She took this hike to find herself. What she didn’t expect to find was a mirror deep in the woods.

After the week she had, she needed to clear her head. She drove to a secluded part in the woods, picked a direction, and just started walking. The whole way she thought about her troubles at work, her failing love life, and how this supposed relaxing hike just turned out to be never ending bug bites and thistle scrapes. She was about to call it quits when she came upon a small stream. The water was clear and fast, leading deeper into the woods. She followed, hoping to end at a beautiful lake where she could rest for lunch. As she walked along, the foliage started becoming more vibrant. The dull green bushes turned an emerald color, the flowerless plants now sprouting blues and reds. As she marveled at the beautiful greenery, she didn’t notice that the stream had ended in a small pond, with the mirror on a small mound of moss in the middle. It was ornate. Too perfect for the place it was. Taking in her new surroundings, she hesitantly stepped closer to the mirror. “Who put this here? And why?” she thought. The mirror stood taller than her. It has intricate gold swirls all around the edges that shined in the sunlight. The glass was smudge-free and perfectly reflected her exhausted demeanor. As she stared at herself she couldn’t help but to criticize every little detail; her too crooked teeth, too dark hair, too round stomach. “Pathetic,” she whispered to herself. She was about to turn away when she noticed her eyes. They were too dark. She had always loved her bright blue eyes most, but now they looked almost grey as if the color had drained from them. She tried to brush it off as a trick of the mirror, but she couldn’t stop staring as the color drained even more, making her eyes appear almost black. She tore her eyes off the mirror and looked around the area. Everything else looked normal, vibrant. When she looked back to the mirror she noticed small bumps coming out of her hair. Reaching up, she couldn’t feel them, but she could see them growing in to horns. She wanted to run, but she was too entranced by the strangeness of what was happening. The longer she stared, the longer the horns grew, until they got three inches long with pointy ends. She scanned herself in the mirror to see if anything else had changed, when she noticed her sinister smile. It wasn’t a normal smile, with the fear it instilled in her. This time she really was going to run away. That’s when an arm, her arm, shot out of the mirror, grabbed her around the throat, and pulled her in.