The Face in Every Mirror But Mine!?

The antique mirror arrived on a Tuesday.

I hadn't ordered it. The delivery slip bore no return address, just my name—*Daniel Mercer*—scrawled in ink that looked too fresh, too red. The wooden frame was ornate, carved with twisting vines that seemed to move when I wasn't looking directly at them.

"Must be a gift from the firm," I muttered, heaving the heavy package inside my apartment. The glass was flawless, not a smudge or scratch, though the edges had a strange, almost liquid darkness to them, like the surface wasn't quite solid.

That night, I caught my reflection blinking.

I'd been adjusting my tie before bed when it happened—a slow, deliberate shutter of eyelids that didn't match my own movements. I leaned closer, breath fogging the glass. The reflection didn't fog.

"Okay," I said aloud, forcing a laugh. "Stress. It's just stress."

But the next morning, the reflection was *wrong*.

I'd shaved carefully, the razor scraping away stubble in precise strokes. When I rinsed my face and looked up, the reflection still had a beard. Not just stubble—a full, neatly trimmed beard I'd never grown.

The reflection smiled.

I jerked back, knocking over a bottle of aftershave. The glass shattered on the tiles, but the sound was muffled, distant. The mirror's surface rippled like water.

Then my phone rang.

"Dan, where the hell are you?" It was Mark, my supervisor. "The 9 AM meeting started ten minutes ago."

"I—what?" I checked my watch. 9:10. Impossible. I'd woken at 7:30. "I'm on my way."

In the elevator, the polished doors showed my reflection—beardless, but with a red tie instead of blue. I hadn't *owned* a red tie in years.

Work was a blur. Colleudes kept asking if I was feeling well. My assistant, Sarah, frowned when I called her "Claire"—a name I didn't recognize even as I said it.

That night, I covered the mirror with a sheet.

Sleep didn't come. At 3:17 AM, a sound from the bathroom—a wet, clicking noise, like fingers dragging across glass.

The sheet had fallen.

In the mirror, my reflection sat slumped on the floor, back against the wall. Its—*my*—face was gaunt, eyes hollow. As I watched, it turned its head and looked directly at me.

*"You're fading,"* it said.

I screamed. The reflection screamed too—but a second later, out of sync, its mouth still moving after mine had closed.

Then it stood.

Not when I did. Not how I did. It uncurled slowly, limbs twitching, until it loomed in the glass, taller than me, its neck bent at an impossible angle to keep its eyes locked on mine.

*"Soon,"* it whispered.

I ran. Pounded on my neighbor's door until a bleary-eyed man opened it.

"Call the police," I gasped. "There's someone in my apartment."

The officers found nothing. No broken locks. No signs of forced entry. Just a man in his thirties, sweating through his shirt, babbling about his reflection.

One cop lingered after his partner left. "Mr. Mercer," he said quietly, "when's the last time you slept?"

Three days passed. I stopped looking at mirrors. Avoided windows. Drank coffee from paper cups so I wouldn't see my face in the porcelain.

On the fourth day, Claire visited.

I didn't know a Claire.

She was beautiful—auburn hair, green eyes, a nervous smile. "Dan," she said, stepping into my apartment without invitation. "You haven't answered my calls."

I backed away. "I think you have the wrong—"

She grabbed my wrist. Her fingers were freezing. "Look at me," she demanded.

In her pupils, tiny mirrors, I saw it: my reflection, but not mine. Younger. Smiling. Wearing clothes I'd thrown out years ago.

*"He's almost gone,"* it said through Claire's mouth.

I wrenched free and fled to the bathroom—the one room with no mirrors, just the medicine cabinet I'd torn from the wall.

The antique mirror was there.

Not hanging. *Standing.* Leaned against the wall where the cabinet had been.

My reflection stepped forward.

Not a reflection anymore—a *thing*, pressing against the glass like a diver about to surface. The mirror bulged.

I grabbed the first weapon I could find—a metal towel rack—and swung.

The glass didn't break.

It *absorbed.* The metal sank into the surface like quicksand. The thing in the mirror grabbed it, pulled.

I lost my grip. Stumbled back.

The reflection emerged.

Not all at once. A hand first, fingers curling around the frame. Then an arm, a shoulder, a face—*my* face, but stretched, distorted, its smile splitting too wide.

Behind me, Claire whispered: *"Now you're mine."*

The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was the mirror—empty.

And the man who walked out of my bathroom wearing my skin.

---

**Epilogue**

The new Daniel Mercer is doing well.

He got promoted. Reconnected with Claire. Even grew a beard—it suits him.

Sometimes, late at night, he stands before the antique mirror and whispers to the thing trapped inside.

The thing that pounds on the glass with *his* fists.

The thing that screams with *his* voice.

The thing that learns, day by day, how to smile *just* like him.

Soon.