By that time, the only indication that something was off about my image emerged when I detected a ripple, and then, as if I was gazing into a force field instead of at an image surface, I stared into the black room of the bathroom, hard blinking. I attributed it to fatigue, that exhaustion resulting from the prolonged aftermath of a tiring night of unwinding following a frustrating night of sleep. Deep within, a cold unease spread.
It started small. My reflection smiled slower than I did, almost reluctantly. If I made my hand come to my face, its motion lagged. To begin, I told myself that it was all caused by a psychosomatic disorder. After all, how could a reflection behave independently? But things escalated quickly.
Second, the next morning I immediately rose, moved to the bed approached the mirror, then to my cheek, and exerted pressure on the face to determine the location. Right in front of my counterpart’s iris, in the plane of view, there it was, going through glass, a miniature chip. I stood up and attempted to grab it but my fingertip struck a perfectly smooth surface. The crack was only inside the mirror.
I tried to ignore it. I avoided looking directly at my reflection. Every time, I saw it, the fissure had expanded. It encircled the glass like a wound and it shattered my perception of the world into a million pieces. Worse, the skin of the specular reflection appeared to droop and its features to distend as if something were decaying under the surface.
By the end of the week, I could not look in the mirror. My own eyes looked in its dead reflection, having sunk into pits of despair, and its skin was a ghostly grey. Its mouth twitched when I wasn’t moving. I swear I heard it address my name, as a voice at the back of my neck in the night. “Emma…”
Sleep became impossible. I could still repeat the sound of the murmuring of the whisper each time I closed my eyes. I walled off all the mirrors in the house, a futile attempt to avoid the subject on the other side. But mirrors are also omnipresent–on shop windows, puddles, and even of the surface gloss on newly polished kettles. And no matter how much I wished it not to happen, I could not help but see my reflection.
One night, I woke to a noise. It was faint, like fingernails tapping on the glass. I froze in bed, my heart pounding. The sound came from the bathroom. By desperate urge, I got out of bed and walked through the hallway. The tapping grew louder, more insistent.
When I reached the bathroom door, I hesitated. My trembling hand hovered over the doorknob. The tapping stopped.
“Emma…’ came the whisper, hoarse and haunting.
I swung the door open. The image of the mirror was flipped, and in it, there was the grin of my image. Its teeth were yellowed and cracked; its gums blackened. The glass had cracked, its spiderwebs extending across the image of the body not mirroring my movements any longer. It generated a hand movement, and the hand came into contact with the front surface of the glass.
And then it pushed.
The mirror jutted out, and the glass bent as if pulling a thin sheet of plastic. I stumbled back, my breath caught in my throat. A hand appeared from the surface−gray, mottled, and the fingers, which resembled claws. I screamed and ran, slamming the door behind me. I [had] the pleasure of listening to it beating against the other side and the sound of shattering glass pervading throughout the building.
I didn’t sleep that night. By morning, the house was eerily quiet. I seized the kitchen knife in my palm and took steps towards the bathroom, compelled to make the choice. The mirror was intact, but my reflection was gone. However, an empty frame existed on that spot, as if the mirror had torn a hole in the world.
I should have left the house. I should have burned it down. But curiosity is a cruel master. In the end, I checked again in the mirror. The reflection returned, but it wasn’t mine. It was. The thing— its festering and grotesque face molded grotesquely into a mockery of my image. The object stared fixedly at me, with unreadable eyes, its mouth opening and closing, but having no sound. I did not see it, but I felt it. Stereocilia cold fear cascaded through my ossia, satisfying me.
Suddenly, the lights flickered. Air thickened and an unpleasant odor hung in the background. The sounds of the monster were again loud and becoming louder until they could no longer be escaped.
“Let me in,” it said.
I backed away, but it was too late. The mirror shattered, shards of glass exploding outward. Its body felt the flesh of the entity touch it, cool and putrid, the body decaying underneath. Its movements were stiff and jerking as if controlled by a puppet through twisted strings.
I ran, but the thing was fast. It took me, a chill grasp squeezing my frame like a “jaw. I yelped and it shot up my arm with an accompanying burning along the route taken by the touch. I lost my eyes and fell into the shattered mirror. Bits danced, tips scintillating incandescent like predatory gnashing jaws.
I don’t remember much after that. Lying in the bathroom on the floor, I awakened. The mirror was made new, but my image was not truly me. It healed me with an encompassing, contented joy, its nauseating visage completely overcome. My face.
And at that moment, I suddenly found myself… on the other side.
I slammed into the glass wall and I shouted, but not a single character. The thing on the other side of the other world cocked its head as if to see me, with an oddly twisted, funereal amusement. It whirled around and went to walk off, leaving me suspended in the uncanny, bare room that existed between the mirror and myself.
Now, I’m the one decaying. It can tear strips, there can be raw flesh, and sores can remain unhealing and fester. My teeth ache, loose in their sockets. I’ve lost all sense of time. The only thing I have been able to do is wait and observe, because the object still lives my life while it wears my face, as a mask.
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It also has been known to stare into the mirror and smile at me with its mouth. Each time it occurred; the thought state would repeatedly articulate the identical words and the next.
“Let me out.”