There was a girl named Bryce and she did bad things. She hurt people because she was angry or scared, sometimes people she cared about and sometimes people she didn't. Sometimes she hurt people who didn't deserve to be hurt, and sometimes she hurt people who deserved to be hurt less than she hurt them. She hurt herself, too, because she knew she did bad things, and she hated herself for it the way she hated other people for the bad things they did.
There was a girl named Bryce and she did bad things and she lived exactly halfway between two temples. One temple was beautiful and well-lit and well-maintained, on top of a hill where it was always sunny, and one temple was ugly and run-down and filthy, and always in shadow because it was in the middle of a swamp where it always rained.
An angel lived in the beautiful temple, and it owned a magic mirror. People sometimes went to the beautiful temple if they wanted to understand themselves better, or if they wanted to become better people. The mirror was magic in that it didn't just show you your reflection, it showed you yourself if you'd lived different lives - if you'd met different people, or done different things, or been born in a different place, or if everything around you was so alien that you couldn't even have imagined it before you looked in the mirror - and yet the people you saw were still you, and seeing them taught you about yourself, and taught you about the different people you could become, and how you could choose.
A demon lived in the ugly temple, and it owned a magic knife. People sometimes went to the ugly temple if they didn't like themselves, or if someone else didn't like them, or if they wanted to change who they were. The knife was magic in that it didn't just cut into physical things, it could cut into metaphysical ones - it could cut into your soul, or your spirit, or your self, or carve out pieces of who you were - and you'd never stop seeing or breathing or thinking, you didn't go away and get replaced by someone else if the knife cut into you, but you weren't the same person afterward.
There was a girl named Bryce and she did bad things and she knew it.
One day she left the village, and went to the beautiful temple. She asked the angel if she could look into its magic mirror, and the angel said yes.
In the mirror, Bryce saw a thousand versions of herself, and some of them were instantly recognizable, and some of them were unimaginably strange, and some of them were both. She saw herself if she were happier, herself if she were sadder, herself if she were angrier, herself if she were wiser, herself if she were more foolish. She saw herself if she lived in simpler times and herself if she lived in more complex ones. She saw herself if she were a hero and herself if she were a villain. They were all her.
Some of the Bryces she saw did bad things like the ones she did. Some of them did worse things. Some of the ones who did the things she did learned to stop. Some of them didn't.
Bryce thanked the angel, and left the temple, and walked back along the road to the village, crying.
She kept crying as she walked out of the village, in the other direction, toward the ugly temple.
She went in to the ugly temple, and told the demon about herself -
- because she did understand herself better -
- what made her angry, and what made her scared, and what made her hurt people when she was angry or scared. She told the demon who she was, and what she was, and what she did, and why she did it. She told the demon about all the bad things she'd ever done, and all the worse things that the other Bryces had ever done, and she told the demon why.
And she said, "Cut it off."