“Look mom! I’m so tall in the mirror!” Kids were laughing next to me as they looked in the mirror inside the fun house at the attraction park. There were different mirrors, some made you tall, short, fat. Some made specific parts of you long, your forehead, legs, you get the point. There was only, or is only one problem. This specific area was made for people who have the ability to see themselves in the mirror. I am not. This might sound bizarre, but it’s the truth. I can go back to as long as I can remember, and I’ve never seen my own reflection.
It’s not even only that. I can’t see my reflection in windows, pools of water, anything that might reflect what it sees on the opposite side. And last, I don’t even show up on photographs. The world is trying to hide my face.
I can see my own hands, my feet, my stomach, and if I look down, I can barely see what I think is my nose.
I can touch my face and its features, but I can’t see. People are saying I’m delusional but I’m not! They say they can see my face, but I can’t so why does that matter?!
I glanced at the kids and sighed. At least they are having fun. A kid met my eyes and their face suddenly turned to drought. His lips quivered and then he began crying. A parent came running and hugged him, asking what was wrong. The shaken kid pointed to me and his parents embraced him while glaring at me.
“How can you walk around like that? This place is not for people like you? Look in a mirror!” The parents carried the kid and left the area. Other kids who were having fun left as well.
I smiled. I think I did at least, since I can’t see. I covered my eyes and laughed hysterically.
Every, damn, time! Why WHY!? People are afraid, their faces are in disgust. It’s as if I’m a walking corpse, an alien species. Something that shouldn’t be anywhere!? Everywhere I go, kids coop up in fear. As if I’m a monster. But I don’t know why, I can’t see why!?
I glared into the mirror in front of me. Focusing every cell, every nerve, every inch of my body to see myself in that mirror. But nothing.
I screamed in agony. Why did I turn out this way?! I smashed the mirror in front of me but instead of continuing my rage, I fell down and crawled to the wall behind me in fear. For a split second. I saw something.
A figure. In between the hundreds of broken mirror shards, the same figure was present in all of them. It’s face I- I remember it clearly. The long scar which crossed all over its face. The left cheek was non-existent, you could see right into its mouth from the side. The messy black curly hair which covered one eye. Then the visible eye, all white, no colors. The face was all torn and smashed up.
I stood up and ran out from the fun house in terror of which I had seen. Who was that, what was that? My head felt drowsy and my vision became cloudy. I covered my ears to stop all the annoying laughter from kids walking by and just ran out of the park.
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The only place I knew was home. I entered my apartment, trudged through the masses of empty food boxes, clothes and comic books and laid down on the stinky mattress .
I looked up at the ceiling and stretched out my hand. I took a significant look at it. The jade smooth white skin. The clear, undamaged skin. I let my arm fall down again and I laughed to myself, at myself.
I was foolish to let that thought cross my mind. You see, I almost, for a second, believed the figure in the mirror could’ve been myself. Isn’t that funny? But comparing that face to my body, no. It didn’t fit.
I dragged my hand across my face and touched all its features. The sharp nose, strong jawline, fat lips and both eyes. My short silky smooth hair. There was no scar. No.
I glanced at my left and saw the pile of broken mirror shards. Still not cleaned up. I rolled over to my stomach and reached for a shard and tried to see if that person would show up again.
Nothing. Yet again, nothing. Like it had always been.
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A knock on the door woke me up and I stood up walking to the door half asleep. The mailman, the monthly gift. I set the door ajar and the chain that locked the door rustled, and so did the young mailman. A new face, I see. The mailman jumped in place when our eyes locked and he took a few steps backwards. He put the package on the ground and forced a smile.
“Y-your package, sir! There is also a letter addressed to you.” He ran away from the scene. I unlocked my door and grabbed the package.
I sat down on my bed and ripped it open. Food, money, and that damn small mirror. I ripped the letter as well and read it. Here’s the usual: this is the last time. Please, embrace your other side, see your other side. It’s the real you.
I sneered at the letter and grabbed the small mirror included in the package. No one was on the other side, as always. I threw the mirror and the shards which emerged as the mirror crack’d stacked up on the pile of hundreds of others I’ve gotten before.
I laughed to myself and glanced at the pile. Laughter turned to terror as that man once again was present in the thousands of shards on the floor! He was smiling, laughing! I hugged the wall and panted heavily. My heart rate increased and blinked many times just to see if he were to go away.
This time, he stayed. He didn’t disappear or change stance. He just smiled.
“Go, GO AWAY!” I grabbed the wooden box and threw it at the pile. The noise of all the shards clashing pierced my ears and I closed my eyes. I opened one slowly. Nothing but black strings covered my eye. I panicked and opened the other and things went back to normal.
“I’m going insane.” The man on the other side of the mirror is toying with me, whoever it was. I grabbed piles of clothes and laid them above the mirror shards. I didn’t want to see that man again.
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After some time, I actually left my apartment. Just to, I don’t know, see what is going on? I didn’t have an actual cause. I walked along the street down the road. Not facing any people passing by. There weren’t many to begin with, since the clock struck just around 11PM.
I sighed loudly while walking hunched forward, seeing my feet taking one step at a time.
What was I doing? I glanced to my left and stopped, seeing a large poster for a show.
“Reflection of oneself?” I laughed and spit at the poster. What a fucking joke. But just as I was about to leave. I took one last glance at it. The glass protecting it was damaged in the far bottom left corner. And inside those small cracks, he watched me.
My eyes opened wide and a shiver crawled up my spine. My skin got goosebumps and my breath haltered. I was terrified. He always found a way to find me! In the smallest of cracks, he watched me!
“Fuck off, FUCK OFF!” I walked up to the poster and smashed the crack. But that led to many more. And I saw even more of him! I took some steps backwards and crashed into a person behind me.
I turned around to look at his face and I saw him! The man on the other side. I stumbled onto the ground but stood up quickly.
“You little fucker, why are you following me everywhere I go!” I lunged myself at the man and pushed him down to the ground. I clenched my hands together and smashed his face down to a pulp.
That grin on his face soon turned into mashed flesh, and his body flinched with every hit.
“Die, die, DIE!” I kept going. I didn’t even look at him. I just felt the flesh piling up underneath my hands and the sound it made gently embracing my eardrums. He was gone, I got him!
I laughed out into the night and stood up, brushing off the blood off my hands as best as I could. I sighed in relief and took the one and last glance at this terrible beast of a mam.
But relief turned into confusion, regret, fear. The man I’d first seen wasn’t the one laying on the ground. No, how did this happen? I swear I had seen him?! I took some steps backwards and collided with the poster. I glanced at the cracks and the man was still there!
“NOOOOOOOOOO!” I screamed and ran from the scene. Fuck, I killed a person! It wasn’t my fault no it wasn’t. It was the man on the other side!
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He didn’t leave my mind. I’ve been in this enclosed stinky room, living on the few noodle packages I got from my single mother and what other edible stuff I could. My stomach is hurting. I’m in pain.
I didn’t want to leave; I didn’t want to have a one percent chance of seeing the man on the other side. He had gotten inside my head. I’d never been afraid of anything before. Something about that man got to me. I had smashed everything inside my room that could create some kind of reflection. It looked like a battlefield.
Knocks on the door brought me out of thoughts, and I froze.
“It’s the police. Anyone’s home?” What the fuck were they doing there? I tried standing up but I groaned in pain. My body didn’t have the strength.
The police bashed on the door even harder.
“Hello?!” They kept going and going without stopping. They began whispering something, but I couldn’t grasp what they were saying.
The door burst open, and two police officers entered the room. As soon as they saw me, they rushed to my side.
“Sir, are you okay?” I locked eyes with them and they were taken aback.
“Jesus fuck? He’s not okay…”
“Don’t say that! Anyway, you need medical help. Wait here and an ambulance will come pick you up.” I just moaned in pain. I couldn’t answer.
Soon enough, the ambulance came and picked me up. On the way down to the ambulance car I saw the man on the other side everywhere. In the windows, in the cars, behind the sunglasses of the police. He laid down, just like me, but he was smiling, taunting me. Copying whatever I did.
I screamed and wiggled my body as best as I could before puking all over myself and passing out.
Next I knew I woke up in a hospital, laying in a hospital bed in a white gown. Having that heartbeat machine constantly beeping at my side. I began breathing heavily and looking around the room for anything that could create a reflection.
The heart rate machine, the window, the glass of water, the mirror in the corner. I screamed in terror and the machine went wild. I slammed my arms against the bed and tears burst out of my eyes. Two nurses and a doctor rushed inside and held me down. The doctor pierced my skin with a syringe and soon enough my body calmed down.
The doctor leaned over me and opened my eyes wide, dragging a small flashlight from side to side. I didn’t bother following it. The only thing I could focus on was the man smiling in the reflection of his glasses. Laying down on a bed wearing the same white gown, just like me.
-————————————————————————————————————————–
Reading the patient’s journal was interesting, but also terrifying. To actually witness someone spiraling this far down into madness. The patient had an accident a few years ago, which had entirely ruined his face. The doctors tried their best to patch it up but there was no use even trying.
He survived, but at what cost? The patient had supposedly been very attractive and likable, but witnessing his unfamiliar face had made him go into denial, and his entire history rewrote itself, to git his own narrative.
To even kill a person, thinking it was someone else? It’s fascinating how your mind can control everything around you to such a degree. To even remove one’s reflection.
I look at the man laying tied down to a bed just hysterically laughing, looking into the ceiling.
A mirror, present at the top, just so he can finally understand who he is, and to understand that the man on the other side was no one but himself.
Is what the higher ups want me to think. But as I look to my right into a mirror, I see one too. A disgusting figure who keeps smiling ominously on the other side of the mirror. It’s not me, I know it’s not. The empty eye socks, the cut up cheeks so the smile could reach even further. The many scars on his face.
But I’m not scared of it anymore. I’m used to it. As long as I do not give in.
But to explain the reality of the situation. The man has not had an accident; he looks normal; he has just been toyed with by the folk from the other side. They choose a victim, change their history and make their victims go through trauma until they make them believe. How? No one knows.
This man was normal, until one day he thought that he’d never been able to see his reflection, and he couldn’t at the time he thought this, since the folk on the other side removed it. People began leaving his side, thinking he was insane. Even his mother.
The young mailman who delivered the last box? Vanished. His only family, his mother? Vanished. Even the parents and the kids in the beginning! The letter from his mother was obviously of the folk from the other side’s doing. They have spies, helping them gather people. It can be anyone.
We are not alone. If they are haunting you, they won’t stop. The higher-ups are denying it, but everyone knows, the folk on the other side, they’re eagerly awaiting you to give in, and increase their army and leave the other side to conquer the real world.
This is not only a warning, but a way for me to deliver the truth. I choose this man’s story because it can happen to anyone, and anyone can suffer from it.
If, and only if, you see someone in the reflection that doesn’t look like you, is similar to you, or is actually you, but in a destructive state, don’t reach for it, it will pull you in. Only way that I know of is to ignore it, forever. Don’t think that the figure on the other side is you, it’s not. And if one day you wake up thinking you’ve never been able to see your reflection, just try to remember, and eventually you will remember, that it is all a lie.