The Whispering Mirror

The antique shop had no name. It was folded into a shadow between a boarded-up bakery and a tax office no one remembered visiting. Lin scrolled past it every day on her way to class, earbuds in, eyes on her phone-until one rainy Tuesday when her Spotify glitched, her playlist melted into silence, and a shiver like static ran down her spine.

She looked up.

The door stood open, sighing like it had been waiting. Lin stepped in.

Dust danced in pale slants of light. The shop was a crypt of forgotten things-clock faces with no hands, dolls that blinked out of sync, furniture with teeth-like carvings. And in the back, half-draped in a lace veil yellowed by age, stood the mirror.

It was oval, about as tall as Lin, framed in tarnished silver vines that twisted like veins. The glass was impossibly dark, like water that remembered drowning. On impulse, Lin lifted the veil.

Her reflection did not greet her.

Instead, the mirror whispered. In her voice. But wrong-like it had been taught her cadence by someone with a grudge.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

Lin laughed, uneasy. “Creepy. Ten out of ten.”

She didn’t buy it. She stole it.

Back in her dorm room, the mirror leaned against the far wall, smudged and cold. Her roommate Jo raised an eyebrow.

“Bold choice.”

“It’s haunted,” Lin grinned, pulling off her jacket. “Probably cursed. Got it for free.”

“You mean stole,” Jo said, and tossed a pillow at her. “You’re ridiculous.”

That night, the mirror showed something new.

Not Lin. Not Jo. The room-but not as it was. It showed Jo asleep, exactly as she would be an hour later, arm slung over the side of the bed. And Lin standing in front of the mirror, head tilted, as if listening.

The whispering began again. This time, louder. Clearer.

“One by one your truths will bleed...”

Lipstick writing bloomed on the glass, slow and curling:

One by one your truths will bleed,

Reflections crack on whispered need.

If you lie, the glass will know-

And take the part you dare not show.

Lin started. “What the hell?”

The mirror giggled. Not a laugh-a mimicry of one.

The next morning, Jo’s pink nail polish bottle was shattered. More than that-her left pinky was missing.

Not cut. Not bandaged. Missing. As if it had never existed.

“Something’s wrong,” Jo said slowly, staring at her hand like it had betrayed her. “I had ten fingers yesterday, Lin. Right?”

Lin couldn’t answer. Her throat was locked. Because she remembered Jo having ten fingers. But now… now even her old photos showed only nine.

The mirror whispered again.

“Lie to her,” it said in Lin’s voice. “Tell her it was always that way.”

And like a coward, Lin did.

By Friday, Jo couldn’t remember her mother’s name.

By Saturday, Lin looked into the mirror and saw herself-but smiling with someone else’s teeth.

They tried to throw it away. Together, arms shaking, they carried it out to the alley behind the dorms and left it leaning against the dumpsters. Jo whispered a prayer.

But when they returned, the mirror was back. In Lin’s room. Sitting on her bed.

Another message, written this time in something darker than lipstick:

You lied.

You looked.

You’re mine.

Lin started locking the mirror in her closet. Covering it. Ignoring it.

But still, at night-it whispered. And the voice was getting better at sounding like her. Too good.

Sometimes Jo would ask, “Hey, did you talk to me last night?”

Lin would shake her head.

Jo would pale. “But you said-”

“No,” Lin would whisper. “That wasn’t me.”

The mirror started asking questions.

“Why did you lie about your brother?”

“Why do you pretend to be happy?”

“What part of you can I take today?”

Every time Lin denied it, something else disappeared.

First a birthmark. Then her favorite poem, erased from memory like it had never existed. One morning, she awoke to find her voice hoarse, the cadence wrong, as if her vocal cords were adjusting.

On Sunday, Jo was gone.

Not dead. Not missing. Just… erased. Lin was alone in the dorm. The RA had no record of Jo ever enrolling. All the bedsheets were folded. Her scent was gone.

Lin screamed into the mirror. “Where is she?!”

The mirror smiled. It did not need lips.

“You are alone. I made it true.”

The last lipstick poem had grown longer:

Tell no truths, the mirror feeds-

On guilt, regret, and silent pleas.

Speak a lie, and lose your name-

Till mirror and you are one and same.

Lin hasn’t spoken in three days.

She doesn’t lie anymore.

But still, each time she looks, the reflection smiles first.

And it is almost done learning how to be her.

If you ever find a mirror in a shop that doesn’t reflect your body—leave it. Don’t steal it. Don’t look into it.

And whatever you do…

Don’t answer the voice that sounds like you.