to find every family photo we owned, seeing if I was somehow the crazy person.

Every photo I found was the same: my mother, my father, a brown-haired child, and a blond. Picture after picture depicted the same, and I was slowly losing it. Until I opened my polaroid shoebox. Where picture after picture was of the familiar dumbass I grew up with. I broke down right then and there, grateful that my Charlotte wasn’t just an illusion, and confused why these polaroids were the only proof.

I stayed in my room the rest of the day. At about 4pm I heard the front door open and close, then the door to Charlotte’s room. I stayed completely silent, not wanting to draw attention to that thing that replaced my sister. Then my parents called us to dinner, and I had no choice but to interact with it.

I observed my parents during dinner, seeing if they noticed not-Charlotte. They didn’t. They interacted with it that same way they always had with Charlotte. And I think that's what scared me the most; my parents treating it like it like it was their daughter.

And that was the last meal I will ever share with them.

That night I packed up my backpack with all the essentials, waited until I thought everyone was asleep, and got the fuck out of there.

And now I’m here, in Washington DC, giving my statement to a bunch of stuffy academics who may or may not believe me.

I hope you’re happy.

Archivist notes: attached to the statement are two photographs: one obviously printed at a drugstore, the other a polaroid. They look to have been taken just moments apart, but there is one major difference between the two. The polaroid depicts two teenagers, obviously twins, both smiling, the photo as clear as a polaroid can be. The drugstore photo, however, depicts two wildly different people, without context you would never guess that they were siblings. The different person in the photo looks blurry, almost like it was a bad photoshop job.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Out of all of the 15 Powers, The Stranger has always been the one that has affected me the most. When I was younger, I was DEATHLY afraid of mannequins, taxidermy, ect. When I was 8 - 9, I had a dream about mirrors and didn’t look in a single one until I was around 11 - 12.

I’m not as afraid of these things now as I was earlier in life, but I still haven’t looked in a mirror the same way again. And full taxidermy can not, under ANY circumstances, be in a full environment behind glass. It can be just the critter, no landscape, but add in a backdrop, foliage, ect? It's too Real™ and I have to nope the Fuck out of there.

And to make matters worse, I am a twin. My biggest fear is that one day I will wake up and they are no longer the person I shared a room with for 17 years. 

So I wrote this fic. It hurt like a motherfucker to write, but I did it.

[the-magnus-institute]

Untitled - Statement 20132405

Statement of Zarah Armistead, regarding their work as a field biologist. Original statement given May 24th 2013. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Y'all know how @mr-heavendrops-bastard-version made their own statements for TMA? Yeah, it was fun so I did it too. Here's my statement, completely fictional. I'm obviously not a biologist and Armistead is definitely not my last name. Enjoy! CW: blood, bugs, dirt

[CLICK]

Statement of Zarah Armistead, regarding their work as a field biologist. Original statement given May 24th 2013. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

"Your desk is dirty. I can feel the dust sticking to my skin and clothes. When did you last clean it?

I'll try to bear it for now, just in order to tell you what happened to me. Or "give my statement", as the archivist lady told me. My penmanship is ugly, I know.

I spent 3 years at Reading University studying biology and entomology. The biology part was planned but the entomology wasn't. It's not that I didn't enjoy my specialty, I very much did. But my original plan was to get my degree and work permanently in a lab. Dr. Maria Saar's class is why I decided to go into entomology and field studies.

When I was in my first year of uni, I needed to pick a class for my elective. I spent 3 days deliberating whether I wanted to take Fundamentals of Physics for Medicine or Metabolic Biochemistry, but in the end I settled on Dr. Saar's course - Basics of Entomology. It just felt right in the moment. But God knows I regret it now.

I didn't know much about entomology. Sure, I'd played with bugs as a kid, but they weren't interesting to me as an adult. And yet, that first day I stepped foot into the classroom, everything made sense. Dr. Maria Saar was the kindest woman I'd ever met in my life. She had a warm smile that erased any doubt in my mind about where I was supposed to be. She was short - a bit shorter than me. Short black hair reaching to her shoulders. She said she was from Estonia. She was about 50 but she had such a pep in her step that you'd mistake her for a student. Not threatening in the slightest bit. Dr. Saar told us that she was normally a field researcher but decided to take up a few classes at Reading to fill her time while she found a new group of entomologists to conduct field tests with. With each word she showed off her deep smile lines and I felt the most comforted I have in my whole life.

Basics of Entomology wasn't a hard class, quite the opposite. Most of it was field exercises. Every Tuesday Dr. Saar would round all 16 of us up and we'd leave uni grounds together. We would pile up into a bus that would take us to Nuney Green. We would then pick a random direction, walk in it for 5-10 minutes, choose a spot and set up our equipment. Then for the next roughly 6 hours it was just us, sixteen 19 year olds and one woman in her fifties, crawling around on the ground in search for bugs. Dr. Saar would give us instructions and tell us what to look for as she herself searched for insects. Hours later, we'd march on back to the classroom, carrying containers filled with bugs, covered head to toe in mud and soot, yet beaming with joy.

Whenever we went out Dr. Saar would constantly be on the lookout for her favourite insect - the green rose chafer beetle. Cetonia aurata, or as she called them, "her babies", are a common species in England. They have a green iridescent colouring on their backs and look stunning when the sunlight shines on them. They were always pretty easy to find and when one of us got one we'd hold it up to Dr. Saar and she would smile from ear to ear.

Despite the fact that we all contributed equally when we were out in the field, I felt like Dr. Saar praised my classmates way more than she did me. So I tried harder and harder to please this woman that I really looked up to. I would be entirely focused on bringing as many specimens home as I could and that seemed to make Dr. Saar happy. And I was happy.

Every year I signed up for Dr. Saar's class and so did every single one of my original classmates. It was the sixteen of us with her for 3 consecutive years. We got to know each other very well. We were like family. The class was no longer Basics of Entomology, we'd moved on to harder material. But we were all acing it, despite spending most of our time out in the field. It was something about that big luxurious classroom covered with posters of rose chafer beetles, mayflies, rain worms, locusts and other insects that relaxed us and tuned our senses to Dr. Saar's frequency.

When it came time for our big finals that determined whether we would actually graduate, we studied our heads off for every class except Dr. Saar's. She brought us coffee and food when we had class together and considering we were a bunch of tired uni students cramming desperately for finals, we couldn't have been more grateful. In the end all of us passed. Some with flying colours, some barely skirting by, but we passed. All 16 of us graduated. And as soon as we had left the ceremony, Dr. Saar approached us. She said that she was retiring from teaching and going back into the field. She wanted to offer us all positions on her team. She was practically our mother these last three years, how could we possibly say no?

So we went off and became true field biologists. We were going out with Dr. Saar multiple times a week, all over the country. With each outing we were getting more and more overjoyed to be working with our mentor. She asked us to call her just Maria, but it felt odd to call someone you consider a parent by their first name. Despite that, my previous classmates one by one started calling Dr. Saar "Maria" and I was the last one to still call her "Professor" or "Doctor". And my new coworkers seemed just so much more in their depth when we were outside than I did. But how could that be? We'd all gone on the same exercises, handled the same exact bugs. Yet they seemed much more at home amongst the creepy crawlies we were catching.

In August, the year before last one, on the 18th, we were in New Forest National park, somewhere down around Stag Park. It was late afternoon, but the sun hadn't started setting yet. We had brought with us a big container of sugar water to lure in a larger amount of specimens. Everybody had wandered a little ways away from our initial set up site but we were in shouting distance. I was on my hands and knees, examining a patch of glass when something shiny caught my eye. It was a green rose chafer beetle. Dr. Saar's favourite. I hadn't seen one in months and I was excited to go show it to my mentor. I knew it would make her so happy and she would be proud of me. Then I heard one of my colleagues call out "Maria! I found one of your babies!" I gently scooped up the tiny iridescent invertebrate and hurried off to present it to Dr. Saar before they could. But in my hurry I must have tripped on something. I felt my boot catch on something solid and I lost balance. I fell right onto our sugar water container, knocking it to the ground and spilling its contents.

I must've been unconscious for a few seconds because when I woke up a few people had gathered around me. There was blood on my glasses and dripping down my forehead and nose. I must've hit my head on something on the way down. I sat up and looked down at my shirt and hands. They were covered with a sticky orange substance coated with bugs and dirt. That annoyed me, but I knew I could last a little longer until we were done with specimen collection. The beetle was no longer in my hands and that made me feel terrible. I'd lost one of Dr. Saar's babies. I looked up to talk to her and apologize: "I'm so sorry Professor, I found a green chafer and wanted to show you but I must've tripped on some-" but as soon as my eyes focused on her, my blood ran cold in my veins.

She was covered in beetles. Every inch of her skin. Her hair. Her clothes. Coated in green rose chafers. They were swarming her the same way a bee colony swarms an invader. Rushing over one another, blurring into one large iridescent skittering mass. The only visible part left of her was her eyes, now bloodshot and dark. And she was smiling. I looked around to my friends for help. They were now emerging from the tree line around us. They were in the same state as Dr. Saar was. Covered, head to toe, in iridescent insects. The sunlight of the setting sun hit their bodies in such a way that the reflections made me dizzy. They were moving, unlike the professor. Their limbs seemed out of place and broken, torn out of their sockets or simply ripped off. The beetles wouldn't let the blood flow, they were lapping up the fresh red liquid from the wounds they'd inflicted. I couldn't tear my eyes away from them. Then Dr. Saar spoke.

"Are you alright, Zarah?" she said and her voice buzzed like thousands of insects rubbing their wings against each other. Like it wasn't my mentor speaking, but the beetles were speaking for her. My skin started crawling and so did the bugs on my hands and clothes. I panicked and as the rest of the research team started shambling faster towards me, still encased in a solid layer of colourful chitin, I got up and ran. I ran as fast as possible.

I reached some campsite by the time the sun was dipping below the horizon. There were about a dozen people there who saw me run screaming from the forest, still covered in blood and sugar water. I certainly gave them all a fright, but they were kind to me. They gave me a spare shirt so I wouldn't be covered in sugar and helped me wash my hands. One woman touched me on the shoulder and said "Oh, you've got a beetle on you!". I turned to look and she was holding a green rose chafer in her hands. I think I fainted then. One of the campers dialled 999 and about 20 minutes later I got picked up by the paramedics and taken to A&E. The doctor who looked me over said I had a concussion brought on by the initial fall I had taken while out in the field. The amount of blood I'd lost was large, but not worrying as head wounds tend to bleed a lot. I asked if he could contact Dr. Saar and my team to tell them to pick me up, but he said that there was no such woman in the university records. My coworkers weren't there either. It's like they had disappeared into thin air, like molting insects.

I know why they did it. I know that Dr. Saar loved them more than she loved me. She knew that I wasn't worthy of their love. My classmates knew. The beetles knew. They all knew. That's why they tried to feed me to the rose chafers. But I wasn't close enough to them. And now I will never get the chance to join them again. I know it seems like a horrible thing to say and I feel ashamed to say it out loud, but I wish that they would have taken me with them. We could have been family. Closer than we ever were before. And it's all my fault.

I can't take it anymore. I need to take a shower."

Statement ends.

Despite the heavy similarities to the Prentiss situation we are currently dealing with, I would say that this case is unrelated. The description Mx. Armistead gives of their professor does remind of the way Jane Prentiss described herself in statement #0142302 and the insect infestation is a shared point. However Mx. Armistead says they got injured briefly before their "supernatural" experience so we cannot say for certain if it was real.

Sasha found the records of their admission to Southampton General Hospital on August 18th 2011. They were diagnosed with a minor concussion, suspected to have occurred due to their fall. They had lost a big quantity of blood, but recovered quickly and were discharged the next day.

I did some digging into the staff and courses of Reading University and there has been no teacher under the name of Maria Saar, nor has there ever been a "Basics of Entomology" course, much less from 2008 - 2011 when Mx. Armistead attended.

Martin was able to track them down and contact them, but the only thing they said was that they were "having more nightmares than usual as of late".

End recording.

[CLICK]

[the-magnus-institute]

Pinch - Statement 20141210

Statement of Abby-Lynn Grace regarding her experiences with an anomalous mirror. Statement recorded by the Usher Foundation, directly from subject, October 12th, 2014. Statement transcribed on 24th of March, 2019.

---

[Statement Begins.]

My mama’s always called me a bit vain. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve liked to look at myself— in spoons, in windows, in the bathroom mirror. My brothers used to tell me to get out of the shower when we were school-age. I’d just turn the water on and let it run and run while I sat on the counter and preened.

It wasn’t always self-indulgent. Sometimes it was like a– a compulsion, I think Frankie called it. That’s my husband, Frankie. He’s always been real good about keeping my head on right, God bless him. He’d come in sometimes, find me cryin’ in front of it. If you look at yourself long enough in the mirror, things start to warp, look all out of sorts. Your face stops lookin’ like a face and starts lookin’ like a problem.

This all started a few months back. That’s why I’m here. Frankie’s been worried, says I haven’t seemed myself lately. To be honest, I haven’t felt it, either. I think… Now, this sounds silly, but I know you all hear all manner of silly things, so I’ll come on out and say it. I think it’s the mirror’s fault. No– I know it is. I know it’s that mirror’s fault.

Me and Frankie got married in April– you see this ring? He bought it himself, I told him not to get one this big, but he insisted. I’ll get him somethin’ real nice soon, make him treat himself. Anyhow, we moved into my granddaddy’s old place. It’s small, but it’s real nice, especially in the evenings. All the lightning bugs and the crickets come out, you can sit on the porch swing and listen to the whipporwill. We had fun paintin’ all the walls bright colors, plantin’ trees out front, diggin up Granddaddy’s old garden beds. We even cleared out his old attic, made it into a nice guest room, just in case, you know. It gets awful hot up there, we’ll have to keep company strictly to the fall and winter [laughter].

But, ah. The attic is where I found it.

It’s this big ol’ mirror. Taller than I am, wider than I am, too, though I’ll outgrow it soon enough if June Harris keeps makin’ lemon bars for the church potlucks. It’s got this pretty gold border, all swirls and roses. Frankie said it was gaudy, but Frankie gets the basement for his model trains, so I got the mirror in our closet. I keep thinkin’ about what might have happened, if I’d just taken it to the Goodwill, left it on the street, smashed it to bits and buried it.

But I didn’t. I used it to get my face beat in the mornings– before church, before my shift at the Piggly Wiggly, takin’ all my makeup off at night before bed. Sometimes, I’d see somethin’ out of the corner of my eye in the mirror, but my imagination’s always run a bit wild, and so do the cats, so I didn’t think anything of it.

It hung there for weeks, until they turned into months. I noticed– well, no, that’s not quite right. It was Frankie who noticed. He told me I was lookin’ in the mirror too much, that he was worried I was havin’ one of my moments. That’s what we call them– my moments. When I look at myself too much, and it makes me miss church and meals. I’ve got help for them, so I told him he was bein’ overprotective, and that I was fine.

But then I started noticing, too. I’d be talkin’ on the phone– you know how people walk around when they use the phone?-- and I’d end up smack in front of that mirror again. It’s not like it’s easy to get to, either, it’s in a closet I get to through the master bathroom. Two doors, and I’d breeze by both of them like they were nothing. 

I’d clean, and there I’d be, wipin’ down the mirror like it wasn’t already shining. Sitting in front of it after I was done beatin’ my face up pretty, just staring. If I stared for long enough, it felt like I would fall right through.

I started doing odd things. I’d eat in front of it, when Frankie was out of the house, then when he was in the house. He noticed– I told him to mind his own. I’ve been awful to Frankie, he’s been onto this thing since the beginning, but I only just– 

[Soft breathing, sniffling]

Anyhow. I’m fine, put that away. I’m fine. 

It was a couple weeks ago, I think. Right after Suzanna’s baptism. I went into the closet at night, and I just sat right down on the floor in front of it.

At first, it was just like normal. I looked like me, a bit more tired, a bit less sunburned, but I was me.

I kept lookin, and it started to do that funny optical illusion. My nose started lookin’ a little too big, my eyebrows started seemin’ all wampus. I started pushin’ and prodding at my face, and… it stuck.

Look, here, my nose. It used to be crooked right here, and now it’s straight as an arrow. The mirror did that. My eyebrows are thinner, my lips are bigger. I was ecstatic; Kathy Lee spent three grand on her nosejob, and I’d just gotten one for dirt cheap. Cheaper, even. 

Frankie looked at me a little weird, that next morning, but I was over the moon. I’d go into the closet, push and poke, and come out a little more perfect than I had before. It got to be that I couldn’t go an hour before lookin’ at myself, making sure it’d stuck, that I looked alright. 

Then, about a week ago, I had one of my moments. 

I woke up, and I could tell it was gonna be a rough day. Frankie was already off to work at the power plant; he leaves early on Wednesdays. I didn’t bother makin’ myself pretty. I put on Frankie’s old sweatpants and my college hoodie– they’re my favorites for when I have my moments. They hide me away in folds and bags, and Frankie knows it’s my outfit for bad days, so we usually cuddle up on the easy chair and watch whatever’s on.

But the mirror was close, and I wanted to see if it worked on all of me. I wouldn’t have done it except for that I’d been cryin’, and I was all puffy, and nothin’ felt right.

It was hangin’ there, same as ever. I lifted up my shirt, sucked in my stomach, and… it stuck. No battlin’ with crunches, nothing. I turned, and it’d really stuck. That’s when things started goin’ wrong.

I started small. Just little pinches, like sculpting clay. Tuckin’ things in, pokin, lifting. I didn’t want Frankie to notice anything too different– he knows me, he’d notice if I suddenly looked like a Wal-Mart Megan Fox. I started to get frustrated; I pinched harder. My left leg wouldn’t match my right, I had to make ‘em even. I got so mad, I…

Lord, help me. I scrubbed my hands over my face. I didn’t mean to, it was just habit.

I screamed when I opened my eyes back up.

I looked like I’d melted. My nose was stickin’ straight up, my cheeks were dripping like candle wax. My eyes… You know when little boys get mad, and they pull their bottom eyelid down? Like that, but stuck, and I reached up, and that’s what they felt like, too. 

My heart was fixin’ to burst. I tried my best to fix it– I got out my phone, looked for a photo of myself. I tried to put everything back right, set my face back, but I’ve never been a very good artist. I look off. Like a twin, or a sister.

I went to bed early. When Frankie came in, I told him not to turn the lights on, that I felt sick. He believed me. 

He screamed, the next morning. He thought a stranger had snuck into his bed. I had to talk to get him to believe it was me. I told him everything– he broke the mirror. He wants to take me in to a doctor, one of those psychiatrists. Told me it’s for the best, that I need to talk to someone professional. Lord knows we don’t have the money to burn on useless things like that.

That’s why I’m here. I figure… you all have heard all manner of odd things. Surely I’m not crazy. 

[Cell phone buzzing]

Oh– that’s Frankie. I’m supposed to meet him for dinner. I’m trying to get out more.

Don’t tell him this, but… I’m not proud of this. I couldn’t take the chance. I have to be able to fix myself, somehow.

I stole a broken piece. It’s fitted into this compact blush. I need to fix it– I’m gonna. 

It can’t hurt, right?

[Statement ends.]