The Man in the Mirror

Me and my friends were still talking about it. The loss of my boyfriend, Carston in a drive by shooting, a case of mistaken identity in a gang war. He died while out with a couple of his friends, and I was dating him for a couple of years until his death. I learned he planned to propose to me before he was shot. I contemplated suicide, but didn’t attempt it. My friends came through for me. I just hated not hearing him. We called him “Glitch” because he had dyslexia, but he had good intentions, and cared for people. My best friend Alex kept me feeling somewhat positive after the fact, but I knew she wouldn’t accept it either. I was still distraught, and then the unexplainable started to happen.

I bought a new bathroom mirror, as my old one I found just brought me back memories of Carston. I could only remember times he would assure me as I looked in the mirror that I looked great. I just wanted to let go. When I hung it up, nothing out of the ordinary was happening. By the next day, I saw something I couldn’t believe.

There was Carston standing behind me in his jacket and v-neck shirt. He had a small but sad smile as he looked at me through the reflection. I looked over my shoulder and there was nothing. I looked back and he was still smiling. He put his hand on my shoulder, and I felt coldness where his hand was in the mirror.

“Thank you,” I said into the reflection. He reacted with a nod and letting his hand off. Thank God it was a Sunday and I didn’t have to go to work. It stayed like that for a couple months, with Carston using a knife to etch messages into the mirror that he could rub off. Hard for him at first, but he got the hang of it. The first one he did (successfully) was “Only this one” which meant that was the only mirror I could talk to him. I didn’t have to do research to know that he know possessed that mirror, but hey, at least I could see him. Still, I had trouble getting past it. I could only talk into the mirror, and he could only carve a message. It was a sweet but infuriating thing in my life. I could talk to him, but I could never hear him.

My friends just got through it though. In about five months after death, they were almost completely past it, while I still cried and had nightmares of when I first heard of Carston’s death. I was angry and I told him that my friends were almost past him. He etched the words that seemed to have started a decent in his sanity for him. “Can you bring them here?”

I brought Alex, explaining to her that I could see Carston. When she went to the mirror, he was there. I tried to burst out, “Do you see him?” but all I saw on her face was confusion.

“Hello?” Carston wrote. He was in front of both of us in the mirror.

“Do you see what he wrote?” I said to her.

“You’re going insane Hillary.”

“He’s right there!” I screeched. Discontent showed on Carston’s face. He tried to figure out what to do. He tried to etch a few words or commands, but erased them shortly after starting them. Alex and I were starting to argue, and I tried to flash looks at the mirror for my move. Eventually, he wrote, “Go out and talk,” so I did and just cried into Alex’s shoulder for fifteen minutes. We reassured each other that this was reality, and I started to accept it. She said that I should go and get a date. Get over it a bit faster, even if it fails in the long run. I took her word for it, and she left.

I went straight back to the mirror, hoping to calm down what seemed a flustered dead boyfriend. When I went in, Carston kept banging on the mirror, in front of my reflection. He wanted out, I knew it. I just didn’t know how. I told him that, hoping he would understand. He did (surprisingly) and wrote down words in this sequence.

“They can’t see me?”

“Yes,” I said sadly.

“Only you?”

“I guess.”

“Alright…” the dots were all in stabs, like he was in a dilemma. He then seemed to have an idea, and then, a side of him showed that he didn’t when he was alive.

He turned to me grinning, not in a pleasant way either. It seemed like he had something on his mind, and I knew what it was. He wanted to get the murderer of him. A revenge kill that couldn’t be resolved.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said out of terror. “Don’t do it. You’ll only hurt yourself.”

“Why not?” he etched. “I get away with it.”

“Because you’ll hurt me!” I yelled, holding my head and trying not to cry again. His grin was wiped from his face. He was now in thought, unsure of whether to follow me, or wreck the one who killed him.

“Fine,” he wrote after a while. A sigh of relief later, I walked out of the bathroom and I told myself to try and avoid Carston for a little. He could get a bit overboard with his thoughts, and I’m not sure how it would end up. I avoided him for about sixteen hours, until I went back in to get ready for the day, avoiding it last night.

He wasn’t impressed to say the least. He seemed a little bit annoyed, pacing the small room that he could.

“You know she said that I should find a date to me right?” I said in honesty.

“I know,” he wrote back. He was more annoyed now, like his mind was reeling. He wanted to go back to the way it was, and I could tell. He was living another life, the one he used to have.

“You can’t go back,” I said.

“Ok.”

“Can you accept this?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Your my girlfriend,” I frowned at that, unsure that I should go ahead on the date idea. My alarm went off for work and I quickly said, “See you tonight,” as I headed out, not waiting for a response.

By nightfall, I decided to go through with a date. I told Alex and she was excited. She and her boyfriend, Jared got a friend of his that was actually cute and seemed like a nice guy. First impressions though. They said that his name was Kenny, and he wanted to have someone for a while now. I said I would try him out.

I went into the bathroom, and I didn’t even have to say a word before Carston had a complete phrase. It wasn’t intended for me. I could tell as he was wiping it off as he saw me.

“_ e all blinded,” was what I could make out. I knew he would have secrets, but this one is puzzling.

“All blinded?” I said in curiosity.

“Not you,” he wrote. “Not yet at least.”

“At least?”

“Yes, your date.”

“You have hard feelings, I get it. This is important to me though.”

“He’ll blind you.”

“No he won’t.”

“DON’T TRUST THE VIRUS,” The last mark he left, just there.

“Is this to do with your nickname?” He nodded. “Glitch, you’re not making this easy. If you want justice, you’ll have to wait.” He made that “but I don’t want to” look on his face. It was like raising a kid, or how I envisioned it to be. “Just wait. Don’t worry, they’ll get them soon.”

“DON’T TRUST THE VIRUS,” he wrote again, stacking the messages. I walked out in frustration.

***

Kenny was a nice guy, he brought me to a nice restaurant for dinner and took me to the park for a walk afterwards. The restaurant was high end, and the park was near deserted, as it was late. He picked me up, dropped me off and was funny in his jokes. I have a good feeling about him. Needless to say that Carston wasn’t impressed. He was still bitter about it. The virus comment he refused to lift. It seems that it would stay like that for a little while longer. At least judging after he wiped virus for another conversation.

“How was it?”

“Honestly, quite pleasant. It was nice to have a breath of fresh air.”

“From me?”

“Not exactly. You’re making it hard to move on.”

“Ok,” he rewrote the virus comment and turned away. I walked out.

At this point I was unsure of anything he wanted. It was a blender in short. It just seemed like he knew more than he let on. Then something startled me. A bang came from the bathroom, then in my bedroom, then the bathroom again.

“Decipher that,” read the message left by Carston. He wasn’t anywhere to be found. I was confused, puzzled, and above all, somewhat amazed. He got away with lieing to me for three months about him not being able to leave the mirror. “So now he could go into any mirror,” was my thought. “He could be watching me anywhere.” Yet, after two weeks, I didn’t see anything of him anywhere. Not in the mirror in the bedroom, not in the bathroom, or any other for that matter. Kenny wasn’t commanding, and everything seemed to be working out for me. He just seemed off one day though. Not like his normal charismatic self. Just… off. Nothing more, nothing less. Aside from that hitch, nothing was out of the ordinary.

***

A month has past since my first date with Kenny, and I had him over at my place for the first time. I had been to his place twice, and now we took the shift over here. Nothing was out of the ordinary, until Kenny used the bathroom. I forgot about Carston at this point, since he removed everything. I only remembered when Kenny was taking a little longer than 4 minutes in the bathroom. I went over and heard the sink on, but then he just banged the door once.

“Are you alright?” I said out of shock.

“Just come in here, I can’t explain it!” he yelled back. I opened the door, and he was in shock just staring at the mirror.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“I… do you see that thing in the mirror?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a man inside the mirror just laughing at me!” I looked into it, yet nothing was there. I then had flashbacks to when Carston wrote to me. His slow decent into bitterness and madness. I knew something was wrong with Kenny and maybe it was Carston, but I didn’t see him. All I could tell was that he was in shock, so I dragged him out to try and help. Soon he recovered and from what I could tell, he wasn’t going to unsee that. He told me everything that the thing looked like and it checked out as Carston. I took him back to his place and kept with him until he was unconscious. I then went back home and stared back into the same mirror for what seemed like ages, but I never saw Carston there. I shook it off, but I was getting scared. If Kenny can see it, who else could? I shook it off but my mind wouldn’t let go of it. It’s horrible. I feel lost, not scared or creeped out, just lost. It was like a state of helplessness; unsure of what to do or what to say. I went up to my bedroom and tried to go to sleep, but I became restless and just couldn’t let my mind stop. Then, the abnormal happened.

The world went a deep shade of crimson, and the mirror in my bedroom was all I could see. Carston was there, staring at me. He then crawled out, and grabbed hold of my face. I then had a better look at him. His face was cut along the bottom of his right eye, and his smile was that creepy grin from before. It was his eyes that got me though. All it was, was two blank areas where the pupils and iris belongs. It wasn’t him from before, even in the mirror. He wasn’t handsome, but now deranged.

“Is it nice to hear my voice again?” he said. His voice was a drawn out, almost stacked voice that made him seem hollow. “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything!” I screamed back. “Leave me alone! I want to go to sleep!”

“So strong… it’s amazing.” Then the world went back to normal. I went to my mirror instantly and writing was on it. “I know your secret,” it read. I didn’t keep anything from him, ever. I was open to everything, and he knew all my secrets. What was he saying?

***

I know what he knows now. Carston was in my mirror again, but he just stood there with an impressed grin on his face. The first time I saw him he was just like him on any other day. Yet, no matter what I did or said, he remained unshaken. The next time I saw him, he had blood on his hands. The next, more. His grin widened every time, until I broke and went home. I screamed at him from my bedroom mirror and it seemed that did the trick. His grin was wiped from his face and his charisma that he seemed to have was also drained. Then he shook his head, and the world turned crimson again.

He crawled out of the mirror laughing as he pinned me to a wall with a hand, his knife in his other.

“Why’d you keep the truth from me?” he said.

“What do you mean?” I said without difficulty. I was still breathing normally somehow.

“You… you’re still keeping the truth from me?” his grin came back.

“What do you want?”

“Justice… because you killed me!” he raised his knife to my throat. “You sent Kenny out to kill me because you, Alex, Kenny, Jared, and everyone else is a gang together! And you had fallen for me! So you asked Kenny to shoot me and frame it as a gang shooting! Then you dated him because of it!” his knife was cold and rubbing my neck. I knew what I had to do.

“I’m sorry!” I yelled. Tears started to roll down my face. “I admit it! It was my mistake that costed me!” I became a blubbering mess, just hoping he’d have that same mercy he did have for the world.

“Too late for that now,” he slit my throat, yet I didn’t feel pain, but the blood gushing from it I did. He threw me to the ground and carved my chest open and pulled out my intestines, as well as my heart. Still, I was somehow alive and conscious. “I did the same to Kenny and Alex. I ignored Jared because the grief would drive him to suicide. So, when I go back into the mirror, you die in the real world. So… any last words?” He laughed hysterically. I just threw insults at him. I didn’t hold back and he deserved it. “Good choice. By the way, Kenny told me you told him to kill me. Great boyfriend you chose… blinder,” he said mockingly, as he started to crawl back in the mirror.

Then the world flashed a sight of my bedroom, then to darkness.