Through a Glass, Darkly

I was sitting cross-legged on the couch, scrolling mindlessly through my phone, when the notification sliced through the silence. Chloe. I opened it without a second thought—until I saw the image attached. My breath hitched. A wave of vertigo crashed over me, so sudden and violent I had to grip the armrest to steady myself.

How can this be?

The photo itself was enough to freeze my blood. My heart hammered against my ribs as I stared at the woman in the picture. She was… me. Or something wearing my skin.

I typed back, fingers trembling:
“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?! WHO IS THIS?!”

A minute later, Chloe replied:
“I don’t know, Soph. Ever since that girl gave me that ‘moisturizer’ sample… my legs feel like they’re burning. She said she was your sister.”

My hands went numb. The phone nearly slipped from my grasp.
“Sister?! Chloe, I DON’T HAVE A SISTER! I’m an only child!”

The reply that followed shattered my world:
“Impossible. She looks exactly like you. Swore on her life she was your sister.”

Those words—“she was your sister”—ripped through me like a physical blow. Time stopped. I was frozen, eyes locked on the screen, drowning in a sea of impossible questions. Who was this? Why now? What did she want?

A cold weight settled in my chest, heavy and suffocating. The air in the room thickened, humming with a static charge that prickled my skin. I stumbled to my feet, legs unsteady as if the ground had turned to liquid. I needed to see. Needed proof.

I sprinted to the full-length mirror in the hallway. My reflection stared back—same wide eyes, same messy bun, same faded band t-shirt. But something was wrong. Terribly wrong. My reflection’s eyes didn’t blink. They held me in a gaze that felt ancient, predatory, as if something else was looking out through my own face. A chill snaked down my spine.

A soft thump echoed behind me. I spun around. Nothing. The room was empty, yet the silence felt… watchful. When I turned back to the mirror, my hair was disheveled, strands clinging to my sweat-slicked temples. I knew I’d smoothed it just minutes ago.

My phone buzzed again, a shrill, jarring sound. Another notification from Chloe. This time, it was a video.

I tapped it with a shaking finger.

The screen showed a woman standing in Chloe’s dimly lit apartment. She turned slowly. My breath stopped. It was me. Every detail matched—the curve of my jaw, the small mole near my hairline, even the way I tilted my head when confused. But her eyes… they weren’t mine. They were voids, swallowing the light, reflecting nothing but a cold, predatory hunger. A slow, chilling smile stretched her lips.

A searing heat shot through my legs, sudden and agonizing, as if molten metal was being pumped through my veins. I cried out, collapsing to the floor. The heat vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by an unnatural cold that spread upward, locking my knees, my hips, my spine. I was paralyzed, pinned to the spot by an invisible force.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sound came from the front door. Soft, rhythmic. Testing.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream. The tapping stopped. Silence pressed in, thick and suffocating. Then, a whisper, close enough to feel the breath on my ear:

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m your sister.”

Ice flooded my veins. I wasn’t alone. I could feel her presence behind me, a radiating cold that made the hairs on my neck stand up. I twisted my head, straining to see over my shoulder. Empty space. Just the hallway shadows stretching long and distorted in the dying light.

But the feeling remained. A pair of unseen eyes boring into my back.

My gaze snapped back to the phone screen. The video was still playing. The woman’s smile had widened. Her head tilted, mimicking my posture perfectly. She raised a hand and slowly, deliberately, pointed at the camera. At me.

I threw the phone across the room. It skittered under the coffee table.

I scrambled backward on my hands and heels, pressing myself against the wall. My mind raced, fracturing under the weight of impossibilities. Chloe said she was my sister. The video showed my twin. The whisper…

No. This isn’t real. It can’t be.

I hugged my knees, rocking slightly, trying to force air into my lungs. The unnatural cold in my limbs deepened, spreading like frost through my marrow. I could see my breath plume in the suddenly frigid air.

Flicker.

The overhead light sputtered. The neon tube above the mirror buzzed erratically, casting strobing shadows that danced like living things across the walls. My own shadow, thrown against the far wall, moved independently. It stretched, twisted, and began to glide—slowly, deliberately—toward the mirror.

I was still huddled on the floor, frozen. But my shadow was standing, walking.

I shot to my feet, heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I stared at the mirror. My reflection stood there, perfectly calm, watching me. A slow, cruel smile curved its lips. It raised its hand and pressed its palm flat against the glass from the inside.

I screamed—a raw, ragged sound—and lunged for the phone. I snatched it from under the table, fingers fumbling as I typed frantically to Chloe:

“CHLOE! ARE YOU SURE SHE LOOKED LIKE ME? DID SHE REALLY SAY SHE WAS MY SISTER? ANSWER ME!”

I stared at the screen, panting, waiting. The silence in the apartment was absolute, broken only by the frantic buzzing of the dying light and my own ragged breaths.

The phone vibrated. Not a message. The screen lit up. The front camera activated.

I saw my own terrified face filling the screen—pale, eyes wide, hair plastered to my forehead. And then, movement behind me. A figure materialized in the reflection, over my shoulder. Same face. Same smile. Same dead, empty eyes.

My other face.

I threw the phone again. It shattered against the far wall. I scrambled backward, crawling until my back hit the kitchen counter. I curled into a ball, trembling violently.

Who is she? Why now? What does she want?

A soft sound reached me—the whisper of fabric on wood. Footsteps. Light, almost silent, but unmistakably approaching from the darkened hallway leading to the bedrooms.

I forced myself to look.

A silhouette stood at the end of the hall. Female form. My height. Hair loose, like mine. No features visible in the gloom, just an outline radiating cold.

She took a step forward. Then another.

My legs were lead. Every instinct screamed RUN, but an invisible force rooted me to the spot. She stopped just outside the bedroom door. Turned her head. I felt her unseen gaze lock onto me.

FZZZT-POP!

The overhead light exploded in a shower of sparks. Pitch darkness swallowed the apartment.

And then, the whisper again, inches from my ear, cold and final:

“I’m not like you… I am you.”

The darkness was absolute, a physical weight pressing down. I was trapped against the counter, the silhouette from the hallway now a looming presence just feet away. Her words echoed in the suffocating blackness:
“I’m not like you… I am you.”

The statement was a physical blow, stealing my breath. What did that mean? How could she be me? My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs, a trapped bird fighting to escape. Logic shattered, leaving only raw, primal fear.

I shuffled backward, desperate for space, until my spine hit the unyielding edge of the kitchen counter. The silhouette moved with me, gliding silently over the floorboards. One step. Then another. Closing the distance.

As she neared, the faint ambient light from the streetlamps outside filtered weakly through the window, casting her in a sickly, pale glow. The details emerged, etching themselves onto my retinas.

Her face.

My face.

Every line, every contour identical. The small, crescent-shaped scar above my left eyebrow from a childhood fall. The slight asymmetry in my smile. The way a strand of hair always fell across my right temple. Even the faded blue t-shirt I wore was mirrored perfectly.

But the eyes…

They weren’t mine. They were abysses. Vast, empty pools of absolute blackness that seemed to absorb the weak light around them. And her smile… it stretched too wide, a grotesque parody of my own expression, filled with a chilling certainty.

I tried to scream. My throat locked, producing only a strangled, pathetic gasp.

She stopped directly in front of me, close enough that I could feel the unnatural cold radiating from her body, a chill that seeped into my bones. She raised her hand, pale fingers outstretched, and touched my cheek.

The contact was agony. It wasn’t just cold; it was a void, a sucking emptiness that felt like it was leeching the warmth, the very life, out of me. I gasped, my knees buckling.

Behind her, the shattered remnants of the full-length mirror began to vibrate. The fractured pieces hummed with a low, resonant energy, vibrating faster and faster. I looked past her shoulder, into the largest remaining shard.

My reflection stared back. But it wasn’t me anymore. It was the reflection I should have seen—terrified, desperate, but mine. Its eyes were wide with recognition, not emptiness. Its mouth opened in a silent scream directed at the woman touching me.

“GET AWAY FROM HER!” the reflection’s voice screamed inside my head, a desperate telepathic plea. “SHE’S NOT YOU! TRUST ME! I’M REAL!”

My mind reeled. Which one was the lie? The flesh-and-blood nightmare touching me, or the desperate reflection screaming from within the broken glass?

The apartment itself seemed to convulse.

WHOOSH.

A gale-force wind, impossible and sourceless, slammed against the sealed windows, rattling the panes in their frames. Doors throughout the apartment slammed open and shut in violent succession—bedroom, bathroom, closet—banging like fists in fury. The floor beneath me trembled, a deep, sickening vibration that traveled up through my legs. The ornate chandelier in the living room began to swing wildly, casting chaotic, strobing shadows that writhed like tortured souls.

The doppelgänger’s grip on my cheek tightene