The Vanishing Reflection

Eleanor was never one for the supernatural. She was proud of logic, of reason. So, when she first realized her reflection wasn't in the mirror, she assured herself it was a trick of the light. Perhaps the glass was distorted, perhaps she was exhausted—but deep inside, she knew better.

She brushed it off at first. She carried on with her day-to-day life, steering clear of the bathroom mirror, looking away from the reflective glass of shop windows. But soon she began to notice other oddities. Coworkers refused to recognize her presence until she said something. The grocery store cashier scowled at her like she wasn't there. Even the phone screen couldn't capture her presence in selfies.

Fear scratched at her breast. She attempted to inform her best friend, Sarah, but the second she mentioned it, Sarah's eyes glazed, as though Eleanor's words had just dissolved in air. In desperation, she went to see a doctor, who tested her with increasing concern but never once looked her in the eye. The tests all came back normal. No cause. No answer.

She stood in front of her bedroom mirror one night, staring into the empty space where her reflection should have been. Then something moved. Not in the mirror, but behind her. A shadow, dark and serpentine, took shape in the dim light of the room. Her heart pounding, she turned around, but there was nothing.

The next morning, she awoke with a heavy, dragging feeling. She went to grab her phone to check the time but found it ice cold, her fingers stinging. When she saw her reflection in the glass, her stomach churned—there she was. But something was off. The woman in the glass stared back with vacant eyes, a wicked smile creeping onto its lips.

Her reflection had returned, but Eleanor was no more.

The days went by, and Eleanor's hold on reality tenuous. Others around her were far away, their voices muted as if she stood behind a solid sheet of glass. She attempted to scream, waving her hands in their faces, but nobody responded. She was invisible.

Desperation drove her back to the mirror. The image that mirrored her movements with such perfection now seemed more real than she felt. One night, she experimented with the boundaries. She raised her hand—and so did her reflection. But when she extended her hand to touch the glass, the icy surface undulated like water, and her reflection's hand darted out, clamping around her wrist.

There was a sharp, cold sting as Eleanor's reflection pulled her along. She shrieked, but the cry was consumed by darkness. She blinked, and she was not in her bedroom anymore. She was standing in a distorted, monochrome replica of her apartment, the air heavy and choking. She whirled around in shock—across the glass, in the outside world, her double turned away from the mirror with a satisfied smile and left the room.

Imprisoned, Eleanor beat on the glass, but it trembled only slightly beneath her fists. She could only stand by as her double lived her life—responding to texts, grabbing coffee with Sarah, smiling at passersby, deceiving them all.

The worst was seeing it smile at her family, at Sarah, and at its own reflection in the mirror as though it had been her all along. And as days gave way to weeks, Eleanor's pounding grew weaker, her screams fell silent. Her reflection had prevailed.

And no one ever noticed she was gone.