I do not know this man. I do not know this man in the mirror. The one staring right back at me, moving his eyes to reflect wherever I look. He does every single thing I do. Makes every single face, pokes back at fingers aimed against the glass, and turns his back when I turn mine. To the untrained eye, it looks as any normal reflection does; behaves as any mirror is designed to do. There is nothing obviously out of the ordinary that would arouse suspicions otherwise.
But as of a few restless nights ago, my rationality has flipped completely on its head. I cannot explain what changed in the span of those 24 hours. The mirror looks exactly the same as it did. My reflection retains its likeness. What changed? Maybe nothing did. Maybe nothing did. Perhaps it’s always been this sinister copycat game and I’m only just noticing. This must have been an error on the other man’s part. That has to be it. Even a master will slip up his own craft over years of perfection. Why else would I suddenly realize this awful, determined creature was lurking on the other side of that frame?
Sometimes I spend hours at a time staring at that mirror. I abandon sleep for a greater mission. All things considered, a lack of sleep may be contributing to my paranoia, but even so I haven’t been able to depart my attention to anything else. If I stare long enough, the glass seems to evaporate and leave open an entrance into the other side. It’s as if I could reach right through to an identical room. Furniture indistinguishable from the originals arrange themselves in duplicate form. From a central standpoint between the two, the rooms would complete a symmetrical presentation. However I am reasonably less concerned about the layout. It’s that godforsaken double standing right at the front. He never falters. He is always ready.
Sometimes I will stay as still as possible, testing its patience, hoping it will tire— even bore of mimicking my every waking moment. Other times I will yell, flail, threaten, even exert myself as much as I can in hopes of catching even the smallest of errors. At the very least I would have proven I hadn’t been imagining the whole ordeal. I don’t believe I could ever forgive myself for wasting days, even years of evincing something so trivial. I’d rather die than accept that I have gone mad.
Even if I did turn out to be right, what would it matter to me? Nothing’s ever happened. If it had been here since the beginning without harm, it made little sense for the thing to start now. I can think of only one simple cause for wariness. The man knows that I know about his little game. He’s been compromised, and sooner or later he knows I will find a way to defeat it. I have prompted it to cease acting in a defensive stance and switch gears violently into aggression. I could have been safe from its wrath if I never discovered anything peculiar.
Or worse, the thing had a sick plan from the beginning to build my trust long enough that I would never think to doubt anything as ordinary as my own reflection. I imagine it will be of great satisfaction to eventually reap such pent up rewards, just for the thrill. Surely the right time to strike would be at the climax of my terror, when I did finally realize that my reflection was not even my own. Not having even a moment to comprehend what I’d been subject to for years without a single worry.
I feel incredibly alone, but I cannot bring myself to tell others what I am afraid of. They would think I finally lost my mind, seemingly for no reason at all.
I have thought about breaking the mirror. But I am apprehended by the idea that should the glass break, be there any glass in the first place, he will lunge at me. Lunge at my throat and squeeze tight. However, an even worse thought has been keeping me awake at night. What if there never was any glass? How many nights have I slept unwittingly with an open doorway right into my house, with no sliver of glass to divide us? How many nights has that creature stepped out of his portal and watched me from an even smaller distance— one that if I awoke at the wrong time, he would have no choice but to snuff me out? I could not calmly imagine opening my eyes and being face to face with my own visage. A threatening one, no less. God, when I think about perhaps not touching glass at all but instead pressing cold fingertips, and the empty air transferring between realms as easily as a breeze through an open window, I shudder to even look in the direction of that mirror. How many times have I breathed towards the mirror, assuming that the air coming back to deflect is still mine? Do they breathe at the same time as me? I don’t think I’d be able to handle it if they breathed before me, and foreign hot air hit my face. I would never enter that room again.
My paranoia has expanded to other mirrors. Any reflection that catches my eye causes a bout of anxiety that is difficult to shake without leaving the room entirely. There are mirrors everywhere, no matter where I go. It seems there are more than there used to be before I was afraid of the man waiting in mine. I spend the most time walking with my head down, and doing the same when I converse with strangers and family. When I do sleep, I dream of people I know suddenly taking the form of my wretched reflection when I look back up at them. That fear has seeped into my reality. I hate mirrors. Knowing that I have no way of reassuring myself one way or the other what is true suffocates me. I do not have an answer. I am so incredibly unsure. I feel safe around transparent glass such as windows and store displays. I savor the reassurance from proof of an entirely different world on the other side. The reflection I see of myself is entirely my own. But. Pure mirror glass is unpredictable.
The biggest problem that causes me conflicting doubt is that these fears have been based on some self-sabotaging kind of intuition. Intuition, that’s all. Well, they used to be, anyway. Last night I looked into the mirror for hours like I always do, and as I faced up against my likely antagonist, I noticed it: on the other side, in the reversed room, flowers that I’d kept on my desk for a least a week, fresh and healthy as they started, while mine in my own world were noticeably beginning to wilt.