The infernal mirror

“I feel good now. Strong. These past days I have used all my power to lure her out and now I can finally breathe again. I am strong enough now”

It was a sunny afternoon in May. The Walter family was expecting a delivery soon. It was from their extended family in Queens, USA, where a tragedy struck recently, leaving their furniture to go to the nearest branch of their family. Fifteen-year-old Sarah was impatiently waiting for the delivery as she had been excited to choose what she can keep and redecorate her room with. Her nine-year-old little sister did not show any interest in the waiting as she was busy playing with her dog Scobie. And there comes the delivery truck, Sarah thought when the gates opened.

Sarah was standing in her room facing the 19th-century oval gilded mirror. There was something about it that Sarah couldn’t put a finger on. The mirror attracted her the most, and she found a spare space in her room to put it there. It was not possible, but somehow the mirror was making her look elegant. She laughed at those thoughts as she prepared for her night.

Sarah woke up in the middle of the night hearing the sound of scratching against her windows. She could hear thumping on the stairs, like someone was coming for her, and the steps grew louder and closer. It wasn’t her family. She had been living with them for 15 years and knew when it was them. She broke into a sweat and quickly got out of her bed and reached for the baseball bat. Her father had taught her so many times to defend herself in situations like these, and yet somehow, she was feeling helpless. She hoped, in some part of her brain, that it was just her sister running on the stairs to scare her. Suddenly, the steps stopped, and in the stillness of the room, she could hear the opening of the door. In a situation like this, every outcome of the person standing behind the door is unexpected, but what Sarah saw made her freeze to the floor. It was her. Her body. Her features. Her face, and yet she was different in a more eerie way. The smile she held was blood-curling, and when her eyes swept across the mirror, the mirror showed something else, something which made Sarah scream at the top of her lungs, waking herself up. She was in her bed, under her covers. It was a nightmare. There is no double of her. A stupid, illogical nightmare created by her twisted mind. No more horror movies, Sarah thought to herself and went back to sleep. A mirror-cracking sound was made from the corner of the room, but Sarah was too exhausted to notice.

The next morning, Sarah was in a hurry to school. She went down while her mom was making her lunchbox. “Hey, mom, not sandwiches again!” Sarah said with a groan. She was washing her hands in the sink when she heard a whisper from behind. She turned around and saw a horrific scenario that made her turn cold all over again. Her mother, with her bloody hand, was piercing her hand over and over again and whispering, “It says, I have to do it.” Sarah’s instinct was to stop her mother from cutting her own flesh, but when she tried shaking her mother, she heard a voice in her head saying, “Down to earth, Sarah,” and suddenly a different scenario was in front of her eyes. Her mother was standing in front of her, her hand all normal, and asking her to take the tiffin. Sarah grabbed the tiffin and went straight for the school bus. She didn’t want to think about all that.

The school wasn’t good either. Sarah kept getting this feeling that everybody was staring at her, while the next moment everything was usual. She kept getting the cold feeling over and over again, like something bad was happening. She thought, “There is nothing wrong with me, it was a nightmare,” but this morning, it felt so vivid to be there and to shake her. Sarah wanted to distract her mind and didn’t think about it for the rest of school.

The rest of her day went as usual; she didn’t think about the incidents and distracted her mind. In the night, she was too exhausted to notice the whispers coming from the mirror in a strange language.

The next morning, she went to school as usual, but this time something felt strange. Even in the school, it felt like something was following her, and then she saw it. Across the ground, looking just like her, her own clone was smiling at her ear to ear with the evilness of the devil himself. She had a knife in her hand and started walking towards Sarah. Sarah’s feet froze, and only when the evil her was halfway across the ground, her body woke and she ran for her life into the classroom. Sarah was so scared for her life; previously it only seemed like some hallucinations and nightmares, but now… she saw herself walking towards her. She needed to talk to someone, Sarah decided. Maybe she was going mad.

After coming home, she decided to talk to her mother after changing. She went into her room and stopped in front of the mirror. She always liked to look pretty, and that mirror made her look just like that. But there was something wrong. Sarah realised something as she saw her reflection in the mirror smiling like it knew something. She realised in horror that she wasn’t smiling, but her reflection was. Her reflection raised her hand towards the mirror and reached for Sarah, coming out of the mirror. Sarah tried to shift away, but the hand grasped her tightly and pulled her inside the mirror. The last thing Sarah remembered was the cold chilled air that hit her and the sense of fading away into deep darkness.