Have you ever had the feeling that your house is "noisier" when you're the only one living in it? A creaking floorboard, a refrigerator humming too loudly, or the sound of something rolling in a room you haven't entered in days.
My apartment is old, full of mirrors set into the wardrobe doors. One evening, as I walked past one of them, I noticed an insignificant detail: in the reflection, my bedroom door was closed.
But I knew I had left it open. I physically turned to check. The door was wide open. I looked back at the mirror: in the glass, the door was unmistakably closed.
It wasn't a trick of the light. It was as if the mirror were showing a version of my house that existed a few seconds behind, or perhaps with a will of its own.
I decided to run a test. I raised my right hand. The reflection raised its right hand a second late. I smiled. The reflection didn't smile back. It stayed there looking at me with a neutral, almost bored expression.
Then the image in the mirror did something I wasn't doing.
The reflected "me" stepped up to the glass until its breath fogged the surface. But I was standing still, two meters away. The reflection raised a finger and wrote on the condensation, from the inside: "LEAVE."
Panicking, I covered the mirror with a bedsheet and went to bed, or at least I tried. In the dead of night, I was woken by a rhythmic sound. *Thud. Thud. Thud.* It was the sound of someone slamming against a pane of glass. It was coming from the wardrobe.
I turned on the light. The sheet I had used to cover the mirror was on the floor, torn into thin strips. The mirror was empty. There was no reflected furniture, no bed, no me. There was only an endless gray darkness that seemed to pulse.
Then I saw a hand pressed against the glass. A hand that resembled mine, but with black, worn-down nails. It slid downward, leaving a trail of dark blood on the surface.
In that moment I understood: the mirror wasn't a portal to another world. It was a prison. And what I had seen for years wasn't my reflection, but a prisoner mimicking my every gesture, hoping to find a crack in the glass.
And tonight, it has found the crack.
I hear the sound of glass splintering behind me. It isn't loud, just a thin, metallic *tink*. I have only seconds before it finishes coming out. And the worst part is that I already know what will happen: it will take my place in the world, and I will spend eternity imitating its gestures, hoping that one day some other idiot will stop and stare too long at his own image.
Did you feel that little shiver? Check the nearest mirror. Did your reflection blink at the same time you did?