The Reflection That Stayed
There’s an old farmhouse outside Uppsala that no one rents for long.
It’s ordinary from the outside — white paint, sagging roof, and a mirror in the hall that seems to have come with the house.
A woman named Elin moved in last spring. She didn’t believe the rumors — the ones about the mirror showing things that weren’t quite right.
The first few weeks were fine. Then, one evening after brushing her teeth, she noticed her reflection lagged — only half a second, but unmistakably.
She laughed it off.
Maybe she was tired.
But the next night, when she turned off the bathroom light, she caught her reflection smiling — long after her face had gone still.
Elin stopped using the mirror, draping a towel over it. Yet every morning, she’d find the towel neatly folded on the floor.
On the final night she lived there, she woke to the sound of slow footsteps in the hall — and the faint, steady creak of the bathroom door opening.
In the morning, the house was quiet again.
Only one thing had changed: in the mirror, Elin’s reflection was still standing — wide-eyed, waiting — though the room behind her was empty.
stake: kentakofotdm