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Her heavy coat rests on the chair next to her as her fingers try to undo the laces on her back which hold together her corset. She longs for the moment when it will give in, so she can finally breathe free again. At least for a while. Someone has sent flowers and their perfume fills the candlelit room. Christine likes the sweetness in the air. It always reminds her of summer, no matter which season reigns outside. She feels the tight piece of clothing eventually loosen and a sigh of relief escapes her beautiful lips. Gravity is about to drag it down when something hits Christine without warning that makes her grab the corset and causes her to freeze.
The scent beginsto smell too sweet to bear, causing a sudden qualm. What she senses is not strong enough to call ‘a feeling,’ not even strong enough to call ‘a fleeting idea’. It is instinct. Something that has been asleep in her cells all her life. Something she had never needed before. A nature-given gift, long forgotten by mankind over centuries and millennia, that warns her, that awakens when it perceives an unknown danger. The room abruptly seems to shrink and the light to grow darker. Horror strokes downward on her back like an ungentle steel brush and makes the tiny hair on her arms rise when a doubtlessness explodes inside her and sets her mind on fire: She is not alone. It is no feeling - it is knowing. Something inside the big mirror behind her back watches her. Awareness catches her: There exists something that is far beyond worry and much worse than fear. An experience Christine learns just in this very second. It is like a beat in her stomach, a breakpoint in time: The moment when her nightmares come to life and crawl out of the deepest depths of her darkest dreams into her reality. They hit her without warning and make her scared stiff. She wants to run, but the ability to move is suddenly lost … All she can manage is a glance over her shoulder, though there is a heavy aversion within her to do so. She is afraid to see and at the same time not to see. Only the mirror’sinverted rooms stare back at her and her own frightened face. Beside these things there is absolutely nothing, but still she can’t shake the feeling of something lurking inside the glass, inside the copy of the shadows around her. She senses hidden eyes on her body, a presence besides her own. Like an untamed river, blood whooshes in her ears and that is all she can hear mixed with the hard rhythm that her heart beats.
Without noticing, she begins to tremble and cold sweat forms on her forehead. Trapped – the exit fromthis room is just a few steps away and yet she feels unable to ever reach it. Also, there is a mean little voice inside her head claiming that if she actually managed to run and pry open the door in panic, she would only find out it had been locked all along. That there was no way out. That whatever was lurking within this world of mirror-inverted things would get her, no matter if she tried to flee or just remained paralyzed. A prey she is, nothing more. A prey about to be caught. The predator only waits for the perfect moment to dash out of the shadows.
It is a reflex thatfinally gives her the ability to rush for the door, no chosen decision, no controlled movement. Her body crashes into the wooden door and her own weight keeps her from being able to open it for a moment during which panic almost consumes her. But then she is out, the closed door onher back and she has no idea how she has managed it. Her heart beats fast, her breath is hectic. But she is alive, back in a world without a reflection full of dark corners. She tries to listen to her environment, to focus on the harmless life inside the opera house. And after a while, the bright corridor with its light and the voices of other people calms her down and eventually brings her some peace of mind. But a part of her still remembers the darkness lurking behind the wall that somehow has found a way into her soul