Reflected

When I was seven years old, I woke up in the middle of the night with the urge to use the bathroom. My parents kept a night light in the hallway for such occasions, and there was nothing unusual on the journey. Or even as I relieved myself.

But after flushing I turned and caught a glimpse of something in the mirror. One double take later and, I was sure. In the bottom right corner, it looked like a single eye and half of a smooshed-up nose were pressed against the glass. Its features were dark and indistinct, but it was there.

For a moment I stared at it, frozen in terror. Until my body caught up and I bolted for my parents. Of course, it was gone by the time they checked, and of course, they didn’t believe me. My mother tucked me back in convinced it had only been a dream.

It wasn’t, and I was adamant about that for years. But sometime between ten and eleven I overheard my parents talking about how I was obsessing over a delusion and might need therapy. After looking up some definitions, I just quit mentioning it at all.

Though I had developed a phobia of mirrors. My mother thought the best way to conquer it was to put a full-length mirror in my room. It was big, oval, and took up an entire corner. Most night I would cover it with a blanket, but I made sure it was uncovered when my mom might see it.

Amazingly, over time the tactic began to work, and I would forget to cover it at night. Until I was thirteen at least. Once again, I was awoken in the middle of the night. But this time I didn’t know what woke me. I laid there in the low light of my television, pondering my state of consciousness, when movement caught my eye.

The mirror in the corner gave me a full view of my bed. The movement I saw was me, or rather, my reflection, sitting up in my bed. I was not sitting up, but she was, and was staring at me. We made eye contact and she gave a bone chilling smile that made me question whether it was my likeness.

She reached over to my nightstand, pulled the drawer open, and lowered her hand inside. The room was silent save for my desk fan, even my TV was on a blue screen. Half sitting, I looked to my nightstand. The drawer was closed. A flash of metal caught my eye and I looked back to the mirror. She had pulled long, blue handled scissors from the darkness.

They weren’t even mine. They were an old pair of my mother’s quilting scissors. I wasn’t even supposed to have them, but I pilfered them from her sewing box, because all of mine were too dull. I didn’t hide them in the nightstand though. I had left them in my craft box.

Yet they gleamed in her hands as she opened them. She put the sharp side against her wrist, and it was like her whole body jerked as she sliced the skin. Her blood poured on the bed before running down the side to spread across the floor. Her body wilted until it was too pale and slumped over. She never looked away from me, and she never quit smiling. In the end I didn’t want to get close enough to cover the mirror, so I turned my back to it.

I stared at the wall until my alarm went off. By then the mirror was back to normal. There was no way I could tell anyone about what I saw. It would mean a padded room for sure. So, I slipped the scissors back into their rightful place, and left for school like any other day.

The next time my parents suggested counseling I didn’t fight it. Fortunately, my therapist disagreed with Mom’s mirror tactic, and it was moved. Unfortunately, it would only be a year until I would watch myself die again.

Only this time I was a friend’s house. We had stayed up late watching movies. Camped out in the living room on a huge pallet of blankets. My friend was sound asleep, but I struggled to find any sleep myself.

A light was left on in the kitchen incase we needed a drink or something, and a small amount filtered into the Livingroom. Just enough to get a reflection from the otherwise dark TV screen. At first when I caught movement, I thought someone had gone into the kitchen from the hallway. After a moment of not hearing any sound, I looked out of curiosity, but no one was there.

Everything had always happened at home. I thought that being somewhere else I was safe. But as I got comfortable on my side of the pallet I glanced up at the TV and froze.

There I was reflected. But standing in the center of the room instead of sitting in the space we had cleared. There wasn’t enough light to see her face, but in her hand was a rope.

It took her a couple of tries, but she managed to loop it over the ceiling fan and climb on top of the coffee table. From there she tied it around her neck, waited a long second and hopped off. The moment she jumped so did I. but I couldn’t stop staring at her gently swaying body as it went side to side.

Turning the tv on wasn’t an option. My friend’s parents were strict about TV after bed. Sleep certainly wasn’t going o happen. All I found myself doing was staring while it continued to sway.

At some point, right before dawn, my friend woke up. She was groggy as she looked at me sitting next to her. When I barely glanced at her she followed my eyes, finally taking in the gruesome sight. Honestly, I didn’t think she’d be able to see it. I guess I had started to believe it was all in my head.

But as she drew in a breath to scream, I reacted out of instinct. I clapped my hand over mouth, muffling a mix of her scream and surprised yelp. “Don’t scream,” I begged in a whisper. “Nobody will be able to see it by the time they get here. They won’t believe you.”

As she calmed, I backed away, checking the screen to see it was gone. Which helped her relax more, and for the first time I told someone everything I had seen. She believed me, but it backfired on me.

Three days later she told me that I had a demon attached to me, and it was too dangerous to be my friend anymore. She even went out of her way to avoid interacting with me at school. She didn’t tell anyone though, so I was grateful.

However, if I had known what I was in for, I probably would have welcomed a padded room. The shows my reflection put on only got more graphic. I watched myself die in ways no short of horrifying. I quit looking at mirrors and kept my eyes trained away from any reflective surfaces.

I mean all surfaces. I once watched myself bang my skull against an extra clean counter. The worst were shop and business windows. Nothing like zoning out and watching yourself walk into traffic. Always with that sick smile.

I made it to college without anyone noticing anything. Nobody witnessed my reflection behaving out of the ordinary or noticed my aversion to mirrors. Until I started staying at my boyfriend’s apartment. Everything was going great until he noticed how tense I was at night when the windows were uncovered. It was like having a wall of mirrors no matter what room I was in.

Of course, I brushed it off. But that led him to noticing other tells and he started pushing. I really loved him, and he started talking about how he couldn’t be with me if I was keeping secrets. So, I told him.

I told him everything. Even about an eye starting contest I lost. I had watched myself die by a self-inflicted bullet to the bran, in the reflection of my opponent’s eyes. I may have gone overboard, and he avoided me for a few days.

But then he came back. He said he was a little freaked, but he believed me. The following three weeks were the best of my life. I thought I was the luckiest woman on Earth. It turned out I was just gullible. All the extra bonding and romance was a way to get me to blindly trust him.

Trust him I did. Right up until the moment it was too late. It was after a long night fine dining and dancing. He kept talking about how excited he was for the finale once we got back to his place. Because of that when he asked if I was ready, I was eager to find out what he had planned.

He blindfolded me and spun me around several times to disorient me. I thought it was overkill just to lead me to the bedroom. But when he removed the blindfold, we weren’t in the master, but the spare bedroom.

It was an office that morning, but that night it was something out of an occult movie. Symbols painted in red, black curtains and sheets covering the ordinary blue walls and plush carpet, a large, covered object in the center of a circle. Figures in hooded cloaks surrounded me. They sealed off my escape as my boyfriend donned his own cloak, not bothering to pull up his hood.

When he met my gaze again, I barely recognized him. His expression was manic. He was smiling with an almost glazed-over look in his eyes. “It’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll still be together after. Well…kind of.” He turned me around and pushed me to the center of the painted circle.

As I focused on the covered object the covering was ripped off. My heart lodged in my throat as I stared into the large oval mirror. My reflection smiling and twirling her fingers at me. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a female voice sounded, as she stepped forward lowering her hood. “I always loved this mirror. I was disappointed when it was moved from your room when we were kids. But your mom was happy to sell it to an old friend of her daughter’s. I thought it would be poetic for what we’re doing.”

I hadn’t seen her in years, but I recognized her. She was the only person to ever witness my reflection acting on its own. And there she stood, with her arm resting on my boyfriend’s shoulder. “Oh, don’t worry. The betrayal doesn’t run that deep. We just met about a month ago. Actually, you were the one that helped me realize I’m a lesbian.

I told you. You have a demon attached to you. And demons have power. The only way to access that demon’s power, is to bring it to this side of the mirror. Which coincidentally, is what it wants. So…here we are, it’s nothing personal.” The moment she quit speaking my boyfriend spun me around to face the mirror squarely and shoved.

I had a split second where I felt the cold glass under my cheek and hand. Then I continued falling forward. There was a weird thud when I hit the carper, but I wasted no time in jumping back up to pound on the glass. It made no sound when I struck it. It felt like hitting a rubber ball.

But I got a front row seat to their plan ending in disaster. They bowed to the me that wasn’t me. I couldn’t hear them, but after a moment I shook my head. There was absolute anger on their faces. There was some clear yelling until one of them pointed to the painted symbols.

I don’t know what they thought was going to happen, but their confidence disappeared when my head tipped back. I think I was laughing, and then I pointedly stepped out of the circle. I, I mean she, walked out of the room. Stopping only to twirl her fingers at me again. Those that tried to stop her died quickly, only two were left standing.

Those two looked back at me, and I shouted for them to help me. But they ultimately just shook their heads and left. “They can’t see you anymore.” I was sick of surprise voices even after only one, but this one was a man on a big floating rock. “As soon as she left the room you disappeared from the mirror.” His tone was matter of fact, and his expression made him look bored.

“What’s going on? Who are you? Where am I?” I asked all three in a single bursting breath. It was then that I took not of the gloating rock and began to look around.

It was darkness. Just a large expanse of emptiness with random patches of light, all varying in size and brightness. “I’m not sure what its name is, but I call it the Flip Side. I guess you could call it the Mirror Verse or something. Either way we are inside the mirror.” He hopped off his seat with ease, but I didn’t get the change to throw out any more questions.

“As for who I am…well, it doesn’t really mater now. Now I’m just a reflection. What’s going on is you’ve been replaced in your reality.” As he stepped toward me, my eyes were drawn to the rock as it slowly rose higher. “Yeah, I should mention that physics isn’t a thing here. The only reason there’s a floor is because you expected it to be there.”

At this point I had so many questions the confusion overwhelmed me, and I just started at him. An expression flitted across his features resembling compassion, and he let out a loud sigh. “Come on, it’s easier to explain while I show you.” He sat down close to the edge of the platform, patting the space next to him.

For a moment I looked back through the mirror. They were cleaning the room. Getting rid of all the evidence. It looked like they might have even been joking around while they worked. I was numb as I took the seat he offered. As I did, I noticed a subtle shift. Looking behind us and the mirror was getting further and further away. The platform had disappeared.

“First, you have to understand that there are only two rules here. You can’t go through the mirror. And the only one that can see you is the other you.” He stopped to take a breath and I took advantage of the pause. “If I can’t go through the mirror then how did I get here? And what is the other me, a demon?”

Agitation flashed across his face, “Correction, you can’t go through the mirror unless you touch it at the same time as the other you.” I didn’t bother to wait for more. “So that means I can get back through?” this time he gave me a pointed look that clearly said, “Shut up”.

“I told you, this place is nothing like the reality we came from. Time is not linear. When you look into a mirror you could see anything from any period of time. Go ahead and look.” He gestured to a rectangular patch of light over my right shoulder.

It was almost out of reach. I could barely get my left eye and nose up to the corner to look through. As I focused on what was on the other side my chest tightened and after a moment I sat back down, hard, “That was me. A s a little girl. I was in the bathroom.”

He gave me a knowing nod as he explained, “These beings, like that one that took your body, I don’t know what they call themselves, but they come from here. Look…” he pointed to a large patch of light up ahead of us. At first, I didn’t see what he was talking about. Then I saw what I thought was a shadow.

I couldn’t tell the gender, but there was someone standing in font of the mirror. It was a silhouette all covered in darkness, with no features to speak of. “If its easer to call them demons that’s fine. I suppose they fit the description. They desperately want to experience our world. However, without a body to inhabit they can’t. But when they latch onto you, they don’t just possess you, they curse you.

To latch on they have to find someone open to their existence. They can’t be seen. If someone is open to a world beyond the glass, then they can take over their reflection. From there its just a matter of getting the person to touch the glass. Children are the most susceptible. That’s how I ended up here.”

My mind swirled with the new information. So, the demon targeted me when I was a kid. That made sense in hindsight. But what mattered now was getting back to my body, and the life attached to it. “What are you doing?” he asked as I stood up.

If physics didn’t exist here, then there was no need for a floor. So, I took a step off the ledge. My stomach dropped at the view of nothingness beneath me, but I stayed motionless. No falling or screaming like a part of me expected. And turning to look at him was as simple as a thought.

“Thank you for your help. But I need to find a way back to my body. Good luck, and thank you again,” I said before floating off to find myself in the mirrors. Maybe I could even get a younger self to touch the mirror and stop all of this from happening. As numb as I was before was as angry as I had become.

*******

There she goes again, I think, as she floats off. Last time she came through she at last heard me out more. If she keeps it up, she’ll turn into the kind of demon she’s trying to thwart. That’s what happens when you let the curse run in a cycle.

If she’d ever stick around, and let me finish explaining, she’d know that the demon has already won. The demon won the moment it latched onto her. A part of her is still in her body, its just not her consciousness. The demon will inhabit her body no matter what part of her is stuck here.

Right now, she’s on her way to torment a younger her in an attempt to possess her own body. She has no idea that she’s just starting the cycle over again. Restart the cycle too many times and The Flipside claims you as its own. I’ve seen it before from the man that helped me when I got here.

The only way to escape The Flipside is to let yourself live out its lifetime. When your body dies you get released, and the demon is sent back here.

Its best to just wait it out. Hopefully she realizes it before she becomes nothing but a silhouette, yearning for something would never be hers again.