"The Mind Beneath the Mirror"

She always said mirrors don’t lie.

But Elena knew better.

It started on an ordinary Thursday, the kind with stale coffee, buzzing office lights, and the lingering ache of dreams she couldn’t quite remember. She worked as a receptionist in a dental clinic — all “How can I help you?”s and fake smiles. Her world was small, her apartment quiet, and her loneliness loud.

Then there was Marla.

Marla walked in like a thunderstorm: red hair, a laugh that made heads turn, and the kind of beauty Elena had only ever seen on TV. She was applying for a job as the clinic’s new marketing manager. Elena offered her a coffee and a compliment. That’s all it took. They were friends by the end of the week.

But Marla wasn’t just magnetic. She was mysterious. Her past was a puzzle, her eyes carried shadows. She talked about dreams — vividly, obsessively. About lucid dreaming, astral projection, the mind’s ability to escape the body like a ghost walking in the dark.

“Elena,” she whispered once, glass of wine in hand, “have you ever seen yourself sleeping?”

“No. Should I have?”

Marla just smiled. “You’d be surprised what you can see… when you’re not in your body anymore.”

It was harmless at first — dream journals, meditation, breathing exercises. Then the experiments began.

“Tonight,” Marla said one evening, her face glowing under candlelight, “you’re going to meet yourself. Float out of your body. Look down at the girl sleeping. She’s not you. Not really. Just flesh.”

Elena played along. At first.

But one night, something changed.

She woke up floating. Or at least she thought she did. She saw her body in bed — pale, still, mouth slightly open. She floated through the ceiling, into the sky, higher than she’d ever felt before. It was intoxicating.

She didn’t tell Marla.

But Marla knew.

“I told you,” she said the next morning, not asking, just knowing. “You saw her. You saw yourself.”

Elena nodded slowly. “It felt… real.”

Marla’s smile was wide and dangerous. “It was.”

---

The obsession grew. They spent hours talking about dreams, death, and what lives between sleep and wake. Marla taught her how to push — to move through space, to touch things, to influence.

Then one night, she went too far.

She woke up in a different body.

Not floating. Not dreaming.

Inside Marla.

She screamed, but no sound came. Her hands weren’t hers. Her face in the mirror — Marla’s face — stared back, calm and cruel.

And on the bed… Elena’s body smiled.

“Good morning,” Marla said. In Elena’s voice. “I was waiting for you to figure it out.”

---

The days that followed were a waking nightmare. Elena — now Marla — was trapped. She tried everything: begging, threatening, screaming. But Marla (now in Elena’s body) had planned it all.

“My body was sick,” she explained. “Dying. Yours is perfect. Young. Strong. You should be grateful.”

She wasn’t.

She watched Marla — herself — laugh with her coworkers, charm the dentist, even flirt with the man Elena had quietly loved from afar. And no one knew.

Because mirrors don’t lie.
But people do.

---

She planned her escape carefully.

Late one night, Elena returned to the dream world. She found her sleeping body again — now inhabited by the intruder. She hovered above, whispering her name. Willing her soul to come out.

But Marla had built walls.

“Don’t try it again,” she warned. “If you do, I’ll kill your body in its sleep. And then where will you go?”

Elena wept in silence.

---

Weeks passed. She learned to live in the wrong skin. She stole money, booked a cheap motel, wrote everything down. She studied, learned, watched.

Until one night — she tried one last time.

This time, she didn’t float.

She fell.

Hard.

Into a dream that wasn't hers. A dark corridor. A voice.

“You are not your name,” it said. “You are your will.”

She screamed. She reached. She pulled.

And she woke up.

In her old body.

Marla’s soul was gone — vanished into the void.

---

Now Elena sits at the edge of her bed every night, watching the mirror.

Just in case.

Because sometimes, she hears tapping.

From the other side.