Rick looks into the mirror and says, “I know you’re watching me.”

No response.

Rick can’t remember the last time there was a response.

To anyone else, it would look like paranoia.

Rick’s therapist told him that this was a manifestation of his anxiety…

Rick doesn’t think so.

To Rick, this is his battleground of emotion.

“I know you’re watching me.” Rick screams at the mirror.

The sweat running down his face being mirrored by the condensation on the glass.

“_Is that… letters?_” Thinks Rick.

Gone in the blink of an eye. Were they really there?

“_Am I mad?_” Thinks Rick.

His reflection seems normal. Moving the way it should, but those eyes… always watching.

Rick’s paranoia grows, and he begins to isolate himself. Friends and coworkers notice his erratic behaviour - avoiding eye contact, mumbling to himself, constantly checking over his shoulder.

Dr. Marlow suggests increasing his medication, but Rick resists.

“This isn’t in my head,” he insists. “It’s real. It’s the mirror!”

One night, Rick confronts the mirror again, his voice shaking with a mix of fear and defiance.

“What do you want from me?” Asks Rick.

“You’ve been running from me for years. I’m the part of you that remembers everything you want to forget.” His reflection replies, grinning, with a voice tinged with malice.

“I’m going to _help _you.” The reflection says.

“No. Leave me alone!” Rick screams, as he punches the mirror. Cracks slice through it like a web.

Pain flares in his hand and his eyes fill with tears from the pain.

When he blinks the tears away, the reflection is as it should be again. Albeit, now splintered into many different versions of itself in the shards.

No hint of anything amiss.

The next evening, Dr. Marlow knocks on Rick’s door.

“Rick… are you in there? You missed our appointment today.”

…

No response.

Dr. Marlow tries the handle. The door gives way and opens.

The apartment is eerily quiet.

Dr. Marlow searches the apartment, but finds nothing.

In the bathroom that adjoins Rick’s bedroom, Dr. Marlow finds glass covering the floor. The mirror lays in the bathtub, ripped from the wall.

Dr. Marlow feels a breath on his neck as a familiar voice says “You should have listened to me…”