Eleanor Tadman was happy as a child, as happy as a person could possibly be. Her family was loving and supporting, and she was protected from the truth that the world was in fact far darker than she knew. As she would soon come to realize, childhood was the only time in life one could experience true happiness, when conscience was still untainted by the worst side of the world, when innocence prevented children from realizing the monsters that walked among us looked like us, not like the ones in the movies, and did not wait and hide under our beds before destroying us.

But Eleanor, in her blissful naivety, lived in a world of her own, and had been led to believe imagination and reality were the same thing. That the happy world she had created was the real one, and that nothing could ever harm her, or would want to do so. Above all, she never thought that the thing that would want to harm her most would be herself.

But on her thirteenth birthday, when she still had laughter hanging on her lips from a joke her father had just told, she found out the truth. That the worst monster wasn't under her bed, but inside her head.

Eleanor remembered the mirror – in fact, it was the only thing she could remember vividly. She heard the screams, of course, her mother calling out for her, her father shouting for both, getting up from the table instantly and jumping in front of them to shield them. Then the bullets came from outside the restaurant, shattering not just the window, but Eleanor's world and all the kindness in it.

The bullets pierced through her father and through her mother without any warning, any mercy. Weapons didn't choose to kill, humans did. Eleanor couldn't see their faces, and yet she felt like she would never forget them. From that day on, she would look for the people behind the triggers in every person she met. And even if she didn't find them, she would still see them in everyone. From then on, murder would be the only face she'd recognize. Even in a mirror.

She vaguely remembered looking around, seeing the other clients hiding or running, but all the guns were pointed at her family and her family alone. This was a planned attack, and her father and mother had put themselves in front of her knowing they would die for it. Nobody came to help them, and Eleanor's first instinct was to play dead herself, half out of survival, half because that's how she felt. She closed her eyes and committed murder too, inside her mind, killing all the parts of her that still believed in goodness. Murdering the happy child she had been with no idea of who she would become.

Then the bullets stopped, and the sirens started. People kept screaming, but she was terrifically quiet, as if all sounds in the world had died along hers. She was still holding her parents when she finally dared to open her eyes. She had their blood on her hands and would never be able to clean it. They died so she could live, but after them she never truly did.

The mirror was shattered on the floor around her, broken glass of a broken world. She looked at it and stared. There was someone else in it, someone other than her own reflection. It looked like her, but it couldn't be her, because while Eleanor had tears streaming down her face, the other one had blood dripping down her grin.

That was the first time she saw her. And the last time she saw herself.

author's note.

this was just a small prologue to introduce you to the story and Eleanor's character. First chapter will have the real stuff! (and by real stuff I mean Jonathan Crane and his crazy hotness)

Hope you liked it nonetheless, and please vote and comment if you did, it helps tremendously with inspiration <3

sign-off gif made by -eviesloki