• Nobody ever saw her. She had never seen her own parent's faces, because they would never look at her. She was also always locked up in the house, her parents made sure of that. The only person who really looked at her was her brother, Tim. He was five years younger than her, but he looked at her and understood her. He also went to a school, outside of the house. Her parents always told her that she was too smart to go to school, but she knew better. She sometimes asked Tim if he knew why. He always smiled at her and said: "Antheis, of course I know why. So do you. You're too good for the world. The kids at school don't deserve you." Antheis, her name, wasn't sure. Though her parents had always kept the windows in the house boarded up, she had seen a picture of the real world and she wondered why her life didn't look like the picture. The picture showed a white farmhouse under a beautiful blue sky and a family standing in front of the house. The two things that struck her when she first found the picture was that this is what the real world looked like. The second thing that struck her was that the family, consisting of two parents and a girl and a boy, was looking at each other.
    Antheis was always curious and always knew exactly what was going on in the house. Almost nothing interested or escaped her, and the only time she ever became interested was once, when her brother came home asking about something called mirores. Or maybe it was called mirroes? No, it was called mirrors. He came home from school and, when eating dinner with the parents in the dining room while Antheis ate in the kitchen, as always, asked his parents "Why don't we have mirrors?" Both parents looked at him in shock, looking towards the doors to the kitchen as if they could see his words seeping through the door and into Antheis’ ears. The mother leaned in and whispered to Tim, “We can’t have mirrors, honey. Because of Antheis. We’ve told you this before, remember? Everything in school that you learn about that we don’t have is because of Antheis.” Though the parents didn’t know, Antheis, who had excellent hearing, heard every word that her mother had said to Tim. Every single painful word. Antheis pretended that she couldn’t hear what her mother had said when dinner was over, but she was secretly planning a way to finally see the world. The mirror conversation was the final straw for her. Her opportunity came when her parents left one night to go to dinner at a friend’s house. As soon as Antheis made sure her parents were gone, she sneaked down to the door to check if it was locked. It was, as it always seemed to be. Then her plan kicked into action. She quickly ran up to her room and began ripping the boards off her windows. First, she was ripping with excitement. A few minutes later, it was because of anger, with her mother’s words, renewed and ringing in her ears. “Because of Antheis.” What was that supposed to mean? She thought angrily. Soon, all the boards were off. With bleeding fingers, she pulled herself up to the window. What she saw shocked her. There were no white farmhouses, no blue skies. Instead, there were large, dark factories clouding the air with putrid gases and smoke. She was shattered. She slid down to the ground and buried her head in her arms. How could this be? She thought. After a few good minutes of crying, she looked up. This is when she was shocked for the second time. There, on the floor, was a piece of glass. That wasn’t what was shocking. It was what she saw in the glass that shocked her. For the first time in her life, she saw her reflection. She blinked hard. Everything seemed right , comparing her face to Tim’s and the back of her mother’s head, except two things. The first was her eyes, instead of round pupils, like her brother’s, hers were slits, like a cat’s. The second shock was her hair. She didn’t remember her mother’s hair moving, crawling like… like… snakes. Suddenly, she felt her fingers stiffening. She looked down and screamed. They were turning into stone! She stared in terror as the stoniness spread to her lower body. At this point, Tim had heard Antheis’ screams and ran into the room. “Antheis?! What’s wrong?” He yelled. Quickly, realization struck Antheis. Tim was… blind. That’s why he could look at her. Soon, the feeling of knowledge passed when she felt familiar stiffening on her neck. She looked down. Her entire body except her head was stone! It quickly spread to her chin, then her ears, soon followed by her forehead. Her mouth was the next to go; then her nose was next. The only thing left of Antheis at that point was her eyes and hair. She took one last glimpse of the world, with tears in her eyes. The last thing she saw was the picture, the one of the perfect world she wanted. Then she turned entirely into stone.

    A few minutes later, two parents ran home. They had been told by the neighbors that someone was screaming in their house and fear overtook them both. Unfortunatley, when they reach home, it was too late. They burst into their daughter’s room, to find their girl turned to stone and their little boy, stumbling around blindly, yelling: “Antheis?! What’s wrong?”

    The End