“Every Mirror in My Apartment Shows a Different Version of Me”

When I moved into Apartment 3B, the only thing the landlord warned me about was the heating. “Old building,” he said. “Gets noisy at night.”

He never said anything about the mirrors.

The first time I noticed something was off, I’d been living here three days. I was brushing my teeth, half-asleep, when I realized my reflection wasn’t copying me. My hand paused mid-air, but in the mirror, I was still brushing.

I blinked.

My reflection blinked a second later.

I stared at the mirror for a full minute, waiting for it to normalize. It eventually did. I laughed it off. Sleep-deprivation, maybe. A weird brain hiccup. But it stuck with me.

That was just the bathroom.

Over the next week, I began noticing the same lag—and sometimes worse—in every mirror in the apartment. The tall one by the front door, the cracked one above the dresser, even the small round one on the medicine cabinet. It wasn’t just lag anymore. Sometimes, I looked different.

One morning I looked into the mirror and saw myself with a scar over my left eyebrow. I don’t have a scar. Another day, I saw myself in a gray hoodie I hadn’t worn in years—and definitely didn’t put on that day.

The creepiest was the version of me that was smiling.

I wasn’t.

That grin was too wide. Like a smile carved from the inside out.

I started testing it. Holding up fingers. Turning quickly to catch the delay. Saying phrases out loud that my reflection repeated slightly off-beat.

I filmed it. Nothing unusual showed up on playback.

I brought over my friend Kayla. She saw nothing. “Looks like a normal mirror, Ben,” she said. “You sure you’re not just… stressed?”

I didn’t sleep well that night.

⸻

By week three, I started naming the versions.

• Scar-Me only showed up in the hallway mirror.

• Grin-Me liked the bathroom.

• Sad-Me, who looked constantly on the verge of tears, showed up in the dresser mirror.

• Clean-Cut-Me wore a suit and looked like he had his life together. I hated him the most.

The mirrors were like windows into alternate versions of myself. I wasn’t crazy—I knew they were wrong. They were too real. Too deliberate.

Then came the knock.

It was 3:14 a.m. I was sitting on the couch, flipping through channels, unable to sleep. I heard it—soft, almost polite. A knock on the mirror.

Not the door.

The knock came again. I looked up.

The hallway mirror. Scar-Me was standing there, knuckles still pressed to the inside of the glass.

I walked toward it, heart hammering in my throat.

Scar-Me didn’t move in sync anymore. He stood perfectly still, watching me. Then, slowly, he raised a hand and placed it against the glass.

Without thinking, I raised mine to meet it.

My hand stopped on solid glass.

His passed right through.

I stumbled back, falling hard. When I looked again, he was gone.

⸻

I covered every mirror in the apartment the next day.

Bedsheets, towels, even cardboard. My place looked like I was hiding from vampires. I went to a thrift store and bought a cheap plastic mirror to test.

Same thing.

No matter the mirror, the versions returned. Sometimes new ones.

I saw Bloody-Me once. Just once. Shirt soaked, eyes wild, breathing hard. His mouth moved but I heard nothing. Just his lips forming one word, again and again.

RUN.

⸻

Then came the night they moved. All of them.

I’d just walked past the bathroom when I noticed movement. The mirror curtain had slipped.

I looked.

Every version of me was standing behind the real me. Reflected versions filled the hallway, bedroom, even the tiny mirror above the kitchen sink. All of them, perfectly still. Silent.

Watching.

And one by one, they began to move.

Not in sync. Independently.

One waved. Another turned and whispered to someone I couldn’t see. One of them banged a fist against the glass. Grin-Me licked the inside of the mirror.

Then I heard it.

A soft, stretching crack.

The bathroom mirror split—just slightly—right down the center.

The sound echoed like ice breaking over deep water.

⸻

That was three nights ago.

Now I sit here, in the corner of my living room, every mirror uncovered. I gave up pretending to ignore them. What’s the point?

They don’t act like versions of me anymore. Not really. They’re too… independent. Some of them laugh when I cry. Some seem sad for me. Others stare like they’re waiting for something.

But the worst is Grin-Me.

He’s always there.

No matter which mirror I check, he’s in the background. Closer than before. Watching me like he’s hungry. Or patient.

The crack in the bathroom mirror has grown. I can hear it sometimes, stretching—like the mirror’s skin is about to tear.

I know what’s going to happen.

One of them—maybe all of them—wants out.

And I don’t know what happens to me when they come through.

But I know this:

I’m not the real one anymore.

🪞 Moral:

When we avoid facing who we really are, our reflection may start to show us the truth we fear most.