My Two Cents: THAT'S NOT MY FACE by Amanda Ruzsa

Although "That's Not My Face" by Amanda Ruzsa is horrifying, it's meant more as a portrait of someone struggling with mental illness than simply another ghost story. And while Ruzsa is not the first to draw such an analogy, through her deft hand and striking imagery, she's able to convey true terror, dismay, and despair that all feel painfully, poignantly true to life.

In "That's Not My Face," April is a young woman haunted by sinister apparitions that appear to her in her own reflection. Through horrific visions that have plagued her since childhood, she's hounded by a version of herself that is diabolical and strange, one that watches her with malicious glee, its face sometimes gruesomely distorted or disfigured. Sometimes it even breaks through into April's physical world, and in a particularly disturbing sequence, it attacks her as a child with a torrent of spiders hatching from nests hidden in her hair.

April has tried to tell her mother about what she sees, and her mother in turn, has brought April to a slew of doctors and specialists who have prescribed medications and therapy meant to convince her the "other April" in the mirror is all inside her mind. Even so, April refuses to believe this, and that conviction is only strengthened as her reflection's assaults grow more brazen, brutal, and frequent, pushing April's already fragile psyche to its ultimate breaking point.

Most unsettling about this tale is not just the realization that for some people suffering from mental illnesses, hallucinations seem very real, but also that the way they feel when those symptoms are controlled by psychiatric medications, the person they become once medicated, is not the "real" them. When the malevolent reflection takes over, April can only watch helplessly as friends and family not only fail to notice the difference, but prefer its feigned "normalcy" over April herself. It's heartbreaking to consider what her mother views as a positive turn in April's behavior, an improvement in her mental illness, is from April's perspective, an emotionally devastating betrayal.

"That's Not My Face" is a short read, clocking in at just under 100 pages. April's loneliness, confusion, and above all, her terror are brought vividly to life in this dark, gripping fable, one in which Ruzsa warns that our own worst enemy is sometimes looking back at us through the mirror, smiling as it patiently waits for its chance to emerge.

"That's Not My Face" is available here.