Switch

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own. Truthfully, over the last week something seemed slightly off with the mirror, but I chalked it up to simply not having had my morning cup of coffee. It made sense, given how blurry the world is in that ungodly period between waking and caffeine. Today, though, there was no mistaking the visage before me was radically different. It was me alright, but my eyes were vacant, rounded features were hardened and angular, and my skin was deathly pale.

What was most alarming, though, was the thin, blood-red lips, skewed into an unnatural smile, if one would even call it that. I broke my gaze away, flushed my face with cold water, and prayed that the nightmarish ghoul before me was my imagination, taunting me with its power to chill. When I came back up, the mirror was back to normal. I quietly sighed and walked away, relieved that whatever that… that thing was gone, receding back into the depths of my mind where it belonged.

A steady stream of emails kept my mind occupied at the office, and it wasn’t until I started driving home that the morning’s grotesque image began creeping back to the forefront of my thoughts. I shook it off again, assuring myself that it wasn’t real. I walked into the house, weary from the day’s events. Lacking the motivation to make a proper dinner, I cracked open a beer and made do with a couple of peanut butter and jam sandwiches.

Yet there was that nagging feeling of putting off the inevitable. I had to look in the mirror again, for my own sanity if nothing else. So, after dinner I worked up the courage to walk towards the upstairs bathroom. I paused briefly in the hallway outside the bathroom, swearing that I could hear murmurs emanating from inside. I nervously laughed at the ridiculousness of it, knowing full well the old house was full of creaks and squeaks that would explain the hushed noises. Nevertheless, I turned the hallway light on and opened the bathroom door.

I stood in front of the mirror, relieved that there was nothing amiss about the reflection… at first. Slowly, the reflection in the mirror grew darker, as if a curtain was being pulled across the mirror by an unseen hand. I stood silent, breathless, as my reflection painstakingly morphed into the horrific, bastardized, alternate version of myself. As I gazed, the vision began moving its gnarled lips, as if speaking. Before long, I realized that it was speaking, that eerie murmur I had heard in the hallway. Its words grew in volume, almost to the point I could decipher what it was saying, but frustratingly not loud enough to do so.

Every fiber of my being was imploring me to walk… no, run away from the mirror. But I had to know. I had to know what it was saying. Against my better judgment, I leaned in closer to try and make out what was being said. The voice was chilling, a raspy whisper awash in a moribund glee. Still, I couldn’t make sense of the words, so I leaned in a touch closer, closing my eyes to keep from being distracted. It sounded like “we witch, hello Earth”, but that wasn’t quite it. Just a little closer…

I opened my eyes, and God, I wish I had never done so. I was no longer in my home, but in a Picasso-like abstract version of it. The walls were blood-red, the floor riddled with bones, some of which still held the rotting skin of whom it came from. I pulled back from the mirror and stared ahead. There, in the place I was mere moments before, stood the ghoulish version of myself. It leaned forward, pushing its face ever so slightly into this unholy world, mockingly speaking the words it had been repeating before turning and walking away with purpose – “We switch. Hell on Earth.”