The Malevolent Reflection

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own.

After a year of putting up with my noisy neighbours in a shoe box studio I had recently moved into a brand new apartment just outside the city where I was looking forward to knuckling down and getting some serious writing done in my new tranquil surrounds.

As a sort of housewarming gift to myself I stumbled across an ornate, antique mirror at a thrift store. It was the perfect addition to my spacious living room, or so I believed.

As a freelance writer, I spent a great deal of time at home, slaving away at my laptop, creating what I consider to be literary gold so it’s important that the space I work in is perfect. Originally I felt my new antique mirror really competed the room.

However, as time passed I began to notice something seemed to be off about the mirror. It was almost as if the reflection it showed was slowly changing, becoming more and more distorted with each passing day. Originally I put it down to to eye strain after one too many late nights writing.

Until one evening when I was getting ready for bed, I caught a quick glimpse of the mirror out of the corner of my eye. In the reflection appeared a dark, ominous figure standing behind me, its eyes glowing red with malevolence.

Startled, I quickly spun around to confront the mysterious figure but to my surprise, and admittedly my relief, there was nothing there. I chalked it up to tiredness and my imagination playing tricks on me and trudged off to bed, but as I lay awake I couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about the mirror.

The next day, as I was getting ready to proof read my work from the night before, I reluctantly peered into the mirror again. This time, to my surprise, the reflection somehow showed a different room entirely. It was dimly lit, and I could just make out the outline of a figure standing in the center of the room. Not believing what I was seeing, I tried to reach out and touch the glass, but in a moment that sent chills down my spine my hand passed right through it.

Initially I thought I was losing my mind but with each passing day I began to realise that what I was witnessing was indeed real and although it seemed impossible the mirror seemed to be showing me some sort of a nightmarish alternate reality.

As time went on the reflection grew stronger, more vivid, until it was almost as if I could step through the glass and into that other world. Sheer terror at the paranormal goings on of the mirror soon turned to utter obsession as the mirror drew me in with an unrelenting hold over me.

I became more and more obsessed with the mirror, spending hours on end staring into it, trying to understand its power. Losing sleep and skipping meals become commonplace as I tried to make sense of what was going on. But the more I looked, the more I felt like I was losing my grip on reality.

My girlfriend, Beth, was the first to notice the disturbing changes in me. She begged me to get rid of the mirror, but I’d already become lost to its power over me. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I was addicted to the rush of this terrifying alternate reality, to the growing power of the mirror.

As time passed, the reflection began to grow darker, more malevolent. It was as if the mirror was alive, feeding off my obsession and growing stronger with each passing day.

One evening, as Beth and I were sitting in the living room, the mirror began to glow with an otherworldly light. Beth screamed as the reflection began to bleed out of the mirror and into the real world, a twisted version of my apartment filled with horrors beyond comprehension. I tried to close my eyes, to look away from the terror forming before me, but I was transfixed, unable to turn away. And then I saw it – the figure that had been haunting my reflection all along, a grotesque, twisted version of myself.

Fear gripped me entirely and I tried to run, but the twisted figure chased me, its dark, inhuman laughter echoing through the halls of the apartment. Beth was right behind me, screaming for me to snap out of it, to come back to reality. But it was too late. The twisted figure closed in on me, its eyes glowing with an unholy light as it dragged me back into the mirror, into the alternate reality that would soon become my prison.

As I drifted through the dark, twisted landscape of the alternate reality, I realised the shocking truth that the mirror was not haunted at all. It was a gateway, a portal to a realm of pure darkness, a world beyond our own.

And now, trapped in that other world with no hope of escape, I am forced to bear witness to the horrors that lie beyond the mirror, a prisoner of my own obsession and the power of the gateway that had claimed me.

But as I gazed out into the abyss, I saw something that chilled me to the bone. It was another mirror, identical to the one I had purchased at the thrift store. And in that mirror, I could see another version of myself, staring back at me with terror in its eyes.

I realised with a sickening feeling that the mirrors were not merely gateways, but mirrors into an infinite number of alternate realities, each one more horrifying than the last. And as I looked closer, I saw that in each mirror, there was another version of myself, trapped and tortured in their own twisted reality.

I shuddered in terror as the realisation struck me that there were countless others like me, trapped in their own personal hell, all because of the cursed mirrors that had found their way into our world. Infinite versions of myself who had fallen victim to the same dark and twisted figure who had trapped them there for reasons unknown to me.

And then, as if in response to my growing terror, the mirror began to crack, shards of glass falling away to reveal the darkness beyond. I knew that this was my chance, my only chance to escape.

With all my strength, I threw myself through the shattered glass, feeling the cold, sharp edges tear at my skin as I tumbled through the darkness. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

I found myself lying on the floor of my apartment, surrounded by the shattered remains of the mirror. Beth was huddled in the corner, her face etched with fear as she helped me to my feet, both of us silently agreeing to put the horrors of this night behind us.

But I knew that it wasn't over, my nightmarish doppelgänger was still out there, in this world or the next, waiting to claim his next victim. And as I looked into the shattered remains of the mirror, I knew that I would never be able to forget the horrors that lay beyond.