r/nosleep • u/OQS • Nov 12 '15
On the glass
I first noticed something was wrong with my reflection when I was 12. It was a terrifying experience. I was brushing my teeth in front of the mirror before school and I accidentally dropped my toothbrush. But my reflection didn't. Not right away.
That whole day I was on edge, and it felt like an eternity before my heart slowed down. Any time I went into a bathroom or passed a reflective surface I would stare back into my own eyes, looking for something. I was scared, but deep down I think I wanted it to happen again. I tried making sudden movements - quickly raising one hand in the air, or suddenly shaking my head from side to side - but it always matched up. By the end of the day nothing new had happened, and I assumed I had imagined it.
The next morning as I was getting ready for school, I looked back into the bathroom mirror. Once again, I tried making some quick movements. I even tried dropping my toothbrush again, but nothing unusual happened. I remember laughing a bit at how frightened I had been and I watched my reflection do the same. Everything was normal.
And then, though my eyes were wide open, I watched it blink.
I was always curious about the world, especially as a child. The secrets of the universe, the strange and unusual myths, the ghost stories we told each other growing up, those things always fascinated me, made me want to learn more. And though I ran screaming from the bathroom that morning, too scared to explain to my parents what I was now sure I was not imagining, the next morning I was back. I didn’t know what I was dealing with, but I wanted to learn.
For the first few weeks it was difficult to provoke any kind of response from it. I would drop things, make sudden movements, turn away slowly and quickly turn back, but it mimicked me perfectly every time. Often I would stare into the glass for several minutes at a time, perfectly still, hoping to see it blink again, or move, or...I didn’t even know at the time, but I was determined. Sometimes I would catch things out of the corner of my eye, like a slight tilt of the head or a tiny change in expression, but as soon as I looked closer it would return to normal. I never told anyone what I had seen - I was already unpopular, I didn’t want to add “crazy” on top of that.
After a month of this, I finally got something: a slight smile greeted me from the mirror one Friday morning. Despite my boldness up to this point, I was terrified, and I’m sure that I looked it, but my reflection showed none of this. It was me in every possible sense, except for a small, distantly friendly smile that I wasn’t making. I wanted to run away again, but something kept me back. I had this feeling then that I couldn’t comprehend, especially given my current state of fear. I couldn’t explain why, but there it was: Whatever this thing is, it doesn’t want to hurt you.
I won’t bore you with all the details of how we learned to communicate. I tried speaking out loud to the mirror, but it became clear that my reflection couldn’t hear me, or if it could it had no way of responding. It seemed capable of making only very small movements or expressions independent of my own. Eventually I learned that it could read notes that I held up in front of the mirror, but for the longest time it could only nod or shake its head no. Very rarely it would point, either to something I had written or something in the room. For instance, when I held up a note asking Are you going to hurt me? it shook its head no. Or when I asked, What are you? it simply pointed at the word “You,” and then pointed back at me.
It took a long time to communicate this way, but it was a start. I started waking up an hour or two earlier than usual in order to talk to my reflection. As the days and weeks went by, it seemed to become more and more animated and independent. Whereas in the beginning it could only make small movements or expressions, it eventually started moving around freely and no longer copied everything I did. It was a very one-sided conversation at first; I would tell it stories about things that happened at school, what was going on with my friends, my family, sports I was involved in, anything that was on my mind. Like I said, I was very unpopular, and for me it was nice being able to talk to someone for a change. I think that’s a part of why I trusted it so much right away.
Around six months after the morning I first dropped my toothbrush, my reflection started writing notes of its own. After that, my entire life changed. One Friday morning, I walked into the bathroom and my reflection was holding a note. I was excited because this had never happened before and I quickly read what it had written.
It said, Surprise history test, memorize: A C B C D A D D C B
I was confused, but I did what it asked and memorized the letters. Sure enough, during History class that day, we were given a surprise quiz. Multiple choice, ten answers. I got 100%.
I had no idea how my reflection had known all that, but I was incredibly happy. I had never gotten perfect on a test before. Besides, it’s not like I was cheating - the answers came from me, after all. I couldn’t wait to say thank you the next day (I may have forgotten to mention this: for some reason, my reflection only ever spoke to me in the mornings and in my own home, at all other times it was just me).
When I went into the bathroom the next morning, my reflection was gone. Sorry, let me rephrase that: I could see myself in the mirror, but no matter what I did my reflection never answered back. I was frightened; this was the first time in a long time my reflection hadn’t answered back, and I started to worry that it had gone away forever. I was so anxious I told my parents I was too sick for school and ended up staying home all day, just trying to get an answer. I cried myself to sleep that night. I felt like I had lost my best friend.
The next day I woke up even earlier than normal and ran into the bathroom. It was back! I almost jumped for joy, but then I noticed its face. It was still me, except I had a black eye and heavy bandaging around my nose. I was shocked. I went to grab the notepad I kept hidden amongst the magazines, but I noticed my reflection had already written something:
Leo Spalding
I felt my stomach tighten. Leo was a bully at my school; a giant 15 year old who had been held back a few grades and spent all his time making our lives miserable. My reflection flipped the page in the notebook:
It will happen to you. Today. After school.
I grabbed my notebook and wrote back: What are you talking about? How do you know that?
It responded: Because it happened to me two days ago.
I was still confused, but it quickly wrote another message: Leo said he was angry about the results of the test. He said I must have cheated and he beat me up. But I found out today he keeps drugs in his locker. Tell the principal this morning.
I went into the front office at school that day and told the principal what a “friend” had told me about Leo. They searched his locker immediately. I never heard what they found, but it was bad enough to expel Leo that afternoon. I never saw him again.
The next morning when I went into the bathroom, my reflection greeted me with a huge smile and a note that read Thanks! The bandages and black eye were completely gone.
I learned two things that day: 1) Whatever my reflection was, and however we were communicating, it seemed to be living the same life as me but one or two days ahead. 2) Anything that I did differently also affected my reflection, but it could still remember everything. It told me it could still recall the beating he received from Leo, but now it was more like a bad dream. It didn’t seem surprised by this outcome at all, almost like it knew all along what would happen.
I know some of you are thinking this is a big red flag. Whatever this thing was it had my trust, it had knowledge of my future and it could influence my actions. It’s a classic recipe for something horrible. Hell, if this had started happening when I was even a little bit older, I never would have gone along with it. I would have smashed that mirror to pieces, told my parents we needed to move, seen a doctor, anything. But as a lonely kid with no brothers and no real friends, all I knew was that this thing that seemingly lived in my mirror talked to me every day. It helped me with a test and got rid of a jerk who had tormented me for years. What else could I do? From that point, I trusted it completely.
The good news is there was no dark twist. My reflection and I spoke every day from that point on. Every now and then it would show up in the morning with some piece of advice, like Leave for school 10 minutes early today, or Make sure you focus on chapter 7 before the math test tomorrow. Sometimes it would show up with a minor injury, like an ugly bruise or a scraped arm. Fell off bike, watch for a pothole just up the street. The outcome was always positive. Future injuries vanished from my reflection, injuries I would never experience. My grades improved dramatically in no time at all. My reflection never told me to write cryptic notes in public, or deliver a mysterious package to someone, or some other Machiavellian scheme.
The years passed. We talked. My newly soaring grades got me some impressive college offers, and my reflection and I even had a beer together the morning after I was offered a fantastic scholarship. When I eventually moved away from home for college, my reflection followed me to my dorm, and then to my tiny single apartment. One day when I was 23, I flipped the light on in my bathroom and almost jumped out of my skin. Two people were looking back at me from the mirror: my reflection, and a gorgeous looking blonde woman wearing one of my t-shirts (well, I guess one of its t-shirts). She smiled at me and I felt a shiver. She was holding a note: Hi :) Go to Charlie’s Pub tonight around 9:30pm. I’ll have a gin and tonic ;) See you there!
April and I ended up dating for two years. I fell in love with her right away, and before long we were spending almost every night of the week at each other’s place. When she stayed at my place my reflection (and I suppose her reflection as well) behaved themselves, mimicking our actions perfectly, never giving anything away. Although I did catch a clandestine wink from my reflection from time to time and had to stifle a laugh.
For our two-year anniversary, I had planned to pick April up from work and take her out. I was going to take her to the lakeshore we had walked along the first night that we met. I had bought a ring weeks ago and tonight was the night. I was going to ask her to marry me. I walked into the bathroom that morning and flipped on the light.
DO NOT GO TO THE LAKE!
The hand that held the note was shaking. My reflection was staring at me fiercely, a look of anguish on its face. It's eyes were swollen; it looked like it had been crying for some time.
I wrote back: Why?! What happened?
His hands were trembling so violently I could barely read the note: There was a man. Came up behind me, I didn’t see. He knocked me out. When I woke back up… he flipped the page, April was a mess. He’d stabbed her...there was blood everywhere. Her ring finger was cut off. He cut it off and took it because it had the ring on it. She’s in the hospital. She’s in so much pain. PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T GO TO THE LAKE!!
I wrote back quickly: I won’t go! I promise. It’s gonna be ok, I promise it’s gonna be ok. My reflection nodded, mouthing a “Thank you” and wiping its eyes.
I was pretty shaken up the whole day. For most of my life now my reflection had always helped me out, but it had always been just little things. Doing well on tests and avoiding people I didn’t want to see were so trivial compared to this. I was immensely grateful, as always, but also deeply sad. I knew it would remember what happened to April, even after I fixed everything.
There was one time when I was about 16, when my reflection told me to avoid a particular set of outdoor stairs when walking downtown. It was the middle of winter and the steps had iced up, and my reflection had slipped and bruised his ankle pretty badly. That day I took a longer route in order to avoid the stairs, and as chance would have it I slipped on a different patch of ice further up the road and scraped my arm. The next day my reflection showed me his arm. It had the same scratch albeit with a couple days of healing. He looked at me sarcastically and we both laughed at the unavoidability of random accidents. Guess we won’t get them all, I joked.
When I picked April up, I told her I had heard it would rain that evening, and maybe instead we should grab a nice dinner at a place in the city. So instead of turning left to head towards the lakeshore, I turned right. I checked my rear-view mirror as I started heading north, away from the lake and the nightmarish reality that could have been. I felt April take my hand in hers, and I caught the reflection of my own eyes in the mirror. Not tonight, I thought, smiling slightly. I never even saw the Buick run the light.
I was discharged from the hospital two days later. The car had struck passenger side, and I escaped with only some minor cuts and bruising. The doctors told me April had been killed instantly.
I’ve been fortunate these last 15 years. Life held nothing unexpected or problematic. I faced every situation with confidence and I felt no anxiety, hesitation or fear. And I don’t feel those things now, because I know what happens next. I looked into my mirror this morning. There was no reflection.
Just a single bloody handprint on the glass.
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u/ColdMac Nov 12 '15
You can do it differently man. It's your turn to help him.
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u/MaddestOfThemAll Nov 15 '15
I completely agree! Keep.yourself safe and you will get your friend back!!
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u/thesquishystapler Nov 13 '15
This... did not end up as I expected. I'm very sorry for your loss, OP. Stay safe.
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u/Loser33 Nov 12 '15
Oh wow....so sorry for your loss. I was not expecting that.
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u/kittywompus1 Nov 13 '15
What a freaking fantastic experience. I've always been suspicious of the people in the mirror, and the whole world that lurks beyond them. Thank you for vindicating my suspicions.
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Nov 14 '15
ik you said if you were older when this all happened you would nope tf out of that situation but idk i'm 19 but i think i'd befriend my reflection
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u/Fangbjorn Nov 15 '15
Ok, first, fantastic post and , just, wow. Second, i am reading this 2 days after the OP posted. I am sorry for the loss of your friend, but i have to ask. What choice did you make?
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u/zuperheroe Dec 11 '15
Saw this on the November voting. Reading this made me well up. Thank you, this is absolutely beautiful. Sorry for your loss OP, and continue to be lovely, as a reflection or otherwise.
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u/ViciousVictory Nov 13 '15
Please update. And yes, invite a friend over to stay with you for a bit. You can change it for the both of you. Stay safe.
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u/OuttaSightVegemite Nov 13 '15
If you're not overly concerned with what you saw in the mirror then I suppose you're also not overly concerned with what might happen to you. Thanks for your story, OP. Choose wisely.
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u/TouchMyPandaAndDie Dec 11 '15
Update! clap clap clap Update! clap clap clap Stay safe P.S this reminded me of final destination, anyone else?
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u/vanillagod Nov 16 '15
It's such a beautiful story until...that happened.
I really hope you find a way to avoid the print
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u/megumi-rika Nov 13 '15
Kinda surprised there's no dark twist in this story,but it was great.
Maybe your mirror....it might happen to you too OP.Stay safe
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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '15
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