Reflections

by Cindy Carroll

A road trip without a plan sounded like a good idea when Lena and her friends hit the road. After hours of driving in the heat in a cramped car they're all ready for something to eat and a good night's rest.Reflections Inn looks perfect for the group of friends. A little run down, it hides a supernatural horror. A curse that replaces people with their repressed alter egos forces the friends to fight for their lives. Duplicates who lack restraint, crave gratification emerge from the mirrors. Too late they realize they didn't know each other as well as they thought.One by one, Lena's friends learn the truth about their repressed emotions, their suppressed violent urges.What doesn't kill them can only make them stronger.This is a short story of approximately 7,800 words.

55 pages, Paperback

First published July 17, 2013

About the author

Cindy is a member of Sisters in Crime and a graduate of Hal Croasmun's screenwriting ProSeries. Her interviews with writers of CSI and Flashpoint appeared in The Rewrit, the Scriptscene newsletter, the screenwriting Chapter of RWA. She writes screenplays, thrillers, and paranormals, occasionally exploring an erotic twist. A background in banking and IT doesn't allow much in the way of excitement so she turns to writing stories that are a little dark and usually have a dead body. She lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband and their cat. When she's not writing you can usually find her painting landscapes in oil or trying space paintings with spray paint.

Reviews

[Jeanette · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the worst item in print, of any length, that I've read this year. Or last year either, come to think of it.

I'm aghast that this level of story structure, or mindset- let alone the level of language used is easily online published. Not a good choice for Halloween (marketed as a horror story?) to try this type of half wit bottom feeder cognition. Put into trite and repetitive form, on top of it. Humping is one of the favorite words.

[Ronald Keeler · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Reflections, a horror short story by Cindy Carroll, five friends go on a road trip by just jumping into Brody’s car and driving. Who knows where they will end up? Somewhere there must have been a wrong turn. Or the GPS is lying. Or Brody is lying when he said he updated the GPS. The weather was hot, the car was too small for five people, and hotels were not where they were supposed to be. Margo and Lena were dying for a hot shower. More so after Lena’s cemetery adventure.

An inn is almost the same as a hotel. There was a room for Margo and Keith, another for Lena and Brody, and a single for the recently abandoned Steve. Rebecca would pay for dumping him as soon as Steve could devise a plan. Steve cursed his luck. He shouldn’t have cursed in front of a mirror. He should not have used the words from a plaque at the bottom of a mirror to phrase his curse. Now his better half was in the mirror while the Steve appearing to his friends was an unchained, deadly, baser self. Steve was the first victim of the mirrors. Keith was the first victim of Steve.

Will this be the last stop on the road trip for the five friends? This fast-moving short story may discourage readers from staying at hotels/motels/inns with ceiling mirrors.

This was a free story supplied by the author. Her Amazon author page lists one novel, The Princess Prophecy, and three anthologies to which she has contributed. This is a four-star Amazon read. I look forward to reading more of her short stories.

[Liz Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very quick read. I could definitely see this as a movie