False Face

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. The reflection wasn’t warped by shattered glass, nor some fun house effect. It was your simple standard run of the mill mirror. No fancy trimmings, nor embellishment around the edging, just a square brown wood frame. The glass had to extra treatment, nor varnishing that anyone could tell. Yet, that mirror, hanging at the end of the hall, did not reflect my face.

What it was showing me I can’t be sure. Nobody else could see it. No one else believed something was off with the mirror. It was the same mirror we all ran by as kids never stopping, never lingering to look. Now as I stand here looking closely perhaps for the very first time I see. I know not what I see. Surely, this can’t be reality. Not the reality I know.

A tap came lightly on my shoulder. “Sorry didn’t mean to spook you.” My cousin David said. “I’ve finished in the kitchen. Everyone else is gone. I’m headed home. If you need any more help just call, alright?”

I glanced at him, eyes pried away from the mirror, I realized hours had passed and it had grown dark. “Alright.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just…” I pointed to the mirror. “Do you see?”

“See what? He pushed me to the side. “My handsome face?” he smiled.

If he smiled, he clearly didn’t see. “Never mind.”

“Get some sleep.” he walked toward the door. “And maybe stop staring into mirrors. I don’t think we covered them the day grandma died.” and then he was gone.

I stared at the ground. I did not want to look back up but I could feel that ghastly pale unreality staring down at me.

David’s words echoed hollow in my ears. That was just a superstition grandma had. You must always cover the mirrors when a soul passes till after the funeral. She was always quoting old tradition as if it were the gospel truth. Every time she cooked a bird, she’d eat the heart for good health. Maybe that’s why she lived till ninety. I can’t remember her saying what would happen if we didn’t cover the mirrors though.

But it was just a superstition. I just needed sleep. I walked towards the bedroom, careful of letting my eye line wander. Still I caught it from the corner of my eye, that reflection, even more uncomfortable and unsettling than before.

I collapsed to the bed and was quick to sleep. Quick to escape the hallucination I must have made up from stress. It was just a simple mirror and in the morning all I'd see would be my reflection.

It was not morning the next time I saw the mirror. Startled awake, I looked at the side table, there sat a clock with red lights blinking three A.M. I could feel it again. All the way from the hall I could feel the reflection calling out, screaming its existence, taunting me to look again. It was all just a silly nightmare fantasy, right? I got up and shuffled to the hallway. I’m not sure if in that moment I was answering it’s call or trying to prove something to myself.

The hall was lit only by the moon creeping through the window. There I stood looking at the mirror and there it sat staring back at me. That gaunt menacing false reflection looking at me with unflinching eyes and a satisfied grimace. It had to be false. I would not expect any reality, nor plane of existence where that abomination was my true face. It was too unsettling.

Sunrise came and I seized the staring contest with the unreality within the mirror. I went about my day as one normally would but I kept out of the hall. If I could not find an alternate route I would simply cross through the hall quickly, making eye contact only with the floor. Days passed like this, maybe months. Though I avoided the mirror I could always feel it watching, haunting from the hallway. It permeated every corner of that old house with its presence. Slowly at first, but then I could feel it take up residence cracks on the floorboards and every crease in the walls. I felt like a shed infested with termites. My skin felt like it was peeling and the mirror just hung there, a false reflection staring.

Three A.M. to sunrise every night, I’d find myself in front of the mirror staring. The more I stared, the more it looked like me and the more I stared, the less it looked like me. What could it be? Mirrors only show you a reflection but this one did not show mine. Surely, it was just a dream, an illusion. I reached out one night and ran my finger down the frame. A small piece splintered off into my hand. I felt pain and blood dripped. Yet, the reflection remained looming still unchanged with its grimace. It was not a dream.

That sunrise I did not leave as normal. We continued to stare, the false reflection and I. Laughter danced in its bloodshot eyes. This whole time it hadn’t made a sound, but day after day it was the loudest thing in the house.

I don’t know if it was summoned when grandma passed and we did not cover the mirrors, or if it was there when I was a child. If I never bothered to look back then, it could have always been here. It could have always been watching.

Staring.

It was taunting me and I knew it. Every second we continued this psychotic staring contest it believed it had already won. However, how could it have, for it was trapped in a mirror and I was out here. I had time and freedom, all I needed was to find a way to rid the false reflection from here. Surely, I had the upper hand.

The light in the hallway grew brighter as the sun moved into its midday position. The unreality in the mirror remained the same. The door clicked and I could hear the floor creak at the front of the hall. “Hello?” David called out but I would not look away. I feared no one else would ever see the false reflection if I did.

David walked down the hall to me. “hey are you alright? You haven’t picked up the phone in days.” He stopped short. “Woah, you don’t look so good? When’s the last time you ate?”

“Never mind that, come here.” I waved him over. Eye contact with the false reflection doesn’t break.

David doesn’t move. “I think you should come with me first. Let’s…”

“No!” I took the risk. Turned from the mirror, broke contact, and grabbed David. I dragged him to the mirror. I stood behind David. “There, look don’t you see it.”

The sickly abomination had not left in the time it took to grab David, as I feared. It was there leering at us and still taunting me. David had to see it. He had too.

“It’s just us.” David said. “I don’t…”

“There! Right there!” I pointed to the mirror. “The reflection, that isn’t me.”

“Yes it is. That’s you and that’s me.”

“No it’s me, but it’s not me. It’s not reality, it has to be something different.” I moved next to the mirror. “See?”

“I don’t know what you’re seeing. Are you sure you’re ok…”

At that moment it came to me. I knew how to get rid of the false reflection and make the mirror and I the same again. “I’ll show you” The glass shattered around my knuckles.

“Holy shit!” David tried to pull me away from the mirror, but I couldn’t let him.

I wasn’t done.

The mirror may have broken but those bloodshot eyes and taunting grimace still stared back at me. I grabbed a shard and pried it out of the mirror. “I’ll show you what it looks like.” I took the shard and sliced open my cheek. “Like this. It looks like this.” piece by piece I peeled the skin from my face with the mirror. I felt the blood slide down my neck and pool on my shirt. I felt no pain, only heat.

David reached to take the shard. “Stop. what are you…” hand got cut in the attempt. “I’m calling you an ambulance.” he ran off faster than I’d ever seen him run.

I continued my work and cut after cut I began to look like the reflection. Both our eyes were red, surrounded by ghastly complexions, and the little skin we had pale drained of blood. I smiled at the false reflection, the unreality that lived in the mirror, because it no longer was. I had made it real. I had made it true. The reflection and I were the same, just as it was meant to be. The smile matched the grimace and it was no longer taunting. I had won.

I heard sirens get closer and David came back. He was accompanied by two men. “We need you to drop the glass, so we can help you,” said one.

I dropped the mirror piece and turned to them. “It’s okay.” I wiped blood from my mouth. “I don’t need help now. I did it. The false reflection is gone. We’re the same now.” I stepped toward David. “See we’re the same.”

David stumbled back and the two men took hold of me. They started asking a lot of questions but none mattered. “Tell them David. Tell them I fixed it.”

The two men pushed me down on a board and strapped me in. “David, it’s true now. The mirror shows my reflection.” The men brought me out the door but David didn't follow. “He’ll see. I was right. Soon he’ll see. Everything is real now.”