Short Horror Stories

The Mirror

I specially wrote this because some people told me to write more about Mirrors. So have fun, Vote,Comment and follow. Feedback will be appreciated.

Some years ago, a teacher asked me to write a story about the beginnings of my worst phobia. I was not to tell her which parts were real, and which parts were made up. This is a copy of the paper I turned in to her. It has only been changed for grammar errors, and to include the author's note at the end, so forgive some crappy writing. I think I was about 15 when I wrote this.

Since I can remember, there was always something deeply unsettling about a surface perfectly reflecting the world. Even when I was very small, only two or three, my mom remembers me screaming to get out of the bathroom. I was always hiding in her shoulder, begging wordlessly to leave that terrible room.
There was never any real reason for it. There's no scarring experience. No one jumped out from a closet in a clown outfit and gave me permanent psychological damage. It was just something, I suppose, that I was born with. Completely, terribly, irrational.
Until something gave me reason to be afraid.

It's probably no coincidence that I turned out to be more than a bit of a tomboy. What with being too freaked to apply makeup or do my hair like a proper girl, I was always in boy's clothes and a ponytail. My hair was almost below my waist because I didn't want to get it cut. Something about sitting still in a chair for 20 minutes staring at my own reflection seemed rather like torture to 12 year old me.

My mom, of course, just thought my hair was my expression of femininity. She thought the best way to turn me into a "real" girl was to send me to theater camp at the Grand Theater. Odds were, I'd have to wear a dress there, right?

After being cast as a boy, I was really excited. I spent hours hiding in parts of the hundred year old theater learning my small number of lines. I would take dress forms up to the old "blacks only" seating area and practice my sword fighting scene. Right on the cusp of a new era of my life, nearly a teenager, I was actually thrilled to be doing something.

Backstage, we had separate dressing rooms for boys and girls. The girls had stalls with curtains, and each had their own floor length mirror on the wall. There was another mirror at the end of the small walkway. As far as I saw it, there was no escape. And no option to change anywhere else. So I clenched my jaw, and stared the floor. I often changed so fast I received compliments from the director about returning early for my scenes.

The night of the first dress rehearsal, everything changed.
It was two weeks into the play. I was staying late with another friend, hanging up costumes together after the rehearsal. She knew about my phobia, and would frequently tease me about it. That night, her teasing took the simple form of asking me to retrieve some masking tape from the women's changing room.
My strategy was the same as it always was. Take a deep breath, close my eyes, push open the door, and keep my eyes below knee level. After a few moments looking for the tape, I realized something terrible. It was on a nail, at eye level, on the mirror at the end of the walkway. The mirror that reflected all of the others.
Oh god please no.

I stopped dead in front of the mirror. If I looked to my right, there would be a floor length mirror 8 feet away. The same to my left. All three mirrors reflecting a side of me. It scared the living hell out of me, but I knew, on some level, that this was completely stupid. I was alone in there. Dammit, I was nearly a teenager. I should be over this childish fear.

In a moment of stubbornness, I made a decision that still haunts me. I could have just felt for the tape, kept my eyes down, and walked away. But I didn't. Instead, I looked straight ahead. My blue eyes met my own in the reflection.
And then they met green ones over my shoulder.

When you see something truly terrifying, there is always a pause before the fear. Where your brain is processing, trying to explain what is going on. Then, all of a sudden, those thoughts start to scream in a single, terrible voice, that this is nothing like you have ever seen before.

She was nothing particularly scary to look at. In fact, she was a rather attractive woman. Long, tightly curled red hair fell wildly past her shoulders. She had dramatic theater makeup slightly smudged around her eyes. Freckles showed through the thick pancake foundation. She was smiling ever so slightly. I was glued to the spot, locked in eye contact.

Shakily, I said, "So you're one of the older guest chorus members?" Maybe she was just someone I didn't know. It sounded more like begging than a question.

With grace that still haunts me, she slowly shook her head no. Leaning forward, and I could feel her breath on my ear when she whispered, "Look." Then turned her head to look at the mirror to my right.

Against every screaming instinct, I looked. She was reflected there, and in the mirror to my left, too, as if she were physical. Grasping at every last shred of bravery, I held my hand out behind me, where I should have touched her. I knew there would be only air. But I was wrong. It wasn't just air.

Before I could make contact, she whispered, quickly, "I have always been here, and will always be looking back."

As my arm entered the space where she should have been, I felt an intense burning. I later found out I had suffered a first degree burn from my thumb along the underside of my forearm up to my elbow. But all I knew was, she was gone.

Rushing out of the dressing room, I yelled for my friend. There, on one of the makeup mirrors, was a sign saying she had gone to the front office. A full 5 minute walk from where I was. Peeking out of the door behind me was a smiling redhead, slowly waving and watching me.

It did not take me 5 minutes. I ran so fast I missed large sections of steps off the stage and fell, getting carpet burn on the palms of my hands and part of my face. I got up and kept running.

When I did reach the front office, there was no one there. She had gone home for the day. Why? I had only been gone for a few minutes. Looking over at the wall clock, I let out a quiet scream. It was a full hour after it should have been. I had seen the clock in the green room right before I went to get the tape.

My mom came to pick me up twenty minutes later. She found me, with slightly bleeding face and hands, sitting on the curb outside of the theater. I told her I had taken a fall of the stage. What else was I supposed to say?

I got home, cleaned up my cuts, and collapsed on my bed. As I threw an arm above my head, my hand hit something I didn't recognize. Tracing the outline, my heart nearly stopped. I opened my eyes, and pulled the object in front of me.
It was a roll of masking tape. The inside was sharpied "Property of the Grand Theater."

What I couldn't know then was that it was only the start of something that has yet to end. It's been three years, and she hasn't gone away. Mirrors are still torture, but every day I become braver. I get regular haircuts, and no longer race out of the bathroom.

Every time I think I'm improving, I see her again. My personal demon. I know who she is now, I know her name. I feel like Anna and I are somehow inseparable now. That she will be with me as long as I'm capable of staring at my own reflection.
Until then, if you ever seen a pretty redhead smiling at you from over your shoulder, tell her I said hi.

Author's Note: My teacher asked for fiction. She never knew I gave her the truth.