“The Mirror That Remembers Every Face But Yours” “The Mirror That Remembers Every Face But Yours”

The Mirror That Remembers Every Face But Yours

By [Ali Rehman]

The mirror had been in the house longer than anyone could remember. It hung in the narrow hallway between the living room and the staircase, framed in twisted black wood carved with shapes no one recognized. Some said it was an heirloom; others whispered it was cursed.

I never believed in curses.

That was before I looked into it.

At first, the mirror seemed ordinary—dusty, old, reflecting the same tired walls and dim light of the hallway. But something was off.

When I stood before it, I didn’t see myself.

I saw other people.

Strangers.

Faces I had never seen—some young, some old, some smiling, some twisted in fear. They stared back at me with a knowing silence, as if the mirror was holding them captive behind the glass.

I blinked and stepped back. The hallway remained empty behind me. No one was there.

The next day, curiosity drew me again. I looked into the mirror, this time longer.

Faces shifted like shadows. A woman with hollow eyes, a man with a cracked smile, children playing frozen in mid-laughter. But my own reflection was nowhere to be found.

I touched the glass. It was colder than ice.

Panic began to settle. Was this a trick? A hallucination?

I asked aloud, “Why don’t you show me?”

The mirror didn’t answer, but the faces became clearer—each one more vivid, as if telling a story without words.

Days passed. I couldn’t stop watching.

The mirror became a window into lives I’d never known—people whose stories haunted me in silence.

One night, the house was still, shadows long and thick. I stood before the mirror again, desperate.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

A new face appeared—a man with kind eyes but a mouth sewn shut. His gaze locked onto mine.

Then the mirror cracked.

A cold wind blew through the hallway. The lights flickered.

And I remembered.

The past I had buried deep beneath years of forgetting.

I had come to this house with no memory of who I was or where I came from. An accident—or something worse—had stolen my past. Faces blurred. Names vanished.

But the mirror held my story.

The faces were fragments of people I once knew, lives intertwined with mine in ways I had forsaken.

I reached out, trembling. The glass rippled like water.

The man with sewn lips pressed a hand against the inside of the mirror, silent but pleading.

Suddenly, the mirror showed me a scene.

I was there.

In a room lit by flickering candles, surrounded by strangers. We were chanting in a language I couldn’t understand.

A ritual.

Fear gripped me as I realized these faces were not strangers—they were parts of my forgotten life. Friends? Family? Or something darker?

The mirror showed me the moment it happened.

A scream.

A flash of light.

Then silence.

I gasped and stepped back, trembling.

The mirror’s surface shimmered, and the voices of those trapped behind the glass whispered softly.

“Remember.”

The man with sewn lips mouthed words I could not hear, but somehow understood.

I was not the victim.

I was the cause.

The ritual had gone wrong.

I had chosen to forget.

The mirror was not a curse but a prison for my guilt.

Every face was a reminder, every reflection a piece of a past I couldn’t escape.

I fell to my knees.

The mirror cracked again, pieces falling silently like tears.

I touched the shards, feeling the weight of my sins pressing down.

But then the mirror whispered one last thing.

“Forgive yourself, or be lost forever.”

That night, I sat before the shattered mirror, the faces fading but the lesson clear.

To move forward, I had to remember—and forgive.

The next morning, I cleaned the broken glass.

For the first time in years, my own reflection smiled back at me.

Moral

Sometimes, the darkest reflections reveal the truths we hide from ourselves.

Facing the forgotten parts of our past with courage and forgiveness is the only way to reclaim our true selves.