Mirrors never quite worked for me.

As a child, they were always empty, just showing the room behind me without me in it. I took a while to understand what mirrors are actually meant to do. Adults and other children would tease me because the way I wore my hair and dressed myself was never how it was supposed to be. And how could it if I never knew what I looked like?

Only when one child befriended me and asked why I looked the way I looked and if I had never seen myself in a mirror was it, that I had a chance to ask ‚Why would a mirror help me with that?‘

She explained that of course one could see oneself in the mirror, and if I didn‘t know that. That is when I learned, that other people see not only the room but also themselves inside a mirror.

I told her my secret and we spent some time experimenting. She could see my reflection, but I could not only not see myself, but also not see her or any other person for that matter. Only the room or surroundings. 

Other reflecting surfaces were the same, and also animals stayed hidden. Only inanimate objects were reflected. And then also only those not „worn“ by an animate being. I could see clothes lying on my bed, but not the ones others wore. I could see parked cars, but not the ones being driven. But I could see the curtains move in the wind and when someone was moving them on purpose. Weird rules that didn‘t entirely make sense.

We grew older together, she taught me how to dress and look properly without the help of a mirror and we continued our childish investigation into my „condition“ as we called it.

But then, as life tends to go we got separated and lost contact. Her parents moved away for a job and I lost my only friend at the time.

Shortly after was when I first noticed it. I caught a reflection in a shop window while walking by, and saw something move. I stopped and turned to give it a closer look. I saw the street and the parked cars standing there. None of the people that were walking around me were visible. Nothing moved in the reflection.

I gave it a minute or two, intensely staring at the reflection in the window, but whatever I thought I saw was gone, or more likely, never there. I continued on not giving it any more thought, though in hindsight I should have.

Occurrences like this started slowly to happen more often. Me thinking I saw something in the corner of my eye, or that there might be something behind this slightly open door, or car, or furniture, when there was a mirror or other reflecting surface in my sight. I started to think that I was going crazy and without my one friend who knew about my condition I had no one to talk about it.

Having enough I decided to force it. One day I took out all my mirrors, placed them around me in the middle of my room, and just sat in front of them, planning on spending the whole day and night, as long as it took, to look into them until something happened. For hours all I could see was my room. My bed behind me, the door closed with some jackets hanging on a hanger, my floor with the fluffy beige carpet. The mirrors decorating most of my walls were reflecting the other side of the room with my desk and books and pens on it, the window with the trees outside, which counted as inanimate for some reason. Everything as it should be and nothing at all moving. Also, nothing that wasn‘t supposed to be there. 

It started to get dark outside, the light turning into a warmer, more orange, then red hue. I turned on the light using the app on my phone and continued looking for anything happening in the reflections.

My eyes started getting heavier and a yawn escaped me. I was having trouble letting my mind not slip away into sleepy unconsciousness. ‚Why not just go to bed? There was nothing there after all.‘ I started to tell myself but stayed determined to not give in to those thoughts. I just decided to get up and stretch my legs against the tiredness when I saw it. Under my bed were big yellow eyes staring back at me. I rubbed my own, making sure I was not imagining things, but still, there they were. Eyes, under my bed. They slowly blinked but otherwise didn‘t move. 

I carefully turned around, hoping not to scare whatever was there, to see if there was anything under my bed in reality. There wasn‘t. There was just darkness, no eyes, no nothing. With the help of a hand mirror, I looked under my bed in the reflection while also being able to see it in reality, and there they were, in the reflection, big yellow eyes. 

They looked sacred, like an animal hiding cautiously to see if you are dangerous. 

‚Who might you be?‘ I said in a low voice, doing my best to sound friendly and non-threatening. I wasn‘t sure if the thing in the mirror could hear me, but I didn‘t know what else to do.

The eyes just blinked back at me.

I turned on the flashlight function of my phone and shone it under my real bed, hoping to see more of the creature, careful to do it from the side to not blind it.

Around the eyes, there was a lot of red, fuzzy fur. But I could only see it for a second before the creature retreated further under my bed, not allowing me to learn more about what exactly this creature was. 

I immediately turned away my phone flashlight.

‚I am sorry! I didn‘t want to startle you!‘ I said, still in a low soft voice. ‚Please, come back out.‘

Nothing. It stayed dark and empty under my bed. A few minutes passed before I decided to have a closer look. I moved to my bed, my hand mirror next to me, and shone my phone flashlight under it so I could see everything. But aside from some dust bunnies, there was nothing there. Not in reality, nor the reflection.

Disappointed but ultimately excited about the development I went to bed. 

There was something in my reflections. Maybe learning more about it will help me figure out what exactly my condition was.

The next days and weeks I repeated this process whenever I had the time. I was spending hours upon hours looking into mirrors, hoping to see those yellow eyes again and learning more about them. Most days nothing happened and I gave up at some point and went to bed. Other days, the creature appeared, always in different places, but I was never able to get a better look. I also wasn‘t able to confirm if it could hear me or not, nor did I find a way of interacting with it.

At one point I had the idea of trying to feed it and laid some kibble in front of my bed. If I can see it in the reflection, maybe the creature also has access to it. 

I was lucky that day. The eyes appeared under my bed not even an hour after I started. I had learned that the creature prefers to come out when it is dark outside, so I only started after sundown. 

The eyes looked through the mirror at me, I was sitting with my back to the bed, and then they seemingly spotted the kibble. I held still, only watching, not interfering. The eyes moved closer to the kibble, regularly checking what I was doing. When they were right in front of it they stopped. Then they blinked.

I held my breath, kept in suspense. After what felt like minutes but must have only been a few seconds, small thin red arms with claw-like fingers came out from under the bed and grabbed the kibble, pulling it towards the eyes, which then vanished in the dark.

I waited if anything more was happening. It wasn‘t. I turned around to see the kibble having gone in reality too. Whatever this creature was, it was able to take things from reality. That was good to know and not potentially disturbing at all.

The next day I was sitting at my desk, writing down my new findings in my notebook where I collected all the information I had on my condition. The mirror standing on my desk reflecting the book but not the pen I was using to write. I was fully concentrating on my notes when the sound of something small and hard being dropped on wood startled me. I looked around to see what made the noise when I noticed a pebble lying on my desk where there was none before. It was clearly visible in the mirror too. It was the size of a cherry, smooth and almost perfectly round. It had an intriguing mix of colors. Some blue-gray base color with red and golden lines forming a pretty pattern. I held up the pebble, it felt like a normal stone, and looked at it from all sides, admiring the golden lines shimmering in the light. Where did it come from?

I put it in a bowl where I collected small trinkets like this and continued working on my notes.

I repeated the kibble experiment multiple times, placing the kibble in different places and often the creature came and took it, allowing me to see more of its body. It would not take the kibble when it would force the creature too far into the open, but when I then moved it closer, it would take it. When looking in reality, it was like the kibble just vanished. There was no sign of the creature there. But I started to get a good idea of what it looked like. It had big, yellow eyes and fuzzy red hair covering its head and body. The fur on its arms was shorter and they were almost as long as its body, thin and twick-like. Its hands had even thinner long fingers with pointy black claws as fingernails. Its body was human-like in build but with proportions all over the place.

After each kibble experiment another pebble would appear the next day. They all looked different, different colors, different forms, and sizes, but always a size that would fit nicely in the small hands of the creature. I was sure that it was giving me the pebbles as thanks for the kibble.

That was the story that started a long journey of selfdiscovery and a new world hiding where only I can see it. There was more to learn and there would not only be friendly creatures appearing in the reflections, but more often than not, when I look in the mirror, I see a friend.

(Sorry for the abrupt end. Maybe I‘ll take up the story again, but for now, I ran out of time!)