The Monsters in the Mirror

There once was a young girl named Jane who loved mirrors. She didn’t so much enjoy looking at herself; she liked seeing how the mirror shifted the image just so, just enough to notice there was something off. 

Her mother noticed the change in fitting rooms. “This mirror makes me look fat,” she would say as she stared at her size three waist. 

Her father noticed it when he shaved his beard before work. “I could swear I saw a rough patch right there,” he would slur through his morning haze, tapping a spot just below his ear. Yet there it sat, smooth as the day he was born. 

But Jane, she saw more in the mirror than her parents. She saw the way shadows appeared where nothing was casting them; how leering faces would just catch the corner of her eye and then disappear the moment she focused on them. She saw the occasional flick of a tail, flash of a tooth, or snap of a wing appear in her periphery. But she never knew what she was seeing and she never told a soul what she saw.

Jane’s mother was not overly concerned with her daughter’s fascination with mirrors. “It’s healthy for a young lady to appreciate her own beauty,” she told her Jane as she primped her hair in the bathroom mirror, glaring at a wayward smudge of lipstick on her chin. 

“Just take care not to break it,” her father said, “or it’s seven years bad luck.” Jane didn’t need to ask why. She had glimpsed just enough of the world on the other side of the mirror to realize she had no wish to know more. 

Unfortunately, we rarely get what we wish for.

Jane, as much as she loved mirrors, rarely touched them. She would look from afar and stare into them for hours, hoping the mirror wouldn’t fall on its own. It never did. And just when she thought she was safe, Jane received what can be the greatest blessing in a young girl’s life: a baby brother. He was a beautiful, sleepy, well behaved baby except for one, small fault. 

He loved knocking things over.

Like a cat, he would swat at the nearest object within his reach, knocking over baby bottles, vases, books, and glasses; anything not tied down was certain to fall victim to his flailing, grubby hands.

One night, Jane and her brother were left alone with a nanny so their parents could enjoy a night out of the house. An hour after they left, the phone began to ring. Jane was coloring at the kitchen table and promised to watch her brother as the nanny put the baby down for a moment to answer the phone. 

Jane looked up just in time to see her brother toddle over to the large mirror by the counter. “No!” she cried, but it was too late. In his fascination with his own image, her brother had knocked the mirror to the ground, smashing it to pieces. 

Jane leapt to her feet and ran over to where her brother lay crying. She saw clearly now the beasts that had been hiding in the mirror, their gaping, suction-cup like mouths gripping the baby’s skin. She grabbed a broom from the nearby closet and attacked their writhing forms.

The nanny came rushing in just in time to see Jane smack a monster off her brother’s crying form. But she didn’t see the beast. 

“Jane!” she screamed, snatching the broom from the girl’s hands. “Have you lost your mind? Your brother is hurt and here you are, hitting him with a broom!” 

“Let me go!” Jane cried. “They’re hurting him! The beasts from the mirror, they’re hurting him!” 

Jane could only watch as the monsters suctioned themselves onto her baby brother, who lay helpless on the floor.
“Why?” she whispered to one of the beasts as she was dragged away. 

It smiled, its gaping mouth revealing rows and rows of teeth. “He took away our home,” it hissed. “And now we have a new one. But don’t worry!” it said as it slithered away. “We’ll all die in about seven years!”