The Mirror Doesn't Lie, But It Forgets

The Mirror Doesn't Lie, But It Forgets

By Hamza Khan

It started with something small.

A necklace—gold, delicate, with a tiny blue stone. Ada had never owned one like it, yet there it was, around the neck of her reflection as she brushed her teeth. For a moment she froze, staring. The real Ada, in her cotton T-shirt and tangled hair, was bare-necked. But her reflection wore the necklace like it belonged.

She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and looked again. The necklace was gone.

Odd, she thought. But dreams bled into waking life all the time. She shook it off.

A few days later, it was a scar—faint and pale, crossing just above her right eyebrow. Her reflection bore it like a quiet story from childhood, one that would explain a fear of bicycles or dogs or climbing too high. But Ada’s skin was smooth.

She leaned in close to the mirror, searching her face.

No scar. Not on her.

Only in the glass.

She stopped using that mirror for a while, blamed stress, overwork, her overactive imagination. But every mirror was the same. Bathroom, hallway, shop windows—always some small mismatch. A different hairstyle. A mole she didn’t have. Once, a bruise on her jaw.

And then, worse: her reflection began to move out of sync.

At first, a delay—half a second behind, like a buffering video. Then, one day, the reflection smiled before she did. Her own face remained neutral, but in the mirror, it lifted into a small, knowing grin.

Ada staggered backward. Her knees hit the edge of the bathtub. The smile vanished.

She saw doctors. Neurologists. Eye exams. Sleep studies. Nothing wrong. "You’re healthy," they said. “Maybe some mild dissociation. Take time off work. Rest.”

So she stopped telling anyone.

But the mirror didn’t stop. It grew bolder.

At night, she’d walk by the hallway mirror and see herself still standing there, long after she’d passed. Sometimes the reflection would raise a hand she hadn’t moved. Once, it whispered something she couldn’t hear.

She bought a hammer.

She stood before the bathroom mirror one cold, grey morning, breath fogging the glass, hammer clenched tight in her hand. But when she raised it, the reflection didn’t mirror her.

It just looked at her. Calm. Almost sad.

Then it mouthed two words.

"Come back."

She dropped the hammer.

That night, Ada dug through old photo albums, trying to find proof of who she was. She flipped through page after page of faces—hers, sort of. But younger. Smiling with people she didn’t recognize. Places she didn’t remember visiting. One photo showed her on a swing, a tiny blue stone around her neck.

The necklace from the mirror.

She turned to her reflection again. It looked tired, softer than she felt. She whispered, “Who are you?”

Her reflection raised its hand to the glass and pressed its palm to the surface.

She did the same.

Suddenly, memories poured through her like floodwater—disjointed but vivid. A park bench in autumn. A man with warm eyes and a crooked smile. Music in the kitchen. A bicycle crash when she was seven. Her mother’s voice, singing off-key. The sound of crying—her own. The cold white of a hospital room.

A fire.

She staggered back.

Flashes came too fast to make sense of, like someone had broken a dam inside her. She gasped, heart pounding, eyes wide.

She had forgotten so much.

Or it had been taken.

She returned to the mirror. Her reflection stood steady, almost patient. It looked like her—but not the version she’d lived with. It was fuller. Sadder. Braver.

“Why?” she asked.

The reflection leaned close.

“To protect you,” it mouthed. “But I can’t carry it all anymore.”

Ada stared at her own eyes—brown, tired, blinking through tears. They were hers again.

For the first time in weeks, the mirror’s movements matched hers.

The next morning, the scar was on her forehead. Faint, but real.

She found the necklace on her pillow.

Ada put it on. It felt right.

Because the mirror doesn’t lie.

But it can only forget for so long