Hiding from the Mirror

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. It first started appearing to me when I was around 17.

It scared the shit out of me initially but I started to see it more and more often. I felt at first that it was a ghost or demon or something messing with me. My family has a history with spirits and such. My grandmother used to tell me not to fear the dead, fear the living. My house is definitely haunted and none of my friends liked coming here to visit me. They always told me how spooky it was.

We had a few psychics and believers in the family, we had a few self-proclaimed, witches in the neighborhood. So the occult wasn't foreign to me, though it still scared me in my youth. Sometimes it scares me now.

Especially when I started seeing my own reflection with an overlay of a bare skull. What does it mean? It didn't happen every day, just on occasion, and especially later at night, it became.

I only had two mirrors in the house. One big one was in the bathroom, one was a hand-held oval mirror. My mother kept the hand mirror in her drawer and whenever I took a shower or used the sink in the bathroom, I had to pass that mirror which was now haunting me.

When the reflection began to speak was when I started to cover the mirror with a bed sheet so that I couldn't see what was there.

"You should not fear us, embrace us and what you are." A raspy voice emitted from the mirror one evening after a shower before bed. I said, "Who are you, what do you want?"

"I am only here, you can speak to us. You can ask your questions, we can help you. You must respect us, you must hear us. you are here with us."

I backed away slowly with a horrified look on my face that I caught a glimpse of before falling backward into the hallway. I did not sleep that night and avoided the bathroom. I chose to pee in the kitchen sink with the water running after my mom fell asleep.

I convinced a friend of mine to let me spend the night at his house for the next couple of days. He thought it would be cool and we could play video games together. Perfect, I thought.

A couple of nights turned into a couple of weeks. I just stopped by my house to pick up fresh clothes from time to time. Mom didn't mind since she was always working.

I found myself avoiding the bathroom at my friend's house and realized how silly I felt. Maybe I was just going crazy. I looked in the mirror when I went to the bathroom. To my dismay, the skull had returned.

"Don't disrespect us. We are the ones you can trust, the ones who will help you, the ones you are a part of. We, are your family."

I fought my own fear, I stood there and asked openly, "what family are you? You're not like my family here, you don't seem like my family."

"We are always here, you are like us, we are not dead and you are not alive. You are with us, let us show you."

I said with a sternness in my voice, "Show me then, I'm ready now."

I awoke in my own bed, covered in dried blood on my hands, forearms, and chest. My shirt was stiff and stunk of heavy metallic smells. My window was opened wide, the screen was on the floor, and the tree next to my window had broken branches all the way down. My bed was soiled with blood, none of the blood was my own.

The voice called out from the bathroom, "we are with you, my son." I passed out onto the soiled bed.