Where the Glass Begins

They say reflections are harmless, that glass only borrows light. But every mirror keeps a record: every photograph, a promise. The more you look, the more it learns the shape of you.

And sometimes, when the light grows confident, it decides it can walk on its own.

A reflection shouldn’t move first. But when Lucian’s mirror leans to breathe, two versions of him begin to live at once – one in the world, and one inside the light.

He left the phone on the counter and stepped into morning, thin light sliding over glass like a second skin. The door chimed behind him—once, then again, a half-beat late, as if the sound itself had remembered there were two of him.

On the sidewalk, his reflection didn’t catch up.

It lingered in the window of The Joint, faint and obedient-looking, then failed to mirror the tilt of his head. Lucian paused, coffee cooling in his hand, sunglasses catching a bleached shard of sun. Inside the glass, the other Lucian did not raise his cup. He only watched—curious, almost tender—like a portrait deciding whether to forgive its subject.

Lucian’s coat—a deep charcoal wool worn smooth at the edges—hung heavy in the air that already smelled of asphalt and ozone. The lining was frayed near the cuffs, and one button, darkened with age, bore a faint chip at its edge. His reflection wore no coat at all. It was brighter there, behind the glass; light pooled around the mirrored Lucian’s throat as if drawn to warmth. A faint glimmer shimmered in the air beside him, the scent of hot metal or old coin whenever he moved.

He lifted two fingers in a small salute. The reflection lifted three.

“Very funny,” Lucian said, to no one visible. A couple with a stroller passed, oblivious, the baby wrapped in lemon-yellow sunlight. He took a slow sip—the metallic tang of it sharp against his tongue—and turned toward the strip mall’s edge where the asphalt sagged into heat shimmer. The reflected Lucian remained behind, his mouth forming a word the real one couldn’t hear.

At home, the anomalies multiplied like small acts of disobedience. In the hallway mirror, his reflection arrived a fraction early, as if eager to greet him. On the black TV screen, a pale oval lingered after he walked past, lips moving a heartbeat out of time. In the convex shine of a spoon, a face blinked with a different rhythm—patient, deliberate, watching him with interest.

By evening, he tried the experiment.

He set a chair opposite the living room window and waited for twilight—the tender hour when even the light seems to doubt its allegiance. His world was still, the air brittle with manufactured coolness. The refrigerator hummed like a nervous thought. Shadows clung to the corners of the room, soft as dust.

Beyond the glass, his other world stirred. The mirrored apartment looked almost the same—yet not. The light was thicker there, warmer, pulsing with gold that no bulb could make. The floor gleamed faintly as though brushed by unseen feet. The curtains breathed with the weight of wind he couldn’t feel. And there, faintly, he could smell something metallic and sweet—like lightning just before rain.

When the reflection moved, it wasn’t mimicry. It was possession. Graceful, grounded, with a kind of organic certainty that the living often mistake for peace. The mirrored Lucian raised his hand, palm to the window. His skin glowed faintly, as though his veins carried sunrise instead of blood.

Lucian hesitated. His fingers twitched above the armrest. The air on his side was cold; his breath fogged faintly against the glass. On the other, the reflection’s exhalation came warm, shimmering, visible as vapor turned to light.

They faced each other through the pane like two actors trapped in parallel scenes, one playing reverence, the other regret.

“Who are you,” Lucian asked, “when I’m not looking?”

The reflection smiled—not coyly, but with the patience of someone who had waited centuries and no longer feared boredom. He lowered his gaze, and only then did Lucian notice: the mirrored one wore his hair undone, his collar unbuttoned, the lines of his face softer. There was warmth in him, color at his throat. He looked… nearer to human. Or nearer to now.

A hum rippled through the apartment. The overhead bulb flickered, haloing the mirrored Lucian’s features in a soft corona. Somewhere beyond the walls, a neighbor’s laughter carried through pipes, rich and oblivious.

“You took something from her,” Lucian said, thinking of the woman in the clinic—the phone, the flash, the humming ghost of a face that wasn’t hers. “Or the light did. Did it give it to you?”

In the glass, the other Lucian tilted his head, thoughtful. Then he pressed two fingers against his chest—an old gesture. Ownership. Oath.

The room cooled. The window tasted faintly of iron. Static gathered at the edge of Lucian’s tongue like a prayer unsaid.

“Parallel lives,” he murmured.

The mirrored mouth shaped two words, crisp and silent: Not parallel. The syllables landed like taps against the bone of the world. Crossing.

Lucian blinked. He looked down at his hands—long, uncalloused, veins like ink drawn beneath parchment skin—and felt a pull, subtle as tide.

When he looked back up, the reflection had changed again. The room on the other side wasn’t quite his own anymore. Books he didn’t own slouched on other shelves. A plant he had never bought leaned toward a warmer light. A record spun soundlessly in a turntable identical to his, though his had long stopped working.

In that other living room, the mirrored Lucian poured himself a drink from a bottle with a red wax seal. The liquid burned amber under unseen light, catching fire as it swirled. Lucian could almost taste it: warmth, smoke, memory. He wanted it more than he’d wanted blood in years.

He blinked again, and his reality reasserted itself—flat, air-conditioned, precise. His table empty. His bottle unopened.

“All right,” he said softly. “If not parallel, then how?”

The mirrored Lucian raised the glass in a toast that wasn’t a toast. Then he leaned closer until the window held only his face—not reflection, but replacement—a version drawn from light and longing.

He lifted a pen—Lucian didn’t own one that color—and wrote on the inside of the glass. The letters bloomed backward, white and trembling.

When you look, I live.

The mirrored Lucian paused, as though considering the cruelty of clarity, then wrote again.

When they look, I choose.

Lucian’s chest tightened. He could feel the vibration of the words through the glass, tiny seismic tremors running through the architecture of the room. He realized the screens around him—TV, phone, microwave, even the faint black mirror of the coffee pot—were no longer still. All of them pulsed faintly, waiting.

From the window, one last line appeared. The handwriting was clean, practiced, elegant.

Tomorrow, go somewhere bright. I want to try walking first.

Lucian’s pulse—long neglected, barely functional—gave a single, traitorous beat.

He reached forward and touched the window. It was cold. The reflection’s hand met his from the other side, and this time the surface gave—not breaking, but breathing. A warmth seeped through—damp and mineral—like rain trapped beneath the glass. The faint smell of iron rose between them, soft as a secret.

For a moment, two hands existed in one temperature.

“Tomorrow,” Lucian whispered, and both voices answered.

If the glass ever fogs from the wrong side, don’t wipe it clean.

Just turn off the lights. Let it think you’ve left the room.