Morning light crept through the blinds, but it didn't feel like morning at all. My body was heavy, sluggish, as if something had replaced the blood in my veins with sand. Every breath came shallow, strained, and the faint metallic taste from last night still coated my tongue.
I sat at the edge of my bed, staring at my bandaged hand. The cut wasn't deep, yet the wound looked… wrong. The skin around it was pale, almost translucent, and the faint line of blood had dried to a dull rust instead of the bright red it should have been.
I clenched my fist. Nothing. No fresh bloom of color. Just emptiness.
The memory of the mirror clawed its way back into my mind—the smirk, the reflection that wasn't mine, the rivers of crimson that had flowed so freely where mine barely dripped.
For a long moment, I just sat there, gripping my knees.
"Get ready for school," my mother's voice called faintly from the kitchen. It sounded too normal, too steady, as if nothing had happened.
I stood slowly, my legs unsteady beneath me, and forced myself into my uniform. The fabric felt tight against my skin, itching, as though it rejected me. By the time I walked to the bathroom, my throat was dry, burning.
The mirror stood waiting. Cracked. Silent.
I told myself not to look—but my eyes dragged up anyway.
This time, the reflection looked exactly like me. Pale. Hollow-eyed. Lips pressed together in a thin line. No smirk. No crimson rivers. Just… me.
But when I lifted my hand to adjust my collar, there was a lag. A beat too slow. As if she hesitated before obeying.
A shiver tore down my spine.
I spun away quickly, gripping the doorframe. I couldn't face her. Not again.
---
School blurred past me like background noise. Teachers spoke, chalk scraped the boards, students laughed, whispered, gossiped—but I heard none of it. My thoughts were stuck in that bathroom, on the crimson that didn't belong to me.
At lunch, Aisha slid into the seat across from me. "You look worse today," she said quietly. "Did you even sleep?"
I shook my head. "Not really."
She hesitated, then leaned closer, lowering her voice. "You know… my grandma always said mirrors were dangerous. That they hold more than just reflections."
The words pierced through the fog in my head. "What do you mean?"
"She used to cover every mirror in her house after dark. Said that at night, mirrors didn't show you—you. They showed what lived beneath."
Beneath. The word scraped at something raw inside me.
Aisha gave a small, uneasy laugh, like she already regretted saying it. "It's just superstition, though. Old stories."
But I couldn't laugh.
Because last night, the girl in the mirror hadn't been a story. She had been real. Too real.
And worse—she was still there. Waiting.
---
That night, I stood in the hallway outside the bathroom door for what felt like an hour. The house was quiet. My mother's door was shut, no sound from inside.
The crack in the bathroom door glowed faintly from the fluorescent light I had left on earlier. My heart hammered. My feet refused to move closer, but my body refused to turn away.
Finally, I pushed the door open.
The mirror welcomed me with silence.
But this time, I didn't see myself.
The glass rippled like water, faint waves spreading from the crack down its center. And then… a whisper. Low. Familiar. My own voice.
"Come closer."
I froze, breath caught in my throat. The whisper curled against my ear even though no one was there.
"Come closer," it repeated, softer, sweeter.
My feet moved without my permission. Step by step until I stood before the glass. My reflection returned slowly, but it wasn't aligned with me—it hovered a fraction too close, her eyes brighter, sharper, glowing faintly in the harsh light.
Her lips parted, and though mine stayed shut, I heard the words bleed through the glass:
"Your blood isn't yours."
The light above flickered violently, buzzing into silence.
And in that second of darkness, I swear I felt her hand press against mine from the other side of the glass—warm, alive, drenched in the red I had been missing all my life.