-It all began on a Thursday night; the air in my small San Francisco apartment hung heavy with exhaustion as I returned from a long day of work. As a private investigator, my days were often filled with intrigue and tension, leaving me yearning for a peaceful weekend. It was a typical Thursday, I ordered a pizza, sat in front of the TV, and played a series I was following. Around midnight I was falling asleep, so I got up and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready to sleep.
Standing before the bathroom mirror, the world took a surreal turn. A disconcerting discomfort clung to the air, an unshakable feeling of being watched. My reflection stared back at me, but it was different, disjointed from my movements. Time seemed to slow as I fixated on the inexplicable disparity. Was it fatigue playing tricks on my mind? A cold shiver ran down my spine as the reflection held its ground, an eerie detachment from my reality. Panic set in, gnawing at the edges of my consciousness. And then, as abruptly as it had started, it ceased. My reflection returned to normal, mirroring my every move. I dismissed it as a fatigue-induced hallucination and went to bed.
That night, I had a terrible nightmare, I felt like I was drowning in emptiness, nothing but darkness. At the end of that darkness, there was a spark of light, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t reach it, I was getting further and further until I was in a huge empty room. In the middle of the room, there was a mirror. I got closer to the mirror, but when I looked at it, I couldn’t see myself. All I saw was a tall black figure with big round white eyes and no other details on the face or the body. And that’s when I woke up terrified.
It was around 2:30 am, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I remembered what had happened the night before, and what I saw in the mirror. So I went back to the bathroom to check the mirror, but it was normal. I waited 30 minutes, but nothing happened. Thinking I was an idiot for being terrified, I decided to ignore it and just go back to sleep.
Weeks passed, and the memory of that peculiar night became a distant whisper in the back of my mind. My days were consumed by a missing girl case, leading me through the gritty streets and shadowy corners of San Francisco. As a private investigator, I thrived on the adrenaline of solving mysteries, but this case seemed to defy resolution. Late one evening, after tirelessly combing through leads and dead ends, I returned to my apartment. On this particular night, I decided to change my usual routine. Instead of ordering pizza and indulging in a TV series, I went out for a quiet dinner at a local diner. The lights flickered outside as I sat alone with my thoughts. Returning home, I couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that I was being watched.
The apartment, once a safe place, felt like a maze of uncertainty. I hesitated at the bathroom door, the memory of the distorted reflection resurfacing. Against my better judgment, I stared into the mirror, half-expecting the anomaly to return. But, to my relief, everything appeared normal. As the night wore on, sleep eluded me. The hours passed in a haze of restlessness, and the clock ticked away, marking the transition from one unsettling moment to the next. Eventually, exhaustion overcame fear, and I fell asleep.
The nightmares returned, more vivid and haunting than before. The vast expanse of darkness enveloped me once again, and the distant spark of light seemed even further away. The room was slowly getting filled with more mirrors. But I could still clearly see the first mysterious mirror in the middle. In the reflection, the same tall, featureless figure loomed. Its presence felt malevolent, and a whispering voice echoed through the emptiness. It spoke of impending doom, leaving me paralyzed in the void. The line between reality and the supernatural blurred, and the missing girl’s case took on an even more ominous tone.