I shouldn’t have answered the door that night, but loneliness makes you stupid.
It was a storm like I’d never seen—rain lashing the windows of my apartment on the 13th floor, thunder cracking like bones. I’m scrolling through my phone, alone as usual, when the knock comes. Three sharp raps, deliberate. I check the peephole: nothing but the empty hallway, emergency lights buzzing red.
I open it anyway. There’s a package on the mat, soaked through, no label, no sender. Just my name scrawled in black ink that doesn’t run in the wet. I bring it inside, figuring it’s a mix-up. Unwrap it on the kitchen table: inside is a mirror. Antique, ornate frame crusted with tarnish, glass fogged like breath on a window.
I wipe it clean with my sleeve. My reflection stares back—same tired eyes, same messy hair. But as I turn away, I catch it: the me in the mirror doesn’t move. It stays, watching.
I laugh it off—trick of the light, right? Hang it in the bedroom anyway, because why not? That night, I wake up at 3:13 a.m. to a tapping sound. Like fingers on glass. The mirror’s across from the bed, and in it, my reflection is sitting up while I’m still lying down. It waves.
Heart in my throat, I bolt out of bed, flip on the lights. The reflection matches me now, mocking. I cover it with a sheet and crawl back under the covers, telling myself it’s sleep paralysis or whatever.
Next morning, I search the frame for clues—find an engraving on the back: “See yourself as I do.” Creepy, but old mirrors have weird histories. I leave it covered. That evening, while cooking, I hear humming from the bedroom. My voice, but not mine—off-key, like a bad recording. I yank the sheet off: the mirror shows me in the kitchen, stirring a pot that isn’t there yet.
It’s predicting me. Or leading.
I smash it that night. Glass shatters everywhere, seven years bad luck be damned. Sweep it up, bag it, toss it in the dumpster outside. Relief washes over me. Sleep comes easy for the first time.
But at dawn, I wake to tapping again. Not from the wall—from inside my head. I stumble to the bathroom mirror, the one that came with the apartment. My reflection grins, teeth too sharp. “You can’t break what’s already inside,” it says with my mouth, but I’m not speaking.
I claw at my face, trying to stop it. Blood streaks the glass. Now every reflective surface does it: windows, phone screens, even puddles on the street. They all show a version of me that’s one step ahead, whispering secrets I don’t want to know. Like how I’ll die alone, or worse—how I’m not alone anymore.
I’m typing this on my cracked phone screen, the one that reflects a hand reaching out from behind my shoulder. If a package shows up at your door with no name, burn it. And whatever you do, don’t look too long at what stares back. It might decide to come through.
ID: Zezo369
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