Twisted Truth and Lonely Lies
Prologue: The Man in the Mirror
To hell with my life.
Seriously, that’s what was going through my head when everything changed. Oh, I suppose you don’t know me yet, so let me tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Cooper Flamel (yes, like the alchemist). I have raven hair, dark gray eyes, and some seriously pale skin. It helps that I live in the northern part of Great Britain, or else I’d burn like a fly on a Zap-Lite. I also have a tendency to wear neutral colors. No idea how that came about, but I suppose it’s because it compliments my extroverted personality. You’d think I’d be completely normal, because of my “background character-ness”, but no.
I just had to be the most sociable in a school of shy people.
You see, I attend Dr. Mariett’s Academy for Higher Intelligence. That’s saying something, considering I can barely figure out quadratic formulae at the age of fifteen. And then there’s the fact that I bunk with a couple of A-grade nerds. Don’t get me wrong or anything, nerds are okay. I just wish they weren’t trying to get me to convert to scientology or atheism every damn second of my waking life. Nerds make up the majority of this place. And then there’s the football team. Not that stupid knockoff of rugby, but real British football.
That team was the reason I died. Well, not really the entire team, but I digress.
It was actually the best forward on the team, Marcus O’Gille. He was, in essence, the average high-school bully; large, with freakish muscles and an absurd amount of cruelty hidden up his ripped sleeves. The only problem was that he didn’t pick on nerds. The nerds outnumbered him fifty-to-one, and if he tried to face them down, they’d just stab him with their LARP staves. So he took the next-best thing.
Me.
See, I was the only “average” at school, so I stuck out like a middle-schooler’s crotch when he stumbles into the girl’s bathroom. And that means I was the prime target.
“Hey, Marcus! Pass the emo over here!”
‘I am not emo. I hope that bastard gets struck by lightning.’
At that moment, however, I couldn’t correct him. I actually had a football flying at my face, and opening my mouth would mean certain dentures. So I took it like a man, and went head-first into the dirt. I stared up at the stormy gray sky. Man, that sky might have described my mood after this encounter, which is:
I don’t give a damn who’s outside, they’re getting wet. Anyone who gets in my way can be smote by God. Marcus strutted up to me, sneering.
“How do you like the facial, emo?”
I spit some mud out of my mouth. Instead of talking to him, I just grasped the closest thing I could find, and pulled down hard.
I think I may have ripped his testicle off.
Marcus screamed in pain as his right hand, Finch, kicked me in the head and ran over to help him. I shook the stars out of my eyes just in time to see Marc and Finch hobbling to the school building. I figured it’d take them a while, since the locker room was a good two hundred meters from administration.
“Oh, you’re gonna get it now, emo,” one of the others snarled. “Do you know how much that’s gonna cost medically?”
“At least his drug dealer gets the better part,” I shot back. “He’ll have to double up on the steroids he’s been taking to make up for the testosterone loss.” I had no idea that was the last thing I would say before I died.
The smallest guy on the team picked up a spare ball, ready to bean me with it. Just then, I saw a spark flickering from cloud to cloud. We hadn’t had a good rain in a while, and the grass was very dry. The dots slowly connected in my head.
Lightning = very hot
Dry grass + very hot lightning = fire
Fire + me = rotisserie human
This lasted all of two seconds, but those two seconds were two too late. I saw, as if in slow motion, the flash of light not ten meters away from my head. The fire spread so quickly, the boys barely knew what was going on before their nerves roasted.
I groaned in pain as the flames licked across my face, slowly burning every nerve. After I while, I just stopped feeling. I closed my eyes, not really ready for death, but knowing that if I embraced it, I could punch it in the face the first chance I got.
“Wake up, idiot!”
I opened my eyes. The mysterious numbness was gone, as was the fire. I got up, sighing in satisfaction as my neck and back popped. Something seemed off…
I realized I was looking at my reflection.
I looked around quickly. I was in my room back at campus. It was cleaner, and didn’t smell like semen from my roommates’ “secret planning time”, but it was my room nevertheless. The voice sounded again.
“Hey, listen!”
‘Damn you Navi. I will never get that sound out of my head.’
I peered into the mirror. The reflection looked back at me. Then, without warning, it got up and walked out of the side of the frame. I raised my eyebrow.
‘Maybe I’m hallucinating. You know, that makes sense. I’ve heard that fires fuck with your brain.’
Another person walked into the frame. He looked a little like Mel Gibson in Hamlet; dark hair, with a thin stubble across his face. He was dressed in a black tunic with canvas pants.
“Hello? Is this thing working?” he asked. I jumped back in shock.
“Uh, who are you?” I asked a little worriedly. “And why did you just steal my reflection?”
“I didn’t steal your reflection, fool. Your reflection just left so I could talk to you for a while.”
“Isn’t that what all neighborhood pedophiles say to children?”
“Shut up.” The man looked at me intently. “I don’t suppose you know who I am?”
The man looked completely foreign. That is, until I spotted a tarnished silver collar around his neck.
‘Hold on. Silver collar, mourning colors, not breathing… DING!’
“You’re Judas Iscariot, aren’t you?” I asked, hopefully confirming my suspicions. “You betrayed Jesus and felt bad about it, so you repented by forging a silver noose with the coins you got from the guards and hanging yourself with it.”
“Finally, someone recognizes me. It took Satan about a hundred and fifty years to figure that out.” He looked me over again. “How do you like being dead?”
“Eh, I’ve had worse.” Judas laughed.
“I like you, kid! You’ve got spunk. So how about we make a little deal?”
Okay, so a convicted criminal who was supposed to be in Hell is asking me to make a bet with him. Now, I have two options. Am I going to do the smart thing and say no, or am I going to be completely predictable and say yes?
“Why not?” I said carelessly. “What’s the worst that could happen?” for once, I actually didn’t regret saying that.
Judas pulled out a deck of cards and shuffled them. “Whoever gets the best hand wins. If you win, I bring you back to life. If you lose, you replace me as Satan’s eternal chew toy.” He dealt the cards. I picked them up apprehensively.
‘Fuck yeah.’ Judas showed me his cards.
“Royal Flush, diamonds,” he said, grinning. I put on a fake “I haz a sad” face, and mournfully looked down at my cards. I then slapped them into his hands.
“Royal Flush, spades. I WIN, BEEYATCH!” I shouted. Judas looked down in disbelief, then turned his eyes to me. I was dancing my happy dance, and that happy dance made me happy as hell. Or not going to hell, in this case.
“You actually won,” Judas said admirably. “I really did pick the right man for the job.” He snapped his fingers, and suddenly the world began to blur. “Oh, before I forget. I’ll bring you back, but it’s not really going to be in this universe. You’re a Player in the Game now.” He began muttering something that had the word "Equestria in it. No idea what that was about. Then i realized what happened.
‘Oh, fuck. I just got double-crossed by a suicidal.’
“Bye-bye! I hope you like ponies, cuz you’re about to see a whole lot of them. Oh, and how do you feel about birds?” Judas asked, waving his blurred hand to me. I felt the air around me shift, knocking me into oblivion. The last thing I saw was a dark blue horse thing with a massive-ass horn.
“FUUUUUUUUUU-” I screamed before passing out again.
I really hate that double-crossing, triple-crossing sonuvabitch.