Sometimes the mind is a prison, and you’re the warden and the inmate. I never felt it more acutely than when I moved to my new apartment. A converted loft on a 14th floor of a century-old building, it was supposed to be my escape. Unfurnished, just four walls and a load of possibilities—or so I thought.
There’s a darkness in this place that I didn’t recognize when I signed the lease. A heavy air of melancholy that previous tenants must have felt but never disclosed. It’s not the kind that switches on and off with a flick. This darkness clings; it lingers.
And so we come to the mirror. Oh, the damned mirror in the bathroom. A relic from a bygone era, they said, adds character to the place. But what sort of character stares back at me with eyes that aren’t mine?
Day by day, the face in the mirror changes. A subtle droop of the eye one day, a twisted smile the next. Never enough to scream, but enough to feel that fingernail of dread scrape along my spine.
My friends? They think I’m cracking up. “You’re stressed,” they say, their voices layered with syrupy concern, as if my unease could be swallowed down with platitudes and blind assurances.
Then came the night that froze my bones. I looked into the mirror, and the reflection blinked. Not me. The reflection. It blinked and smirked, then opened its mouth. No scream, no sound—just an endless void, a swirling abyss where vocal cords should be. I could feel it pulling me in. The air in the room thickened, almost suffocating. I felt weightless and leaden all at once. My heart was a frenetic drumbeat in my chest.
It whispered in a voice like grinding stone, “Join me.”
Chills ran down my spine as the bathroom lights flickered, creating an eerie dance of shadows on the walls. And there, written in the mist on the mirror, were the words: ‘I see you.’
My blood run cold. I broke away, stumbling back, crashing into the bathroom tiles. How? There was no one here but me and the mirror.
‘I must be losing my grip on reality,’ I thought, shaking my head. When I looked up, the reflection snapped back to my own frightened face. The writing had vanished, as if consumed by the same darkness that invaded the reflection.
Now, whenever I pass that mirror, I feel the cold draft of another realm, hear the distant echo of that gravelly voice. I avoid looking, but it’s only a matter of time before curiosity—or some darker impulse—draws my gaze once more.
And what then?
The mirror remains, its silvered glass like an icy lake under the moonlight. I could shatter it, but what would that achieve? Would the pieces scatter, each shard a fragment of that soul-sucking void? Or would it set free whatever’s imprisoned there, liberate it to become a more active participant in this waking nightmare?
As I ponder this, I catch a movement in the corner of my eye—a blink, a ripple across that glassy surface.
It’s waiting.