MirrorMirror

43 / Portkey Journeys

The glass moved from cold to hot in an instant.

Cassidy pulled his finger away, or tried to.

It didn't feel stuck, but he could not disengage from the glass. He realised it wasn't his finger that was fixed in place. It was his entire arm, locked from his shoulder downwards. The tip of his forefinger felt as if it were burning.

"Amy! Let me go!"

I can't.

Not yet.

He watched in horror as the storm around his hand swirled again. As it spun, it crept along his finger. Spiralling up. Soaking in. He could feel it invading his flesh. Eating its way in through the epidermis. He screamed, but the red flashed up to his mouth, pouring in and preventing any words from coming out. Next, his nose was filled. His ears. He could move and look around. He could, somehow, breathe. He could also feel the lipstick ants crawling up to his eyes.

He tried to cough the contents of his lungs back up, but there was suddenly nothing to cough up.

The smothering fluid vanished, reappearing back on the mirror but, instead of gripping his finger, it had slid down to join with its brethren around the intruder's hand. Cassidy was released and his arm dropped to his side. He fell back, tripping over the body and collapsing to his knees.

What was she doing? What the fuck was she doing?

He didn't have long to wait to find out.

As had happened to him, the man's hand, then arm, then body and torso were covered in crimson. Once it had entirely coated the corpse, it stopped moving. The body, in contrast, started to. Slowly, it slid towards the mirror.

No.

No...

No!

Not towards.

Into!

The palm sank into the glass. The wrist. The entire arm. There was no sound apart from that of the muted scraping across the carpet. Cassidy didn't want to watch, but how could he turn away? It was captivating in a bizarre way. Hypnotic, even. When the last of the man vanished into the glass, the liquid and any other traces of red were gone. Only the smudge remained to spoil the glass's cleanliness.

"Amy?"

He had to ask, though he thought he'd rather not know, what had happened. Where was his attacker? What had she done with him?

Had she... eaten him?

"Amy? Are you there? Are you OK?"

The mirror darkened briefly, a flash of shadow that was gone instantly, then it shimmered. The lipstick Cass was expecting erupted from the outer rim of the glass. It flew towards Cass, who instinctively held up his arms, but nothing touched him. He slowly lowered his arms, and was shocked to see nothing in the room, including himself, had a speck of red on it.

Had it been his imagi... No! There it was again, except this time, there was no explosion. The lipstick ants marched quickly in a diminishing spiral on the surface. Once they reached the middle, they accelerated until the last speck was gone.

The mirror shimmered again, and this time, the shimmering didn't stop immediately. Waves of interlaced layers of darkness and light overlapped each other, faster and faster, until they were almost strobing. Cass held up his hand to shade his eyes, whist still being able to watch what was happening.

Then, it stopped abruptly enough for Cassidy to feel as if he'd been physically hit by the swells. He rocked back on his heels, his attention momentarily taken from the mirror. When he looked back, something seemed to lurk inside the glass. It was like the after effect of a reflection that no longer had the original object to appear as, so was reflecting its memory instead of the object itself.