The mirror arrived on a Tuesday, swathed in stained velvet and smelling of dust and regret. My great-uncle’s final bequest. It was an ugly, heavy thing, its ornate silver frame tarnished black. But it was the glass that held me. Deep within its mercury-backed depths, a single, blood-red iris floated, pupil-less and vast.
At first, I told myself it was a flaw in the antique glass, a trick of the light. But the eye watched. I felt its gaze like a physical weight, a cold spot on the back of my neck that followed me through the apartment. It was when the whispers started that the true dread set in. Not audible sounds, but thoughts that were not my own, slithering into my mind.
*You are afraid of the dark,* it murmured one evening as I fumbled for the light switch. My childhood terror, long buried, surged forth, thick and suffocating.
*You fear being forgotten,* it hissed another time, as I stared at my lonely reflection. A profound, aching emptiness opened inside me.
The eye didn't just see me; it saw *into* me. It learned me, curating my private horrors. Last night, I saw a movement in the mirror that wasn't my own. The red eye had shifted. It was no longer adrift in the center. It was pressed against the glass from the other side, a grotesque, wet orb straining to be free. A hairline crack appeared in the mirror's surface with a sound like breaking bone.
I stand before it now, a hammer in my sweating hand. But I cannot move. The eye holds me, showing me my own face contorted in a silent scream. It’s not in the mirror anymore.