Self... Sacrifice?

[WP] Gods are real, and powered by sacrifice (metaphorical and literal.) You wake up feeling quite bored. So in your mirror, you offer your everything...to yourself. There are unexpected consequences.

*****

I blinked at the screen of my phone. The web novel I was reading, I Sacrificed My Soul to an Ancient Slime and Now I'm the God of This World, was getting really good. But there were no more updates. "Oh no," I said aloud. "My literary crack."

Maybe a midnight snack would make me feel better. I could make ramen and I could crack an egg in it. Sprinkle some dried seaweed on top. Drown the whole thing in soy sauce ...

I ended up making plain toast.

After eating my bread with all the grace of a demon-possessed goose, I walked over to the bathroom from the kitchen and I stared at myself in the mirror. "Huh, my pimples are hardly even visible tonight."

I turned on the lights. "Oh. There you guys are ..."

Japanese writer Haruki Murakami said he once stripped naked in front of a mirror and counted deficiencies. He was sixteen. When he reached 27 flaws, he gave up. Why keep counting? I knew better than to follow in his naked footsteps.

As I stared at myself, however, I couldn't help but think about Devaris the Elder Slime and Kenji from my web novel. "Sacrificing my soul, huh ..."

There wasn't a slime around. Except me, of course. I was sort of a slime. In terms of shape. Why not sacrifice myself to ... myself? "Dear me," I said with a theatrical voice, "I sacrifice myself to ... me!"

My mirror self looked really excited. Then my cat walked in and he just stared at me, unblinking. "No, James, I'm not being weird. What's that? You want a belly rub?"

I reached down to pet him, but he just walked away. "Pain," I said, sitting in the fetal position. James meowed from the hallway. "No," I said. "I'm not being weird. You're the one being weird."

When I got back to bed I checked my phone. I was astonished to see that my web novel still hadn't been updated. If I knew myself right, I would check it twenty more times before going to sleep and I'd be just as astonished each and every time.

There was a spider sitting on my ceiling lamp. It was a round bulb. I wondered whether the spider assumed it was sitting on the sun. Maybe that was a secret desire of every spider. Maybe they all dreamed of sitting on the sun.

My stomach growled. "Hey. I just gave you toast. Knock it off."

It kept growling. "I know you wanted ramen. Me too, belly. Me too."

I looked back up at the lamp and the spider was gone. In a split second my blood was filled with enough adrenaline to outrun an antelope in heat. I'm not scared of spiders. I'm scared of the realization that a spider might currently be inside my clothes. "Wheh! Wheh!"

I did the Murakami and I stripped naked. There was no spider. In fact, it was still on the lamp. It had probably just taken a stroll around what it assumed to be the sun.

Suddenly I saw my reflection in my bedroom mirror. The strange thing was that I didn't have a bedroom mirror. Also, my mirror reflection was wearing clothes.

"You're being weird," said my mirror self. She looked up at the ceiling. "There's a spider. There's one in my room too. I guess our worlds are identical."

I got dressed in a hurry. It was me, bizarrely, so I probably didn't have to feel self-conscious. Or did that actually make it worse? It was me, so I knew exactly what she was thinking.

"Get out of my room! Wait, how did you get here? Get out! Wait, did you climb out of the mirror?"

My mirror self nodded. "I just walked through it. So this is the mirror dimension, huh ..."

She looked around, apparently unimpressed.

"What do you mean?" I said. "This is the real world. You're the one from the mirror dimension or whatever."

"Not from my perspective," she said.

She got me there.

Then it all dawned on me. "Oh! The sacrifice. We sacrificed ourselves to each other."

Mirror me blinked. "Huh? I didn't sacrifice myself."

"... You didn't?"

"No. You sacrificed yourself to me, though."

She seemed awfully nonchalant. "So ... What does that mean?" I said.

She shrugged. "I guess your soul is mine now? Wait. I want to try something."

My mirror self tried to push my bed aside, but it was too heavy. "Some help please?" she said. Together we got my bed out of the way, though I didn't really get why we were doing it. "That's better," she said. She wiped sweat off her forehead. I did the same with mine.

James entered the bedroom. "Me...ow?" He stared at the both of us for a while.

"You're being weird," we told him simultaneously. Then another James walked in.

"Huh," said my mirror self. "I guess he must have followed me here."

The two cats sniffed each other.

"Okay," said mirror me. "Here's what I want to try: I'm going to do some cool moves, and you're going to compliment me. Just say wow that's awesome and how did you do that? and that sort of thing. Okay?"

"You want me to ... praise you?"

She tilted her head from side to side. "I guess? Maybe I'll believe it if it comes from you. From me, I mean. Besides: I own your soul, remember? You pretty much have to do as I say."

"... Are you sure that's how it works?"

"No," she said. "Alright. Check out these moves."

She did some kind of dance, waving her hands as if they were being chased by bees. As she danced, I remembered seeing something like it on YouTube. Oh. It was vaguely inspired by a routine that I'd liked.

"C-Compliments," she said, sweating profusely.

"Oh. Right. That's a ... fine job. Good moves."

"Thanks," she said. "More, please."

She started really getting into it. She had moved on from what she could remember from the routine, apparently, and now she performed some sort of zombie-version of the Charleston. "Wow wow wow!"

Mirror me lost balance and crashed. "Ow," she said. Then she looked up at me. "Did it look cool?"

I cleared my throat. "Uh, yeah. It looked really cool."

She beamed. "I knew it."

My stomach growled again. "That's enough," I said. "Stop complaining."

"Do you want me to make you some ramen?" asked my mirror self.

"Huh? You'd do that for me?"

She smiled. Then she looked awfully guilty all of a sudden. "Truth is, I lied earlier ... I sacrificed myself to you as well."

"Hey," I said. "That's not fair."

"I'm sorry ... It's just, you know. I saw you all naked and I realized I had the upper hand. And I was the one to walk through the mirror, right? I had mirror dibs. Or something. Mirror shotgun." She mimed shooting me with a shotgun. "Poosh," she said.

That did seem like the sort of logic I'd use. "Eh, that's alright. You know, if we make ramen together it's only half the effort."

She nodded her head with excitement. "That's true! Man, that's like a real-life cheat code. Hey. Do you think there's a new chapter of I Sacrificed My Soul to an Ancient Slime and Now I'm the God of This World out by now?"

"Definitely," I replied.

We checked. No updates.

"Pain ..." said my mirror self.

We looked up at the ceiling to confirm the presence of the spider. Good. At least he was still there, hanging out on the sun.

After eating out ramen we talked about life for a bit, then my mirror self grabbed a James and she hopped back into the mirror. I wondered whether she'd grabbed the right one.

"Meow," said James.

"No. You're the one being weird. Okay, I'm the one being weird."

I got back into my bed. It was awkwardly placed. Why did my mirror self have to arrange for a bedroom dance floor? Then I got a little bit annoyed because I realized her bed hadn't moved at all. It wasn't fair.

James hopped onto the bed and he purred. "Do you think there's a new chapter by now?" I asked him.

He said nothing.

"Fine. Keep your secrets."

My phone pinged.

[CHAPTER #347 of I Sacrificed My Soul to an Ancient Slime and Now I'm the God of This World HAS BEEN RELEASED]

"Woo!"

I raised my arms in celebration. "Meow," said James. He was clearly just as excited as me.

Then I thought about mirror me. She was out there. Probably celebrating just like me. I smiled.

I was happy for her.

*****

THE END