The Ghost of a Mirror

Alba Mastromatteo, am696@ukaron.edu 

Aphrodite stared at the mirror, satisfied with the work that she had put in. Her hair was obsessively combed into loose waves that flowed over her back like a man-made waterfall. Her dress was draped carefully over her shoulder‒pinned and pleated in all the right places to create an effortless perfection. It hugged every curve of her body and had a golden hem traveling across every edge, paired with intricately embroidered golden doves that flew across her chest, woven by Athena herself. Her earrings were a string of pearls that complimented her motions as she moved. Satisfied, the goddess of love and beauty snapped her fingers, instilling in herself an air of confidence that radiated around her.

As she readied to go to dinner with the rest of the gods, she noticed a small wrinkle towards the bottom of her dress. Her eyebrow twitched in annoyance. She snapped her fingers quickly and steamed out the crease. Again, Aphrodite was pleased and continued her way out of her room. Stepping through the door frame, she entered a grand hallway built of white marble. The walls were covered in intricate tapestries that hung above the doors, illustrating the stories of the gods through the ages. As Aphrodite followed the boisterous noise of the other gods in the dinner hall, she passed the history of her world.

One particular tapestry called her attention, as it often did. It was that of her own creation. Aphrodite’s eyes traveled the thread, and she was transported back to her memories of that day. She had been born as the blood of Ouranos, the god of the sky, had rained across the world after his son Cronus had gruesomely cut him to pieces. Aphrodite emerged as a drop of his blood made contact with the seafoam of the bright, blue sea. Floating above the ocean, her beauty shook the earth. It had once seemed so simple to be that beautiful.

Ocean spirits and wind spirits alike circled around her, a strange woman who had floated up from the depths of the sea, basking in the light of her beauty. As she gained consciousness, Aphrodite noted her company. She took pride in their amazement and their inability to look away. She took pride in the way she seemed to hypnotize them. It made her chest warm, introducing her to the world of emotions.

Aphrodite was pulled abruptly from this fond memory. There was a thread loose from her delicate cheekbone. Suddenly, in front of her eyes the tapestry distorted itself. Her face, which moments ago had been symmetrical, had such obvious mistakes. Her left eye was tilted ever so slightly more than the right. Her nostrils were different sizes and there was a tilt in the bridge of her nose that had not been there previously. The spirits that had before indulged in her beauty had twisted expressions almost as if they doubted her authority or even questioned who she was to deserve a welcome so special. She snapped her finger and the thread found its way back into place. Her beauty was restored. All was well in the world. Aphrodite breathed easy once more.

The goddess continued her way towards the feast. She heard the heightened sounds of the lyre and the laughter of the gods as Aphrodite neared the biggest hall in Olympus. Gold began to make a more frequent appearance, trimming the walls and dancing across them in intricate swirls. Statues dedicated to each one of the gods created by the most devout and talented mortals lined the walls. The gods loved to see themselves portrayed in art. Artists throughout the years had thrived off the inspiration and the whispers of the Olympians. Aphrodite, in particular, loved to see sculptures of herself collected in every museum across the globe, the artists’ marble interpretation of her soft beauty from the hard, unforgiving stone.

As Aphrodite sifted through her thoughts, an extremely disturbing one came to mind. There had been a time when a sculptor, who had promised her the most beautiful and respectful statue, had done nothing of the sort. He had scrambled her face as if it had been a jigsaw puzzle and had haphazardly stuck each piece where it did not belong. That image haunted her, the picture of imperfection. She often wondered if that’s how she was perceived. A shiver ran through her body. She wondered silently whether she was— No. She would not say that word in her mind. She would not give it an excuse to come searching for her. Aphrodite had seen it come for many others (multiple names came to mind). She pushed the thought away. Aphrodite had properly punished the man of course, as surely as she had punished many mortal women for the crime of comparing themselves to her. Aphrodite’s reactions were fair. It was disrespectful of them. She was perfect and they were nothing. No one, not the sculptor and not the women, would compare her to anything short of perfection. She felt this with a fire burning in her chest. If any one had the face of perfection it would be her, the goddess of beauty itself.

Aphrodite now neared the dinner hall. Calling a mirror out of thin air, Aphrodite examined her face and her body. Once fixing the trajectory of each eye brow hair and tweaking the exact color of her lips, she was satisfied. Aphrodite dropped the mirror back to where it came from and continued towards the smell of food. The gods’ voices bounded to the halls now that she was closer than ever before. She stepped through the arched opening and expelled her aura of confidence through the room. That is when the rest of the gods turn in acknowledgement.

“Aphrodite!” Zeus’s voice boomed. The king of the gods pushed back his chair slowly and welcomed her into the room. He passed her a chalice full of ambrosia, the nectar of the gods, and, as Aphrodite sipped it, she felt a warm contentment spread throughout her chest. To her dissatisfaction, though, the feeling did not last long. She took another sip. She eyed Zeus from his head to his feet as he stood before her with a smile plastered over his face.

“Take care of yourself,” Aphrodite said in response. Her voice was clipped and firm. This man, the king of Olympus, did not care about his appearance. It struck a chord buried deep in her chest. It reached a fury so deep within her that every time she encountered Zeus she had to compact her feelings into small boxes in the depths of her immortal mind. A man with all the power, all the influence, in the world settled for such mediocrity. She snapped her fingers and suddenly the collar of his shirt was ironed and stood at attention. Zeus’s hair was carefully combed back and his beard was trimmed immaculately.

“Come on Aphrodite. Calm down. There is no need for this,” he said with a laugh as his fingers ran through the previously well-kept hair. He tousled it until it reverted back to its original form.

Aphrodite rolled her eyes as she took another sip of the ambrosia. Setting Zeus out of her mind, she made her way over to the table. Hephaestus pulled out the chair beside him and motioned her to sit. Her husband offered her a tight smile and then returned to his natural quiet state. That left Aphrodite to battle the observation of her mind. Poseidon had crumbs outlining his mouth. She bristled at his incompetence. Aphrodite snapped and they cleared. A strand of Demeter’s hair snaked its way into her face. A snap and it fell into place with the others. Demeter offered Aphrodite a generous smile, but it was not enough to settle her soul. The world around her was a minefield of inadequacies. As she fixed each god to her standards, their faces contorted slightly in confusion, but each settled that they must have imagined the feeling of the magic across their skin.

She snapped once more trying to clear her mind of its obsessive nature. As her thoughts continued to spin, she determined that the fates were not happy with her. That is why she could not clear her mind. Nothing more. They were punishing her for some imagined misdeed that she had committed. Aphrodite was sure she had done nothing wrong. Of course, she had done nothing wrong.

“Aphrodite,” called a voice from beyond her mind, laying just past her reach. “Aphrodite!” the voice repeated this time with concern.

“What?” Aphrodite asked. The word was sharp and accusatory. A face came into view in front of Aphrodite. Athena, the gray-eyed goddess, looked back at her searching her face. Athena had always been observant, observant enough to pierce through the cloak of privacy most thought wrapped their mind, so as she kept searching, Aphrodite was desperate to make her stop. It terrified her most of all to risk the depths of her mind spilt and searched through in the halls of Mount Olympus.

“What?” Aphrodite asked, once more with a blooming frustration.

“Are you okay? You look like you haven’t slept,” Athena responded. Though her face and her voice seemed genuine, there was nothing that convinced Aphrodite that that was true. She wanted to belittle Aphrodite in front of the Olympians. Athena was not cloaking her true intentions as well as she must’ve thought. Athena thought she was so clever. Aphrodite was perfect. Her face was smooth and youthful. Aphrodite did not look tired. She was the goddess that could command love and adoration with a single motion. She looked perfectly rested. How dare Athena question her?

In a fit of internal rage, Aphrodite, not paying attention to the world around her, backhanded her chalice. She watched in slow motion as the ambrosia droplets marred her formerly white dress. Aphrodite let out a scream that sent a wave of silence cutting through the noise. All eyes across the room found her at once. She stood up violently and threw the chair from out behind her. She would not stand for this. She would not stand for Athena’s disrespect. Aphrodite cursed the fates.

“What are you looking at?” she said. Her voice was full of an underlying fury but had not yet reached a scream. Each word lacked sympathy. “You look at me as if you have not made a mistake yourselves.” Aphrodite looked at her family that she had had for eons. They had murdered people, stood at opposite sides of wars, committed such great atrocities for pettiness. She couldn’t believe the judgment they faced her with now. Aphrodite stared at their blank faces. She furrowed her brow then quickly undid it. She would not give a wrinkle the suggestion to form.

Aphrodite turned around suddenly and stormed out of the room. She pictured her hair trailing behind her with the grace of a butterfly floating along the wind and her dress laying the same way against her curves as it had when she had placed them there in front of the mirror until the image was permanently imprinted into her mind. Aphrodite felt tears prickling in the corner of her eyes. She begged them to resist the temptation of gravity. As they disrespectfully rejected her request, Aphrodite felt her eyelashes relenting to curl under the weight of the salty tears. She snapped once more, this one more tense then the rest. Aphrodite had hoped her eyes would listen to her wisdom, but they did not. She could not let that stand. She snapped again. The tears evaporated and her eyelashes curled to frame her beautiful eyes that shifted colors to fit the liking of those observing them.

Aphrodite’s expression was tense, and as she tried to loosen the tension in her face, it spread instead to her shoulders. She let out another scream which she cut short as she felt the presence of the spirits and their wandering eyes around her. No one could see her like this. Aphrodite made it to the door of her room and burst in, comforted by the silence and peace of loneliness. As had been the pattern that day, the pleasant feeling didn’t last long. No, it had been interrupted by Aphrodite’s eyes meeting the vigilant perception of the mirror. She took herself in. The metallic stain of the ambrosia had set into her dress. Her arms had splotches across them. Aphrodite’s hair had settled from its earlier state into a bland and lifeless mess. The volume from earlier that day was gone. Each strand stuck to her scalp with an admirable strength even as she ran her hand through them.

She snapped. Nothing happened. Her dress stayed soaked with the nectar, her arms stayed a patchwork of colors, and her hair seemed to pull closer together to create a matted wreck. Her imperfections were coming back to haunt her. Anything she had ever found wrong with herself peered back at her from the mirror. Aphrodite could not take it anymore. Her hand rose to her head with such speed as she took the tangled mane and ripped it from her head. She let out a cry surprised by her own courage. It felt good. Even as she looked at herself in the mirror, and down at the bloody mess of hair in her hands, she felt good. Next went the dress. She attacked the stain with fervor, an agency rarely felt by a god who had everything at their command. She turned next to her room. Her mattress soon lay on the floor in pieces, and feathers floated around in the air around her.

Even gold was not saved from her savage rampage. Grabbing her headboard, she mimicked the strength of Heracles and split the headboard into pieces. Once it had been beautifully sculpted with angels that floated around the edges, and now each angel lay on the floor in different states of disrepair. Some lay without heads, others without wings, and others still so broken that they were unrecognizable. Aphrodite let out another scream. The sound held so much emotion that she was sure it had been built over the span of her life. It had been there with her in the sea foam of the waves, and had grown within her since then. The ground shook under her feet. Aphrodite wondered if it was a response to the animal-like sound that had ripped itself from her chest and scraped the inside of her throat.

A knock sounded at her door.

“Aphrodite? Is everything okay?” asked Demeter, her sweet voice muffled by the sound of the door. A pang of anxiety hit Aphrodite in the chest. She snapped. Her headboard returned itself to its former glory, her mattress repaired itself and all the feathers gravitated back to its center, new hair grew from her head and fell down her back in a man-made waterfall of waves, the dress recreated and draped itself with effortless perfection.

As Aphrodite approached the door and grasped the handle, she took a deep breath. She opened it and faced Demeter with a smile that would make any mortal fall deeply in love.

“Everything is fine,” Aphrodite said, meeting Demeter’s concerned expression. “Everything is fine.” She repeated it not to reassure herself, but to reassure Demeter. Yes she was sure that was it. She repeated it for Demeter of course. Demeter offered her a concerned smile but nodded. Aphrodite closed her door on the goddess. Demeter’s concern warmed her heart. But she was fine. She was fine. Aphrodite would be fine until the mirror came to haunt her once more.