Anusia Battersby

There were roses in the crevices of her icy toes.

Go and warm up, a lady with large round glasses had said over her clipboard with a shooing gesture.

Violet had padded the crumbling roses through the winding corridors to the room where the lights buzzed, and a frayed-edged Cary Grant smouldered six feet up.

She had dug frantically in a bag for life for fuzzy socks and sighed in relief when she found them.

You're like me.

She had not jumped, curiously.

She had stilled, heel hanging loosely out of the fuzzy sock, but she had not jumped.

She had finished putting her sock on, trembling only a little.

She had turned her head, slowly.

There it was, translucent and abstract and shimmering like a lagoon.

Behind it was a mirror.

There was pale glitter on her cheeks.

She had swallowed.

I'm not a real ghost, she had said calmly.

You're like me, it had insisted.

She had looked down at her hand, painted veins running purple across her skin.

In a gesture like coaxing a wounded fox, she had raised it slowly.

The ghost had done the same.

A mirror image.

The socks were too big.