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**"The Reflection"**
It was supposed to be just another antique mirror—one of many Ellie had collected over the years. She found it in a dusty little thrift shop tucked between two boarded-up storefronts in a forgotten part of town. The frame was ornate, with twisted vines carved into the wood and faded silver inlay. The shop owner, an old woman with clouded eyes, gave Ellie a strange look as she rang up the purchase.
"Be careful what you bring home," she whispered, but Ellie only smiled and waved it off.
Back at her apartment, Ellie hung the mirror in the hallway. It suited the space perfectly, catching the light in just the right way. For the first few days, everything was normal. Then, the reflections began to change.
At first, it was small things—a lamp in the reflection was lit when it wasn’t, or a shadow moved where no one stood. Ellie chalked it up to stress or lack of sleep. She was used to being alone, used to strange creaks and groans in her old building. But soon, the changes in the mirror became harder to ignore.
One night, as she passed by it on her way to bed, she paused. The hallway in the reflection was slightly different. The walls were darker, and the light overhead flickered in the glass, though it was steady in real life. She stared, heart beating faster.
Then she saw it—her reflection turned its head, slowly, deliberately, to look at her, while she remained perfectly still.
Ellie stumbled back with a gasp. The image snapped to normal in an instant. Her reflection matched her movements again, wearing the same expression of horror. She rushed to bed and didn’t sleep that night.
Over the next few days, things got worse.
Her reflection began smiling at her, wide and unnatural, even when her own face was expressionless. It would wave slowly when she walked past. Once, it pressed its hand to the glass as if trying to push through.
Ellie tried covering the mirror with a blanket, but it wouldn’t stay in place. No matter what she did, the cloth would end up on the floor the next morning.
She even tried removing it from the wall, but it wouldn’t budge. The screws were rusted into the wood like they’d been there for a century, though she had just hung it days before.
Desperate, Ellie returned to the thrift shop, but it was gone—completely vanished, like it had never existed. The buildings on either side were still boarded up, but the little store between them was just a blank, graffiti-covered wall.
That night, Ellie dreamt of the mirror. In the dream, her reflection pulled itself free from the glass with brittle, cracking joints, and stood beside her bed, whispering things she couldn’t understand in a voice like shattered glass.
She woke with scratches on her arms.
The final straw came a week later.
Ellie was brushing her teeth when she caught movement in the mirror. She looked up and saw herself standing still—but behind her reflection, something was crawling out of the shadows. It was vaguely human-shaped, but all wrong. Its limbs bent backward, and its face was a blur of blackened skin and sharp teeth.
She spun around—nothing there.
When she looked back, her reflection was gone.
The mirror showed the hallway, but empty, as if she wasn’t standing there at all. Then, slowly, her reflection stepped into view from the edge of the frame, grinning.
Ellie ran.
She left her apartment that night and never went back. Her friends didn’t believe her, but she didn’t care. She stayed with her sister, tried to move on.
But sometimes, late at night, when she’s near a mirror—any mirror—she swears she sees her reflection lag just a second behind.
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