“I know you’re watching me.” Lilac looked deep into the mirror. “You can come out now-“ A little black cat jumped out from behind a mirrored cabinet. “You have to stop hiding there-“ She scooped up the cat and placed him on her bed. He looked up at Lilac expectantly until she laid down in bed. He curled up next to her with a little huff. She covered both of them with a blanket and pet his little fluffy head. “You can stay more often if you’d like? I’m gonna put a door in for you soon so you won’t have to jump through the window” Zeus snuggled up closer and leaned into the pets. He liked staying here, he wouldn’t get things thrown at him. But here, he couldn’t hunt.

I looked into the big mirror on my stark white wall. My room was like a cubicle cell, like a prison. Completely clean, no imperfections. It was suffocating.

The mirror that took up half the wall made it seem a little bigger than it was, but I hated it. Because I knew what it was really there for.

“I know you’re watching me.” I said clearly, my voice bouncing off the walls in a weird way.

All I saw in the mirror was me: my hair a blonde birds nest on my head, scratches and bruises all over my skin, and wearing a dirty hospital gown. I looked terrible.

I knew I couldn’t cry at that moment, because then I would look weak, and they would see it. So I just thought about grass, and the sky, and the sun.

“If you’re there, mom, please, let me out.” My voice cracked, and I could feel a painful lump forming in my throat.

“Please… for your daughter’s sake. Don’t you love me?”

“I know you’re watching me.” The figure in the mirror looks identical to me. But she’s not and she knows I know. “And?” My reflection finally says. When the thing speaks, I feel my lips move in unison with it, like I’m being controlled by a ventriloquist. But although my lips move, the voice comes from in front of me—inside the mirror. The glass vibrates when the creature speaks. It amplifies the sound. Making it whirl around my body like an acid tornado. “…And?” I ask my glass doppelgänger incredulously. I feel my eyes widening but hers don’t and uneasiness crawls over my entire body. Then the anger hits. “AND?!” She laughs, her head falling back to let the sound billow out of her chest more easily. My body stays still this time, but that does nothing to comfort me. My fucking reflection is alive and laughing at me. “What are you?” I ask even as she continues to laugh. I’m unsure if she hears me and her laughing continues, rising to damn near hysterical guffaws. CREEPY AS FUCK. __ _ _I don’t know what to do. Call 911? Obviously anything I say will most certainly guarantee me being psychiatrically evaluated, if not institutionalized. I’m starting to wonder If that might be a good idea. Obviously I’m not okay. Ha. Hahahah. I actuallly start laughing out loud. oh fuck what is happening? _ _ _ _My reflection smiles at me, but its sinister. Panic rises as I feel my face perfectly matching her expression. “Come find out,” she says. Then arms protrude from the glass I’m staring at and soft hands wrap around my throat, immediately squeezing hard enough that I feel bones in my neck pop. And then I’m yanked. My feet leave the floor, whipping upward and I’m pulled through what should have been solid glass and a solid wall behind it. Nothing is real. Nothing makes sense. Am I even alive? And if so, for how much longer?

Those are the last thoughts I have before I’m ripped from my world and stripped of every part of myself I ever thought I knew. I just never would have thought that once I found out what she was, I might want to become like her too…

Comment if you want a part 2!

“I know you’re watching me.” The girl on the other side with two brown braids steps back. Funny, she didn’t expect me to see her, did she? “I know you’ve been following me, but here’s the thing, whenever you try to chase me, I just get further and further away, so why don’t you just give up?”

Her eyes widen. “So you’re the villain everyone’s been talking about?” I raise my eyebrows, amused.

“Everyone? Wow, I didn’t think I was that popular. Honored, really. Why are you following me?”

Her eyes become defiant. That’s cute. “You’re hurting people! I’m going to stop you.”

Laughing, I say, “you really don’t get it, do you?” I had figured it out from the beginning. Ever since I so happened to wind up in a universe that she had already been in, I had known.

“Get what?” She countered. This girl, Tina? Trix? Is starting to get on my nerves.

I roll me eyes. “For some reason your blip powers are linked to me. Whenever you move into a new universe I am pulled into one further from yours. We physically can not exist in the same universe.”

“How-“ she pauses. “Why do you hurt so many people in every universe you enter?” She questions angrily.

Ah I remember.

Trixie.

“Y’know what, I’d really love to chat, but now that you know the truth why don’t you just stay put and let me have a semi normal life.” She seems stunned by the simplicity of my words. I couldn’t care less.

Before she can say another word I take a deep breath and punch the mirror in front of me with all my power. It shatters into a million pieces.

(This is a scene from a book I’m writing titled Blip, I couldn’t think of any other name for the scene lol. Thx for reading! I just have a quick question for those who frequently read my writings, I’m just curious, do any of you listen to my song of the week things? It’s fine if not but I’m just wondering if I should keep updating it every week.)

"I know you're watching me," Thanh said. At check-in, the staff told him that the mirror in his room was two-way. This allowed the doctors to watch his progress through the treatment without the discomfort of seeing faceless doctors, nurses, and students staring at him.

The treatment was free as long as he agreed to this condition and thought he could. If he didn't see them, then why would it matter?

Once in his room, however, he learned that there was a catch. He would not see anybody during the treatment. Food was delivered through a box on the opposite wall of the mirror, and all test instructions were given through a speaker in the left corner above that box. Thanh had not seen another human being in a week.

Thanh needed to see another human being soon. He felt alone. Disconnected. The treatment was not worth this isolation.

The tests were simplistic. Thanh needed to use his telekinesis to move and manipulate objects. They started with easy tasks like juggling and continued to get harder each day. The objects in the food box got heavier, and he was asked to concentrate on more than one object at a time. Thanh felt the mental exertion of these exercises, which were part of the treatment to master his mental abilities. That and the small amounts of drugs in his food were designed to dampen his impressive power.

Thanh discovered that he could read minds but became scared when he learned that he could also control their minds. It was often an involuntary action on his part. People just did what he wanted them to do, so he sought treatment. The government found this lab willing to help him, and they laid out a strategy of mental exercises and medicine.

Thanh didn't realize how comfortable he was with the background noise of all the voices in his head -- until it was gone. With each passing day, the silence in his mind felt more and more like some part of him was being stolen. Thanh needed to get out. He needed the calming presence of those voices again.

They wouldn't let him out. They didn't even acknowledge his requests for release, even when they shouted at the soulless speaker. Instead, he continued to get food and tasks.

Thanh was no fool. He stopped eating the food and waited for the drugs to wear off. In the meantime, he worked on his telekinesis. If it was a muscle, he was going to make it stronger.

When he could no longer take the hunger, Thanh stared at the two-way mirror and finally lashed out. He smashed the mirror with his telekinesis. He never tried to use it as a destructive wave, but it worked. The mirror shattered.

He was excited to finally see people, but it was not a two-way mirror—it was a concrete wall.

"We can't let you out, Thanh," the speaker said. "We don't know how to treat your addiction yet."

Thanh fell to his knees, sobbing. Nobody told him that his mental abilities came with a caveat. He needed to be around people. He needed to hear their thoughts. He needed to mold their minds. He needed anything to keep from being alone.

Staring into the two way mirror, Pippa can see Ink Spill, tied and powerless with advanced tech to suppress her abilities.

She doesn’t struggle against the binds. Instead, her body is loose and relaxed. Like this was a normal Tuesday for her. That only serves to boil Pippa’s blood even more.

“I know you’re watching me, Beacon,” Ink Spill states, looking in Pippa’s direction. Even though, she knows that the villain cannot see her, her stare unsettles her. Those cold, black eyes. The ones that pierced her soul as she killed Pippa’s best friend.

“Pippa Folly, what would your friend say? You know, if she were here,” Ink Spill teases. Using her full civilian name is just to try to get a rise out of her. Pippa knows that, yet it doesnt stop her emotions bubbling at the surface.

Pippa clenches her fist, indents pressed into her skin by her nails. Pressing the intercom, she speaks to Salen’s killer for the first time. “Patricia Dissack, I’ve been waiting for this.”

If she wanted to use names, two could play that game.

“Using my name doesn’t bother me, hero. That’s the only way you could’ve kidnapped me. Who told you?“ Ink Spill tilts her head as if she were thinking. “Water Craze?”

Even though it was said as a question, Pippa is pretty sure that she knew the answer already. Going to Water Craze did end up being useful. Gave her a name. Once you have a name, it took one Google search to find an alarming amount about her.

“Got it in one. She actually set me up this place.” She almost gestures to their environment but remembers that Ink Spill can’t see her.

Time to fix that.

Leaving her position, she exits the room and enters jnto the next door.

“Nice crib. Cozy,” Ink Spill comments, eyes scanning the decrepit space, not even giving Pippa a second glance. Pippa wonders what Ink Spill did to Water Craze for her to help a superhero.

Pippa can still hear what Water Craze asked after she handed over Ink Spill’s information and this building. “You make her pay. You hear me, Beacon?”

But while it puzzles her, intrigues her, it isn’t the time. She’s not here for answers.

She intends to follow through with Water Craze’s request.

“So Patricia, it is a pleasure to see the great Ink Spill like this. A caged, helpless animal,” she taunts, echoing the villain’s own words when the roles were reversed. It doesn’t have the effect that she hoped it would. Nothing appears to rattle her.

Instead, Ink Spill smirks. Confident, like she knows what’s coming next.

But she knows nothing about her.

If Salen were here, she would make some grand speech that would convince her to stop. She’s not here though. She’s dead and never coming back.

Her death is like a constant buzz in her ear. Always there, reminding her of her failure. A devil whispering malevolent things that she’s starting to believe.

“What are you going to do? Arrest me?” Pausing, she thinks before continuing, “No, that can’t be it. You wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of kidnapping me and bringing me here. Is this revenge? For your little dead friend?”

Just hearing her make light of Salen’s death causes Pippa to create a light dagger before she even realizes what’s she’s doing. Lunging forward, she holds it to Ink Spill’s neck. “Say that again. I dare you.”

The shining knife feels strange in her grasp. As Beacon, she normally makes light shields and shoots beams and blasts. Never something actually sees as a weapon. It didn’t fit her image.

“Ooh. So I’m right. This is about her.”

“Shut up!”

“Unless you’re going to permanently shut me up, I don’t think I will. See, I know your kind. So self righteous with a martryr complex. Can’t help but do the right thing. While you contemplate getting revenge, both angels on your shoulders, because you heroes don’t have a devil, will convince you to do the right thing and turn me in.”

“You think you know me? Maybe you knew Beacon before you murdered her best friend in front of her. But you don’t know me now.”

Ink Spill’s must see something that she hadn’t before because she gives a sly smile. She lets out a haunting laugh. “Oh, I guess we’re more alike than you realized.”

Without another word, Pippa utilizes her dagger like it was intended, slicing into flesh in one swift motion. If she was not in this furious state, she would have been worried on how automatic she did that.

With the weapon being made of pure light, burns formed all around the wound. Angry droplets drip down, making a necklace of red.

Her eyes narrow in a deathly stare at the villain, no sympathy or regret in her gaze. “There. I shut you up.”

Tearing her attention away from Ink Spill, she felt a cold wave wash over her. Her powers deal with light so it is often that she feels warm. But now it is as if a shadow covered the sun.

Looking down, instead of the gold, bright dagger, it is pitch black.

“I know you're watching me.” I tell the mirror. No response. “I know who you are!” I scream, throwing my cup at the mirror. It doesn't shatter. “Oh, it’s gonna take more than that huh? Well then take this you stupid mirror!” I grab the mirror and throw it on the floor. “Take me back to my world now!” Still no response. I let out a blood-curdling scream and stomp on the frame. That's when Harry runs in. “Alexa you must stop this!” He yells, putting his arm around my waist and carrying me to the sofa, away from the mirror. “I’ll get you for this! I'll make you pay! I'll get revenge!” I scream again. Harry runs out of the room to fetch the doctor. I let out a maniacal laugh. My hair is in my face. I look like I'm criminally insane. But it’s not my fault. It’s that mirror. It’s been watching me from the other side since I arrived here. Laughing at me. Mocking me. Because I'm in its world. And it's in mine.

I know you are watching me. Are you Alice? In the looking glass? Or are you someone else? I can’t tell, Who are you?

“I know you’re watching me,” I whisper as I gaze deeply into the mirror, desperately hoping to see something other than my own reflection and the room behind me. After a moment of intense study, I turn away, frustrated. It had been over a week since I’d seen her staring back at me.

Don’t ask me who “she” is because I don’t know. I’d spent far too many hours sitting in front of that mirror since it happened with not even the briefest second glimpse to reward me. I was beginning to think I had imagined it.

And to be fair, a hallucination of my overactive imagination was a very real possibility. I had been in the study for hours that evening, poring over ancient Greek texts, translating and retranslating passages. Homer, Aeschylus, Herodotus… my mind was swirling with thoughts, ideas, possibilities. After feverishly working on my thesis all day, I was starting to feel the weight of my exhaustion settling on me more and more heavily. I had hit a roadblock in the texts that I wasn’t sure how to tackle. I grabbed the nearest notebook and carelessly slung it across the room in frustration.

“Ow!” I said, sucking air in through my teeth and watching as a red line of blood began welling up on my index finger. “A paper cut? Seriously?” I muttered under my breath. A quick survey of the chaos around me indicated that there was nothing nearby to help. So I did what anyone would do and I stuck my finger in my mouth as the blood began to pool.

I sat there for a moment and looked at myself in the mirror on the wall in front of me. It was a huge old mirror, one of my dads most treasured and favorite things in the house, and I too had come to love it since I had moved in. It was enormous, hanging just above the floor molding and reaching nearly up to the ceiling. It had a gorgeous gold frame that was scuffed and worn with age. And the glass was scratched and spotted, particularly in the corners and around the rounded top.

The reflection I saw in the huge, old mirror was a little unsettling, but nothing new for this time in my life. The study was a mess, books and notebooks strewn across the floor and piled up all around. Loose sheets of paper with printed articles or scribbled translations and random thoughts littered the floor and desk behind me. There were half a dozen empty cups of water in random places and three different sweaters balled up on the floor. This room is the very picture of a Greek and Latin language Classics student working on their thesis.

My cat Peggy was laying on a pile of papers on the desk, gazing down at me in a decidedly uninterested way. And there I sat in the middle of it all, dark hair piled up in a messy bun, baggy sweatshirt with an ice cream stain from gods know when on the front, oversized tortoise shell glasses sliding slightly down my nose, and currently sucking on my finger like a child.

“What a mess you are,” I think to myself as I check my pulsing index finger, which seems to have stopped bleeding. The paper cut was only a brief distraction because my eyes drift to the difficult passage I had just been working on and I drop my shoulders with a resigned sigh. I take my glasses off and squeeze the bridge of my nose, secretly hoping the pressure might squeeze some new answer into my mind. It’s then, when I toss my head back in surrender to the gods, that I notice it: movement in the mirror in front of me.

It was very blurry, but it had looked too big and too dark to be Peggy so I quickly put my glasses back on. And there it was, just on the edge of the mirror, hiding behind the fiddle leaf tree, clothes blending a bit with the dark curtains, but otherwise clear as day: a woman was staring back at me. My head immediately spun to the right where she would be standing, but there was nothing there, just the tree and the curtains. And, of course, when I turned back to the mirror, she was gone.

And so I’ve come back to the mirror every day since for varying amounts of time. It was longer at first, just after it happened, and has gradually tapered off as the week went on and as I spent more and more fruitless hours waiting and watching. You’d think I would be nervous or apprehensive, maybe even a little scared to possibly have a ghost living in my house, wouldn’t you? Nope, not me. I was just… I don’t know, curious?

I grew up in this house so I definitely feel like I would have known if it was haunted. My mom died when I was four from a very aggressive brain tumor. My dad raised me. He was a professor, published author, and absolutely the best story teller. I grew up hearing the most fantastic tales of far away places and never before seen creatures woven in complex, beautiful detail by my father. And he never shied away from the topic of death in his stories. Having dealt with it at such a young age, I suppose he didn’t feel he needed to. He would have had a hell of a story to tell about a ghost living in the mirror in his study and I definitely would have already heard it.

It doesn’t hurt that I am also currently researching the subject of ghosts and how they are presented in Ancient Greek texts. So yeah, I’m definitely curious about what I saw. The question that keeps eating away at me is why that day? Why did she show up that day and no other? I’m pacing the floor of the study pondering this question, my thesis all but forgotten in the piles of books and papers around me.

What was it about that day that was different? What was it that summoned her? I’d been in that room hundreds of times: alone, with friends, with my dad. I’d been in there at all times of day and night, all different seasons and weather. I’ve fallen asleep in there, I’ve gotten completely hammered in there, I’ve turned on music and sung at the top of my lungs in there, I’ve broken down and sobbed uncontrollably in there.

I don’t realize it, but I’m picking at my cuticles as I pace the floor. I go through phases with these anxious ticks, but this one is fairly new. “I wish I could go back to twirling my hair,” I think to myself as I finally become aware of what I’m doing. I stuff my hands in my pockets and stare into the mirror. “What am I missing?” I wonder out loud.

Peggy, my all white Angora cat, winds herself through my legs as I stand there. I walk to the desk and flop into the chair. Peggy jumps up, settling in front of me and I begin scratching behind her ear absentmindedly. My thoughts are still swirling over the mysterious arrival and sudden departure of the supposed ghost. A quick sharp pain shoots down my ring finger and I realize I’ve started picking at my cuticles again. I’ve gone too far and now it’s starting to bleed. “Great,” I say to myself as I scan the room for the box of tissues.

I get up and do a quick sweep of the room, but don’t see it. Back behind my desk, I move a few piles of books, lift up a few papers, and still find nothing. Staring into the mirror, I watch my reflection as I stick the bleeding finger in my mouth. I’m looking at my mouth, turned down a bit from both the weight of my finger and my disappointment, when I see it. She’s back. She’s faint and behind the fiddle leaf tree again, but only just. My finger falls from my mouth and she’s gone. Again.

“Ugh, why do you keep leaving?” I shout at the mirror. My finger is throbbing and I can see more blood is pooling around the nail so I stick it back in my mouth. And there she is again, still off to the right and still rather faint, but less hidden by the tree this time. That’s when it hits me. It’s like in the Odyssey, when in the underworld Anticlea has to drink blood to recognize Odysseus and speak to him. Maybe it’s like that only it’s me. I’m the one that needs to recognize, I’m the one that needs to see. And that’s the only thing that lets me do it. The blood.

She’s standing directly in front of me in the mirror now, still faint but I can she’s clearly smiling. “That’s it, isn’t it?” I ask with difficulty trying to keep my finger in my mouth. **She inclines her head as if to signal me and then she’s gone again. I take my finger out of my mouth and notice that it has stopped bleeding. **

“I’m going to need more blood.”

"Remember this, son: every mirror goes both ways; every reflective surface is a window to another dimension. We can see it, but it is always staring back at us. Waiting. Bearing its time to snap back." The memory of a baritone voice with features molded by endless cigarettes, still lingers around so many years later. "So be careful, these windows we cannot close, but we can choose what we show to them."

All your life you have chosen every detail you show to them.

The sound of the song that's playing outside jolts your mind back to the present: it's almost over and you are next. Through the door you can hear the usual hubbub of the club, a combination of noise, music and people having a good time. The room is small and there's mirrors on every wall, many with lightbulbs around them in the fashion of those old-style burlesque joints. There's also glasses, plates, bottles. All of them peepholes to that other universe. There's a few empty chairs scattered around, but it's only you occupying one. You rush to finish putting on your makeup and take a moment to stare at tonight's character: is it a guy or a girl today? Most probably something different, wearing a bright yellow wig with a high hairstyle, glittery silvers and purples on their eyebrows, impeccable contour, deep crimson thick lips, and a fake mole right under the left eye. Glittery silver outfit to match, long gloves and all, and of course five inch heels.

You stand up and head out, right by the door there's the ornate full body mirror. You reach out and touch its dusty frame, leaving a trace as you follow it with your gloved finger. Your character looks into it, stares with the strength of a lifetime of awareness, and says, "I know you are watching me. You always are. Tonight will be a show to remember." These words you say every night; more of a mantra, a good lock charm, or a promise. You still don’t know how true they would soon ring.

You slowly walk away. Dozens of fragmented reflections on the many shiny surfaces of the room walking away as well. Your character's phantom on the other side of those windows to another dimension.

As you walk through the door you hear a loud cracking sound. You can smell the dust, but decide not to turn around. Because it is then and there when they finally decide to snap back.