She was me, but I didn’t like that. I never really liked ‘me’, to be honest. Why would I, when I felt like everyone else just tolerated me, at best? An irrational thought. Which is why I liked ‘me’ even less.

I scowled, and so did my reflection.

Sometimes, I wished she would do something else. It would be terrifying, but it would show me that something else was going on in this world. Or it would just tell me I had another thing wrong with me on top of everything else.

Or maybe not.

Because that’s exactly what happened next. My scowl in the mirror faded into a deeper frown, but that didn’t make sense, because I was still scowling. I felt a pit form in my stomach as panic began to set in. Now, I smiled.

My reflection didn’t.

“No… no no no… no… please, go back to normal. I didn’t mean to think that,” I mumbled, taking a step back and just hitting the door. My expression faded back into a deep frown, and I felt my breathing intensify.

Now, my reflection smiled and shook her head. She seemed to consider things for a moment before she almost gave me an apologetic expression. Then…she spoke in my voice.

“No one is going to believe you,” she said softly, sending shivers down my spine. “But you know that,” she mused. Then, she chuckled, a laugh so sinister that I found myself wondering vaguely if I could mimic the sound. She nodded. “You can.” I widened my eyes. “Yes, I can hear your thoughts. They are mine. Did you know…” She tilted her head.

She reached down and produced a knife from her pocket, one that hadn’t been in mine. Snapped out of my frozen-fear reaction, I whirled toward the door and tried opening it. A chuckle rang out behind me. “You know that won’t work. When does it ever work?” Though she had a point, I kept trying for obvious reasons.

“You might as well turn around and look at me,” she said. I shook my head, reasoning the best thing to do right now was to not look at her. I heard her tsk and say, “Don’t you want to know why you’re bleeding on your cheek?”

At that moment, I felt a sharp pain on followed by a warm trickle of liquid drag down the side of my face and winced. I reached up and wiped it away, looking down to see crimson.

Blood.

Of course it was.

Clenching my jaw, I turned to stare at my reflection. She was bleeding too, and now wore a smirk.

“What do you want?!” I snapped, barely able to speak through the stress. Oddly, my reflection momentarily looked impressed. She must be fully aware I usually couldn’t speak during times like this.

“For you to know something,” she said. She let that sink in for a moment before continuing. “I could, at any point in time, end your life. You know the trope well, right? I could rip your jaw off by doing it to myself. I could use this knife and carve your face off. I could cut through the tendons of your arms, your legs. It would be quite agonizing, wouldn’t it? We have quite the imagination. Somehow, I’d be fine. But you? You’d be dead after a very painful experience.”

I no longer could speak, as my throat had closed. I couldn’t scream, as that’s just not something I really did in fear. I could only stare at her now, a tear trickling down my cheek and mixing with my blood. I opened my mouth, then closed it.

“You’re trying to ask why,” she snickered. “Why I would do that. Why I would threaten it. Does it matter ‘why’? I could. That’s the only thing that does matter,” she said. Her grin widened into an unnaturally wide smile, and her pupils grew to encompass her entire eye.

She was a monster.

My reflection had turned into something else, yet was still me. I knew, deep down, she could do all of the things she promised.

‘Why’ doesn’t matter. It only matters that you could, I thought, and she nodded. She stared at me, tilting her head and wearing that eerie smile for just a moment.

“No one will believe you, either. You know that, too. You’re going to look unhinged, because you are. This is really happening, you will know it right down to your instincts. Yet there is nothing you can do, and no one you can tell. You are alone.”

I am… I thought to myself.

“Except, you aren’t alone. I’m here. And maybe it would be better if you were truly alone. I could do a number of horrible things to you, physically and mentally. But so can everyone else. You know that. It could happen any time for no reason at all. Somehow, that is worse. Isn’t it?,” she asked softly.

Her stare turned apologetic as I swallowed, feeling the edges of my vision darken.

She said, “That’s why I won’t kill you. What is the point? But I could change my mind, couldn’t I. At any time I’d like.”

Everything went black.

*****

I woke up in a hospital bed, staring off into the distance and not truly hearing anyone. They were all muffled. I opened my mouth to tell them, but realized it would be pointless. No one would believe me anyway.

My reflection could do that at any point in time, right? She said she could…. She made a point, too. Anyone could do a number of horrible things and for no reason at all. What if they did so, one day? Or if they just left me alone with her forever. If I told them, they would just think I was crazy.

No incidents happened for several months, but I couldn’t get what happened out of my head. I avoided mirrors, yet still caught my reflection every so often.

Eventually I managed to dismiss it as a dream. It was the only way I could live.

One day, I felt comfortable enough to take out the mirror in my purse. My reflection had only tormented me in that one particular bathroom mirror, that one singular time. No other mirror caused an incident.

Until today. My eyes remained wide open.

Yet my reflection winked at me.

Author Note: Hello! I hope you liked my short horror story. It’s actually meant to be a psychological horror based on my trauma from childhood and my mood disorder. I tried to capture the paranoia that anything could go wrong at any time for no reason. I hope you enjoyed it. It’s rough living with the irrational fear that everyone is just tolerating you and will snap someday. Please take care of your mental health

Also, if you’re interested in horror topics, please follow my channel DesastrNarrations and check out videos like The Uncanny Valley of Sound!

If you want more horror, check out my Vampire Horror audiobook “The Dancing Crow”!