Evan always avoided mirrors at night. He got the feeling his reflection took a heartbeat too long to follow his movements. One evening, while brushing his teeth, he noticed something wrong—his reflection was smiling, even though he wasn’t.
He froze. The reflection slowly wiped the smile away, mimicking him again like nothing happened. Evan chalked it up to exhaustion. But he couldn’t ignore what happened the next night: his reflection blinked after him. A full second late. And its eyes didn’t look quite the same—just a bit too bright, too hungry.
He covered the bathroom mirror with a towel, but the next morning it was uncovered again—his reflection fogged against the glass like it had been breathing on it from the other side.
Soon, the reflection started mouthing words he couldn’t hear. Sometimes it looked behind him. Sometimes it pointed. Once, it pressed its palm to the inside of the glass, leaving a print that didn’t match his.
The breaking point came when he caught it standing behind him in the reflection—except he was alone in the room. He ran, but every reflective surface in the house shimmered with movement. The reflection was in all of them now, tapping, waiting.
That night, the glass split with a sound like bone cracking. Evan heard footsteps behind him. Slow. Wet. Patient. The thing from the mirror was finally free, and as it stepped into his world, his true reflection appeared in the shattered shards—eyes wide in terror—unable to follow.
