It was an average morning when it all started. I wish I hadn’t looked into the mirror that day. It was strange. My reflection was… different. My eyes were a bit off. My skin looked pale, and it looked like I was smiling, even though I wasn’t.
It was a scary experience, I was always creeped out by mirrors, but I thought maybe I was sick.
Later in the day, I had a meeting with my friend, and I was curious if he could see those strange features on me.
“Do I look pale?” I asked him.
“Nope,” he shook his head. “Absolutely not. Why?”
“Just asking. I looked a bit ill in the morning.”
Maybe it was just the lighting that tricked me, I thought. I woke up the next day, and I already forgot about it. As I looked into the mirror again, I almost jumped back. I looked even worse than the day before.
My eyes became darker, like you could barely see I had pupils. I was paler than before. I looked like I had some kind of serious illness. I wanted to make sure, so I quickly went back to my room and took a selfie. To my surprise, I looked normal on the photo.
I was confused. What the hell was going on? Maybe the mirror had some damage that caused this illusion. Or maybe just the bathroom lights… I was thinking about doing some experiments with the mirror, but I was already late from work, so I just left it there.
The following day, I woke up earlier than usual. I was shaking a little bit as I opened the bathroom door, afraid of what I will see in that damn mirror.
As I slowly approached it, I could already see my reflection. My eyes were totally black, like in some kind of horror movie with the black-eyed children. My skin was white as fresh snow. And the most disturbing thing was the fact that my reflection was widely smiling like some kind of maniac.
I was shocked. I stood there for about a minute, but it felt like hours were passing by. I couldn’t even breathe. I finally looked down and noticed my hands and legs were shaking.
When I finally calmed down, I took a photo of the mirror. It looked the same in the picture too. Then I finally grabbed the mirror and took it outside, still naively hoping that the lights were tricking me. I hoped it was just some optical illusion, even though I didn’t even believe it anymore.
The reflection was the same. It was just like me, but much uglier and scarier. Like some evil demon who tried to look like me. My brain tried to process what was happening, trying to find a logical explanation for the events, but it failed.
I put that cursed thing back in the bathroom, then went to sleep, or at least I tried to sleep, but I started to get really paranoid from what was happening. After hours of thinking, I finally fell asleep. I was lucky I didn’t have to go to work the next day.
When I woke up, I decided to avoid that bathroom at all costs as long as I could. I couldn’t believe it when I pulled the curtains, and I could see the same horrible reflection in my bedroom window. I screamed. I screamed, but for some reason, I still stayed there, not moving an inch from where I was.
I had absolutely no idea what to do. Who knows if that thing can follow me anywhere or not? I felt like I wasn’t safe in my own room. Then I finally decided what to do. I slammed the bathroom door open and picked up a steel hammer to break that fucking mirror to pieces, hoping that it would stop the other me from appearing again.
As I was ready to hit the mirror, however, I dropped the hammer to the ground from the shock. There was a mirrored sentence written on the glass. It was blood red. Considering the absurdity of the whole situation, maybe it was written with blood.
LET ME OUT
I ran out of the bathroom, then I ran out of the house, trying to catch my breath. I opened my phone, and sent the picture of the reflection to my friend. I told him what happened.
“That’s messed up,” he texted back a few minutes later. “Maybe you should move out, that’s… unreal, I have no idea what to say. At first, I thought you were joking.”
We texted for another few minutes, then I went back to the house. I thought I was going crazy. The other me wrote the same sentence on every window, even on my TV.
LET ME OUT
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I had to leave this house. I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out where to go, meanwhile avoiding looking at my windows. My parents lived in another city. I was thinking about asking my friend if I could stay in his home for a few days, but at that exact moment, he messaged me.
“Please help! Since you sent me that picture, I see the same thing, but it’s my reflection instead of yours. Whatever this is, you bought it to my house. Please, try to find out how to stop this, I’m going crazy.”
I was terrified and felt guilty. It was my fault that this thing reached him too. Then I remembered what I wanted to do only a few hours before. I went back to the bathroom and picked up the hammer from the ground. I looked into the eyes of the other me, then hit the mirror with the hammer. It was gone. The other me was gone.
I felt happy and relieved. I managed to do it. I checked out every window in my house, and my reflection was normal. I defeated it!
As I looked out the window, I froze. The thing was standing in my courtyard. And it wasn’t a reflection anymore. It was the other me standing there, constantly changing its face, resembling hundreds of humans. I didn’t defeat it. I let it out.