Mirror/rorriM

A man finds that his mirror reflection has evil intentions.

Look at these walls, padded. Like I would intentionally hurt myself by banging my head against it. That would just be stupid. They call me insane, but I’m the most sane person in the world. It’s he that’s insane. The other me. Well I suppose I should explain. Let’s start at the beginning, or as some stories begin, “Once upon a time…” But this isn’t a fairytale, and it doesn’t have a happy ending. It started off when I found the other me.

It started out as a normal day. The alarm went off, and I got up and neglected my workout routine as usual. I had a girlfriend. What did I need to work out for? So I hopped in the shower and the usual. Lather, rinse, and repeat. I got out and dried off. Got dressed, and then went back into the bathroom to begin messing with my hair. Yeah, I’m vain about my hair. At the time it seemed pretty normal. Nothing out of the ordinary. Now that I look back I can remember thinking that my reflection in the mirror wasn’t really synced up with what I was doing, but I thought I was only humoring myself. How wrong I was.

I went to work and did the usual--reports and meetings. I’m in such a routine with these that I pretty much slept through all of them. Sleepwalking was more like it. I went through the motions, but my mind was shut down. Lunch consisted of a nice lemon pepper chicken and rice at this nice outdoor café right around the corner from work. It was a nice day out so I figured why not enjoy it since I was locked in the office all day.

Well I was enjoying my chicken as I read the newspaper. Same stuff in the paper every day really. Wars were being fought, interns were being slept with in Washington D.C., and another school shooting. Doctors were saying it was due to a recent movie. I was disgusted as the school shooting was on page five, the interns on page three, and the war on page two. What was on the front page? Another celebrity break up. I read part of it and saw that it was hard to keep a relationship together when you are famous. Yeah, it must suck having millions of dollars and to be able to work all over the world. If you could call it work. Trying one day at my job and they’d be crying for their mothers. I seem to be getting off the subject at hand. Who wants to hear me complain about my job?

So I put my paper down and ate the last bite of chicken on my plate. I threw the tip on the table and began to get up. My reflection danced across one of the windows. I looked over and saw myself getting out of my chair, but something seemed out of place. I looked down to see if maybe I had spilled something on my shirt. Everything seemed to be in order. No stains. I looked into the window again and saw right away what it was. My reflection was smiling. I wasn’t smiling, but my reflection had a huge grin on its face. Not an , “I just got a new puppy,” smile but more of a ,”your liver is going to taste great when I eat it,” smile. It was scary. I leaned closer to see if I could figure it out. As I did, it began to speak.

“Dead, dead, dead.” It just said this over and over again. I looked around to see if anyone else was noticing this, but everyone sat calmly eating their lunches. I looked back at the windows and everything was back to normal. No chanting reflections., just plain old me. The sun was getting to me, I decided, so I headed back to the office and finished out my day’s work. By the time I walked out the front door of my office building, the incident at lunch had been pushed to the back of my mind.

When I got home I changed into jeans and a t-shirt. I was going out with my girlfriend that night, but it was only dinner and a movie so it wasn’t worth dressing up for. Anna was the type of girl that most guys would have died to be with. She had a smile that would drive you up the wall, long blonde hair that framed her face perfectly, and a body that most super models would be jealous of. How was I so lucky?

When I entered the bathroom, the events earlier in the day entered my mind. I peered into the mirror and looked closely. It seemed normal. As I turned to exit I thought I saw my reflection wink at me but when I looked again it was still normal. No evil smile. No chanting. I breathed a sigh of relief.

I picked Anna up at her apartment, and we had a quick dinner before heading to the theater. We decided on the new Jim Carrey movie. I had hoped it was more like his comedies. Anna hoped it was more like the dramatic movies he had begun doing lately. It turned out she won. It’s not like I don’t like those movies, I just like his movies better when I can laugh. So we sat and watched. To my delight there were some funny parts. Halfway through, my bladder told me I had drank too many sodas, so I went to the bathroom to take care of business. I washed my hands, and when I glanced up at the mirror I saw my reflection was smiling again. That evil smile. I looked around and saw that I was alone in the bathroom. When I looked back it was still smiling.

“What do you want?” I asked it. It just sat there smiling at me. Anger had begun to build up in my mind. Why wasn’t it responding? “What the f**k do you want?” This time I was screaming. Still it sat there only smiling. “Answer me, God damn you!” I almost gave in to the urge to punch the mirror and shatter it into a million pieces when it spoke.

“I’m going to kill her. I’m going to cut off her head and put it on the coffee table.” All I can say is that pure terror ran through my body. I was pretty sure it was talking about Anna.

“Why are you going to kill her?” I asked. This time it only sat and smiled again. “Why damn you?” It didn’t break that evil smile. “Answer me mother f****r!” I was screaming at the top of my lungs when the door opened and a couple of high school boys walked in. I looked over at them, and they looked at me like I was crazy. When I looked back at the mirror my reflection was back to normal. They walked around me trying to keep as far away from me as possible. When the doors on the stalls shut I looked back into the mirror but the evil reflection was still gone. I threw some water on my face and went back to my seat. I don’t remember much of the movie after I sat back down. The rest of my time was spent worrying about what was happening to me, and what could happen to Anna if my reflection had been talking about her.

Finally the end credits began to roll. As we walked out into the cool night air, Anna began to talk about things that had happened to her at work that day. The only image filling my head was that evil smile. It’s one of those images that gets burned into your brain. By the time we got to Anna’s apartment she had been talking for twenty minutes and I didn’t hear a single word she had said. I said my goodbyes and gave her a kiss. She was surprised I didn’t want to come in for some extracurricular activities. I had way too much on my mind to even start something like that.

The evil smile was stuck in my head as I walked home. How had this come about? My reflection has somehow become a sentient being. It could move, think, and talk on its own. Worst of all was the fact that its intentions seemed to be murderous. Was it jealous? Was it just inherently evil? These were questions I didn’t have the answers to.

I got home and began to pace around my living room. What could I do about this? If I told anyone they would laugh their a*s off at me. And if something happens and I kill it? Does it hurt me? Do I live without a reflection for the rest of my life? More questions and fewer answers.

Quietly I moved to the bathroom. Slowly I reached my arm into the darkness and flipped on the light switch. The panels on each side of the mirror flared to life. Everything seemed normal just as it had that morning. I walked into the bathroom never taking my eyes off the mirror. As I approached my reflection grew bigger but still seemed normal. It moved right along with me as I stepped in front of the mirror.

“I know you’re there,” I said to my likeness. Nothing happened. It just mimicked me, as a reflection should. “Show yourself damn it!” I yelled. Nothing. I started to get really angry again. Why was he not showing himself? I put my hands on the mirror to see if my reflection would move with me. All I could feel was the coldness of the mirror beneath my palms. I slid my hand across the surface. The hand on the other side moved in unison with mine. I stopped and spread my fingers apart. My head began to hurt. I had to be going crazy. Here I was standing in my bathroom testing to see if my reflection would move along with me.

Giving up I began to lower my hand from the mirror when something grabbed it. I looked up to see that evil face grinning at me. It my arm grasped around the wrist. Forcefully it began to pull me towards the mirror. As it did, it began to come out of the mirror. Its head materialized right in front of my eyes.

“Dead, dead, dead,” it began to say over and over again. I started to struggle against its grip but it held fast. As it got closer and closer, I was sure it would begin to tear my face off with its teeth. I squeezed my eyes shut. It was still pulling me forward when it suddenly let go. I fell to the floor. When I opened my eyes I could see the toilet in front of me. It felt odd, as it seemed that with the way I fell, I would have gone through the mirror. As I began to get to my knees, I realized that the toilet was on the wrong side of the room. The whole room seemed to be backwards. I turned to look into the mirror behind me. There was my reflection staring back at me with that smile. That stupid, evil smile. Somehow I was now in the reflection and he was out in the real world.

“I told you I was going to kill her,” it said to me. “I am going to stick a knife in her belly and slice her open.” It closed its eyes in ecstasy, as if it were really enjoying describing what it planned to do. “Her insides will fall out onto the floor. It will be so much fun to run my fingers through them.”

“You leave her alone!” I yelled. This only seemed to make it enjoy it more.

“Warm blood spilling out of her. It’s the best feeling.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. It only smiled and then walked out of the bathroom. I pressed myself against the mirror to see if I could see where he was going. Suddenly in front of me the view changed and I was staring into the small mirror that hung by the front door of my apartment. It glanced up at me again.

“See you soon,” it said as it walked out the door. I waited in a panic, as the view did not change for quite some time. From what I could gather my view would change every time it stood in front of a mirror. I didn’t expect my view to be changing for a while, as it was a twenty-minute walk to Anna’s apartment. So I waited. It seemed I could only walk in any direction about two feet before I hit an invisible wall. Rules of the reflection world were obviously different.

As I waited, I pondered about what I could do. If I broke the mirror on this side could I get out? I pulled off my shirt and wrapped it around my arm. With a quick jab the mirror broke. Tiny shards fell to the floor. All that I accomplished was taking away my view of my living room.

Dejected, I put my shirt back on. Just as I pulled the shirt over my head the view changed again. To my disappointment it was the view of Anna’s bedroom from her full-length mirror by her closet. I saw Anna embracing “it” through the door in the hallway. Instantly I began to pound on the mirror.

“Anna! It’s not me. Get away from it.” It looked up at me and smiled that evil f*****g smile that I have grown to hate. “Get the hell away from her!” But that only made it smile more. I saw it reach behind its back and produce a large knife.

“No!” I screamed. It quickly grabbed Anna by the throat and pushed her down on the bed. A look of surprise was on her face as the knife plunged down and entered her chest. Liquid crimson began to flow down her into puddles on the bed. She struggled for a few seconds but the knife had entered her heart. It turned to look at me again.

“I told you it would be fun.” It pulled the knife out of her chest and began to do some of the most horrific things I have ever witnessed. I’m not going to go into detail, but my evil reflection made good on its promises. Her head would be found on the coffee table and her insides were all over the floor. He had his way with them. It made me sick. My stomach churned as I saw my girlfriend’s intestines played with.

When it was finally finished it left the room. Anna was now spread out all over the room. Her body lay on the bed but her head had been taken into the living room. Tears were flowing down my face. Why did this happen? I still didn’t have the answers. It walked back into the room with the telephone at his ear.

“Yes. I just killed my girlfriend and chopped her into pieces. You might want to send the police.” It hung up and walked over to the mirror. “The police will be here soon to arrest me. Or rather arrest you.” It smiled again. I wanted to rip that smile off its face. The phone rang in its hand , and it threw it against the wall.

“Why did you do this?” My voice was shaky.

“Because I could,” it responded. “If you’re looking for more of an answer there is none other than because I could.” It left the room again leaving me sitting there trying to make sense of it. Before long I heard a banging on the front door. It came walking in again.

“Time to go home.” It reached into the mirror and grabbed my arm. I tried to back away but my lack of room to move inhibited me. It pulled me back into the room just as the police kicked in the bedroom door.


You can pretty much guess the rest of the story. They say I am crazy. I am not crazy. Every time I see a mirror and see that f*****g smile I begin to scream. But I am not crazy, I tell you, I am not crazy. Why does it keep torturing me? I hate it. If I could, I would kill it. I am not crazy. You have to believe me.

Reviews

[Jeff Vogel]

"From what I could gather my view would change every time it stood in front of a mirror." Original detail................Loved it!

[Brian N]

I was certainly entertained by this story. The description of the protagonist's daily life was executed in an imaginative and engaging manner. However, the repeated use of the adjective "nice" to describe the character's lunch briefly pulled me out of the narrative.
Although I wouldn't label the story's overall premise as "original", it does evoke a primordial, archetypal dread that is perfect material for a horror story. It's a given that every possible story idea has been exhausted long since, anyway, so the storyteller's job is to make things interesting. The author of this tale has succeeded admirably in this regard by his insightful use of details and descriptions of the characters' behavior. Due credit must be given to the natural, concise prose, which does much to enhance the story. My favorite line was, "he had his way with them." Disturbing.

[Chaos X 3]

this story was great, but man, I wish there had been an actual reason. Like the reflection hated looking at the actual guy so he was gonna put him somewhere he'd never see a mirror again. My favorite lines of the story,

"Not an , �I just got a new puppy,� smile but more of a ,�your liver is going to taste great when I eat it,� smile."

I love that. Your liver in going to taste great. kinda has a Hannibal lecter meets 'the pokey lil puppy' feeling to it. But all in all. I loved it. The descriptions were awesome, it had a good plot, and the gore factor? a definate 10.

[Anthony Ackerley]

I enjoyed this piece, it kept me involved. Small issue in the beginning, the repeition of the term "usual"... not sure if it was intentional or not (I can understand the reasoning if it was) but to me it seemed unncessary. But if that's all i can complain about, it's a success lol

[Jmyer]

Chilling... I love it. It would be cool to hear more about this character and his reflection.

[Magnolia Belle]

This is seriously twisted - full of great imagination and horror. The end is perfect.