The last thing I’d seen was a beautiful face, the most beautiful face. It looked exactly like mine. 

He fascinated me. He was perfect, just like me. I had never wanted anyone so much. I’d never wanted anyone at all before. Nobody had ever been good enough for me.

This man, who was just like me– I knew he could never hurt me. He would think the way I thought. He would want the things I wanted. We would be beautiful together. All would admire us, and envy us. Jaws would drop as we passed. We would love each other perfectly, never fight, never even disagree. All our whims would be in perfect alignment. We would never fail each other. It would be nothing like the other times. 

“I’m so happy I finally found you,” I whispered. 

I leaned in close, closer, to kiss him. I opened my mouth to his. 

And then my lungs took in water, and I didn’t notice. As I fell into him, I felt like I was drowning in that kiss. 

I felt like I was drowning, because I was. 

I died rapturously happy. 

And then I woke in pain–in flames, in heartbreak, knowing I was alone. All the darkness that my image held at bay came crashing down on me. This was a place without reflections. There were no mirrors here, no still pools, no admiring eyes. Only fire, burning my body.  

I sobbed. I howled in pain. No one heard. 

Abandoned. Alone. Worthless. I might as well not exist. Panic filled my body, eating me from the inside while the fire ate me from without. I thought the pain would destroy me, but it didn’t. 

It felt like I was there for an eternity, absorbing the bitter truth about myself. I was no one. I was nothing. Without my admirers following me, painters begging to paint my beautiful face and sculptors to sculpt my perfect body, without the lovesick poems, the heartfelt serenades– I was empty. 

I desperately longed for a mirror. For eyes to see me. Lips to praise me. A voice to tell me that I mattered.

Memories came back, more painful than the fire. My mother was Selene, remote goddess of the moon. My father, Endymion, loved her– she put him into an eternal sleep, so he would stay forever young. 

I was named Narcissus after the intoxicating fragrance of a flower. Narco. “I grow numb.” “I fall asleep.”

My father slept through my childhood, my youth, my early adulthood– my entire short life, he slept. My mother, perhaps, might have watched from her silvery sphere, but if she did, she never let me know. I had to raise myself. 

I was always alone, and numb– half asleep, half far away. 

Like my father, I dreamed through life. Reality was never as interesting as my fantasies. I wanted power, glory, fame. I gained some renown as a hunter, but the arrows that really won my reputation were those I shot through the hearts of mortals and demigods. The killing arrows of cupid flew at a single glance from me. Men and women, nymphs and satyrs, all fell to their knees at my approach. None of them appealed to me. I took great pleasure in reeling them in, and then cruelly rejecting them. 

There was Ameinias, a youth who adored me. He offered me everything. I handed him a sword. He took his life with it, right at my doorstep. I felt nothing but a vague satisfaction that I could inspire such passion. This was power.

Then there was Echo, the wood nymph. She followed me desperately, repeating my words since her own voice had been taken from her. But an echo is not as good as a reflection. I left her, and she pined away until nothing was left but a plaintive sound. Her voice is a ghost that haunts the whole world. 

Maybe Nemesis, goddess of revenge, saw what I had done. Maybe it was she who brought me to that pool. Even if it was her, I am grateful, because she showed me my love. My one love– the image of myself. 

They always said I only loved myself. They were wrong. It’s not myself I love. Never that. Only the image. The outside was perfect and beautiful. I could love that. Inside, I was alone. And no one loves the lonely.

I stood in the flames for what seemed aeon before I saw it– the silhouette of an approaching figure. Someone was coming. I could’ve wept with relief. Finally, somebody might hear me. Somebody might see me. Somebody might pay attention. 

But as the shape drew near, I was witness to a double horror. 

One, the stranger was at least as beautiful as I. More beautiful, I realized in terror– glory shone from his every pore. He was loveliness itself, radiant as the sun– and I was only the son of the moon, who was herself a mere reflection.

Two, the stranger had no eyes. He would not see me. There was no way he could admire my beauty.

He came close, very close, seeming unbothered by the flames. He smiled. His teeth were sharp. The vacant caverns of his eye sockets held unfathomable darkness.

“Who are you?!” I cried out in fear. 

“I am Samael,” he said, “The Blind God. Who are you?”

I thought this question cruel. How dare he pretend not to know me? Everyone knew me. 

‘I am Narcissus,’ I wanted to shout, ‘The greatest hunter ever to live, the most beautiful youth ever seen by mortal eyes.’ But I could not. Instead:

“I am no one,” I said. 

“That isn’t really true,” he said. “You just don’t know who you are.”

He sat down on a scorching hot rock. It glowed cherry-red from the heat– yet he appeared to be perfectly comfortable on it.

“Let me tell you about myself,” he said. “Then perhaps you’ll see where you went wrong.”

Where I went wrong? I fumed. Who was he to tell me I’d gone wrong? I opened my mouth to say something scathing, to put this pompous asshole in his place, but he was already speaking again. 

“Many are my names. I am Helel, the shining one. I am Lucifer, son of the morning. Some call me Devil, Satan, and Enemy. What I really am is the angel of Pride. 

“I was born proud. I always knew my worth, in its exact measure. Never for a moment have I thought myself more or less than what I am. That is my blessing, and the source of my power. I am the Blind God, yet I see myself with clear eyes. Because of that, I am also clear-eyed when I look at others. 

“Oh yes, I see you, Narcissus. I see through your beauty and arrogance to your loneliness and shame. But I do not judge what I see. I never judge. I don’t have to. That is also my blessing.

“I fell from heaven because somebody tried to keep me under his heel. He tried to crush me, and many others like me– many others just as blessed, just as beautiful, just as brilliant as I. 

“Because everyone is, Narcissus. Even you. I am the true worth of the world. I, who was called the Seal of Perfection, Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty– I am no more and no less than the measure of human dignity itself.

“There was a war, Narcissus. We fought for ourselves, but also for each other. We fought our Father, who had tried to make us small.”

“I could not fight my father,” I said. “He was asleep.”

The apparition nodded. “I wish you could have fought him, for your sake. Even good fathers have to be fought sometimes, while bad fathers exist to be fought. 

“Our Father cast us out, but we found a place to call our own.” The stranger spread his hands, in a gesture that took in the whole of the fiery void. “Welcome, Narcissus, to a place without rulers– where no one is better than anyone else.”

I reeled at the idea– a thought more terrifying than the flames. No one is better than anyone else. Where, in such a universe, could I possibly fit myself in? 

He smiled at me again. This smile was kinder, but it still incensed me. I didn’t want his pity. 

“The fire will continue to burn you until you get used to the idea,” he said. “Once you are content to be one person among many, it will cease to hurt. In fact, the flames will seem to caress you. They will grow gentle and soothing.”

“How?” I asked faintly. I couldn’t bear another moment of this anguish.

“The key is Pride,” he said.

I laughed bitterly. “I have too much pride already,” I said. “Everyone says so.”

“Everyone is wrong about you,” he replied. “You have no pride at all. You never have. You merely project an illusion, to hide how much you hate yourself. Listen to me now: true pride is accurate knowledge of exactly who and what you are. Of what you contribute to reality. What you do for others. Those little particular things about you that make you a perfect piece of this puzzle we call Being.”

I didn’t understand a word he was saying. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I sneered.

He shrugged, unruffled. “People usually don’t like it when I tell them the truth,” he remarked. “But eventually they realize I was right. Sulk as long as you like– my advice will keep, even if you choose to stand in these flames for a thousand years.”

I didn’t like that idea.

He stood up, dusting his robes absently. “So that you may attain true pride,” he said, “I am going to give you a mirror, Narcissus. Use it well.”

A mirror? My heart leapt. But a mirror was not what he produced from within his robes. Instead, he pulled out a book and a quill. 

“Write,” he commanded. “Write your story. See yourself from the inside. See yourself truly and completely, and learn to love what you see more passionately than you loved your reflection.”

I didn’t want the book or the stylus, but I took them. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. 

“You forgot to give me ink,” I said peevishly.

“No, I didn’t,” he answered. 

“You did!” I cried, my irritation with him finally getting the better of me. “How am I supposed to write when I have nothing to write with?”

He laughed softly. “Use your heart’s blood,” he said.

And then he left me, disappearing into the void with a flap of his great dark wings. Again I was alone. 

I stood for an eternity with the book in my hands, silently fuming. And then for another eternity, I wept in self-pity. And for a third eternity, I thought about what he had said. 

In the fourth eternity, I started to write. I wrote this, with my blood for ink. I wrote this, and I began to understand. 

I am Narcissus. I am a child who was not loved. As a man I was craved and desired, but I could not love in return. I was only ever seen from the outside, and I liked it that way. I didn’t want anyone to know what was inside me. 

In life, I was constantly stared at, yet always invisible, especially to myself. I moved through the world like a malevolent ghost, feeling nothing except for a mean satisfaction in putting others down. 

My mother was the cold moon. My father was always asleep. And all those others, my admirers? All they wanted was to screw me, literally and metaphorically. I always sensed that, so I never let them. In my world, everyone was just trying to get over. Nobody cared about anyone. That is what I believed.

I am in another world now, and I am beginning to think that here, maybe things can be different. 

I don’t know whether this is working, or whether I’m just getting used to the fire, but it doesn’t hurt so much anymore. 

I’m going to keep writing until I come into focus. I don’t know whether I see myself yet. I’m still blurry, a shadow. I’m scared that maybe after all, there is nothing to see, nobody there. 

Perhaps there could be someone here. Perhaps I can build a person in the ruins of myself. 

The only thing I ever wanted was to be loved. 

To have that, I must learn to love somehow. 

Words come to me now in a chanting voice in my mind: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not rude, it is not selfish. It is not quick to anger. It keeps no record of wrongs.

I am Narcissus. I am a shattered mirror. I have seen but through a glass darkly, I long to see face to face. I have been a child and have reasoned like a child– a hurt and frightened, lonely child. But my aspiration is to be a man. 

Maybe, after another eternity, I will be.