A Most Undesirable Reflection

I don’t know exactly when I first noticed the shadow in the mirror.

I wasn’t a lover of antiques, but the mirror had been in our family for generations so, when my mother passed, I felt I had to keep it to honor her and our bloodline. Even if she had kept it covered and said it was cursed.

She always leaned toward the dramatic.

And, honestly, I think I first thought the shadow was just a flaw I hadn’t paid attention to previously.

Then I thought it was more likely just a trick of the light from the angle in the room where I had placed it.

But eventually, I came to suspect the disturbance in the mirror, in fact, was somehow changing. I couldn’t quite quantify exactly how. It just seemed more present, for lack of a better word.

One day, I recognized the change for what it was: once barely there, ethereal and translucent, the shadow had gained density!

But that was impossible!

Or was it?

After all, I saw it with my own eyes. Could I not trust my own eyes?

From that day forward, each day I looked in the mirror, my eyes went directly to the shadow.

Studying with an inescapable scrutiny.

Watching it as it indeed slowly transformed.

Edges focusing.

Features emerging.

I became obsessed. The shadow was all I saw. Everything else the mirror reflected, including myself, failed to capture my attention.

The shadow consumed me.

But it soon became too much. Obsession turned to horror. I could not imagine anything good coming from this monstrous, unnatural situation.

So, I covered the mirror.

Just like my mother.

But, of course, I could not stop thinking about the shadow in the mirror. Had my covering it stopped the transformation? Or was it still happening behind that sheet?

And then that day: the day I could not bear it any longer and I removed the sheet.

That’s when I saw my answer. The shadow had not only continued to alter, but it had taken a nearly finished form. One that proved all too familiar!

The jawline.

The eyes staring at me.

The tiny mole on the left cheek.

All mine!

And, as the realization came to me, the shadow version of me curled its lips in a growing smile.

It knew I knew!

Horrified, I pulled my eyes away.

That’s when I saw the real horror.

My own, actual reflection I had been ignoring stood before me: now ethereal and translucent; a ghostly version of what it had once been.

It had been transforming in tandem with the shadow!

I looked at my hands.

My real hands.

They, too, suddenly began to fade away—as if my comprehending the idea of my fading image in the mirror made it so in reality!

I turned to look at the shadow me.

It smiled wider.

Horrible!

As my reflection and I faded away, slipping into oblivion, I saw the fully formed shadow me stepping out of the mirror and turning to look at its own, newly-spawned reflection in the mirror.

Their matching, horrible smiles . . .

. . . fully formed.

Perfect reflections.