I'd just escaped a house that tried to eat me—and left behind something that might've followed me home. My boots still dripped with street-mucus, and my hands wouldn't stop shaking. There hadn't even been time to process the man in the lobby who claimed to be me.
The app buzzed to life again.
NEW DROP: MIRROR CITY. PACKAGE: RECURSIVE. WARNING: ECHOES MAY REACT.
No address. Just a slow-loading map with one note blinking in red:
"Stand in reflection. Wait to be claimed."
Great.
DropDead Express wasn't a job—it was a curse with dental.
I sighed, turned toward my kitchen—and stopped.
There it was. The same black wax-paper package Doppelgänger-Me had held back in the lobby. Now sitting next to my sink like it belonged there. No footsteps. No door creaks. It had simply appeared. Or maybe… it had always been there, just waiting for me to remember it.
I grabbed it, more out of habit than bravery, and headed to the nearest reflective surface like a man accepting his fate: one bad Yelp review at a time.
Mirror City wasn't a location. It was a condition.
I found that out the hard way after standing in front of a department store mirror for three minutes, muttering, "Claim me," like I was proposing to a mannequin.
Then the mirror shimmered—and pulled me in like bad debt.
Everything inside was reversed.
I don't mean flipped horizontally. I mean gravity pulled sideways, clocks ran backward, and I kept hearing footsteps a half-second before I took a step.
My reflection—my echo, I guess—was there too.
He wore my clothes, but slightly wrong. Left-shoe-on-right-foot wrong. Hair too neat. Smile too wide.
"Hey, Ray," he said, waving.
"Not today, demon twin. I haven't had my coffee."
He tilted his head. "But I've had yours. It tasted like fear."
Charming.
The city was a maze of mirrored skyscrapers and inverted alleys. Every surface was reflective, like someone had rage-polished a whole dimension.
Signs read backward. People walked backward. And somewhere in this backwards hellscape, I had to make a delivery.
The package squirmed in my hands.
"Stop that."
A whisper from inside: "You're late."
"Look, I'm trying, okay?"
"Late is fatal."
"Not helping."
I wandered until I reached a plaza with a massive mirror statue—an obelisk that shimmered with reflected memories. Mine.
I saw flashes: my sister Lina's birthday. My first broken bone. The moment I signed the DropDead contract. The time I got caught eating leftover pizza from a tombstone-shaped cooler in the office break room. (Don't ask.)
My reflection stepped out from the mirror.
Package in hand.
"I'll deliver it," he said. "You always screw it up."
We squared off. Mirror-Ray versus Me-Ray. One of us had to finish this job.
I lunged. He sidestepped. I tripped over a backwards bench.
Classic.
He looked down at me. "How do you always make this look so difficult?"
"Natural talent," I grunted.
The package hit the ground—and opened itself.
Light spilled out. Sound. Memories that weren't mine.
A family I never knew. A war I never fought. A death I hadn't yet died. And worst of all, a musical phase in high school where I apparently played emo banjo.
Mirror-Ray laughed. "Told you. Recursive. It delivers you to you. Or to what you could've been."
I grabbed the box and shoved it back together. "No returns."
The city trembled. Reality hiccuped. A streetlamp danced the Macarena.
A portal opened in a puddle beneath my feet.
I fell.
Back into my world.
Wet, cold, coughing up syllables I didn't remember swallowing.
Phone buzzed:
DELIVERY COMPLETE.
But the reflection in a nearby window still grinned at me. Still moved when I didn't.
Just before I turned away, it whispered:
"Next time, we trade places. And this time—you'll remember things you never lived."
I flipped off the window. "Add that to your performance review."
Then my phone buzzed again. A new notification:
YOU HAVE 1 NEW MEMORY.
I tapped it.
It was a video. Me—laughing with someone I'd never met. A child. Blonde curls. Calling me "Dad."
My knees gave out.
The phone slipped from my hands. Screen cracked. But the video kept playing.
Mirror City hadn't just delivered a package.
It had delivered doubt.