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There is a woman living in my mirror.
She looks like me and she moves like me, but she is not me. I can’t pinpoint exactly when I realized she was there, only that she is there now. I think she knows I know, too. There is a taunting look in her eyes when I see her that just can’t be mistaken.
Staring into the mirror now, I am certain she even has a bit of a smirk on her lips.
“Who are you?” I demand. She mouths the words as I say them, mocking me. I could just leave; the bathroom or the apartment as a whole. Therapists I’ve seen have recommended doing so. Some have also tried to medicate me. Others have even tried to send me to a mental hospital. I’m not sick, though. There is a woman in my mirror.
It isn’t until she’s been in my bathroom mirror for three weeks that she ventures beyond the room. I almost don’t notice the change when I wake that morning, until I catch a glimpse of her eyes.
I post the mirror for sale online before I’m even dressed. Some innocent part of me hopes that she might go with the mirror and leave me be. That would simply be too easy. Still, once I’ve helped an older lady load my bedroom mirror into the back of her car the following day and accepted a handful of crumpled bills, I am slightly disappointed when I spot the woman in the bathroom mirror once more.
In a brief moment of panic, I attempt to pull the mirror from the wall, but I find that whatever has it affixed above the sink is stronger than I am.
“Leave,” I order her. “You are not welcome here.”
She doesn’t move except to mimic the words as I say them. There is very little I can do to evict a woman living inside a mirror. Frustrated by her defiance, I storm out of the bathroom and slam the door shut behind me. Perhaps it’s my imagination, but I am fairly certain a high, haunting laugh echoes down the hall after me.
I seem to be called to her, spending hours simply standing before the mirror. We stare at each other, blinking in sync, breathing in perfect time. I lean forward toward her and watch a smile spread across her face. Dread curls in my gut and a shiver runs down my spine.
She laughs, mouth too wide, teeth too sharp. My hands tremble at my sides, itching to tear her from the mirror. My heart pounds in my chest. She stares, frozen, smiling. Mocking me with her gaze. So comforted that I cannot get to her, sheltered, as she is, by a pane of glass.
I reach out and she does the same, pressing our fingers together with just the thin glass between us. She is right there. I scrape my nails down the face of the mirror. She won’t leave unless I make her. No one else believes she’s there and she won’t leave on her own. It’s a game to her. She loves to taunt me from her confines, knowing how desperate I am to be rid of her.
“Leave me alone,” I say to her, tearing my hand away from the glass. To my surprise, her hand stays. She has never been so obvious about her existence; never given me such evidence. Slowly, she speaks. I cannot hear what she says, but I can see the form of the words on her lips, some kind of obvious trickery. How dare she even attempt such a thing?
Without my permission, my hand curls up and flies into the glass, smashing the center in with an almost melodic sound. I feel the skin of my knuckles split. The woman’s face is distorted by the cracks, but her smile doesn’t fade. This angers me. She should not be so unbothered after I have inflicted such a blow. She should be afraid that once I break through the glass to get her, she may not have much longer in this world.
My fist slams into the glass once more, shards flying from the impact this time, blood beginning to drip down my forearm. If there is pain, I don’t feel it. I don’t see my own reflection in the mirror, how erratic I must appear; I only see the woman’s face goading me into such rage that I feel as though I might knock the mirror to the floor with my blows.
My wrist is caught, suddenly, in a hand that wasn’t there before. A cold, pale hand protruding from the hole in the center of the mirror where my fist had first landed. My breath catches. Her grip is bruising, uncaring of the slick blood that stains her fingers from where the shattered mirror slices through her skin, and from where the skin has broken on my hands. She reaches her other hand forward to widen the hole, forcing more of the glass to fall and shatter on the countertop. She is able, then, to duck her head through and crawl out onto the counter.
She holds me there, a perfect reflection of myself. Every tiny freckle is placed just the opposite of where it is on my own skin; even the chips in her nail polish exactly mirror mine. Such a perfect imitation; so easy to mistake for a simple mirror reflection.
She studies me as I have studied her and I feel quite exposed while her gaze rakes up and down my body like some vicious predator. Then, she breathes in deeply, closing her eyes for a moment before her grip tightens further and she pulls me so close that I feel her hot breath on my face when she speaks.
“I knew you would let me out.”