Reflection

PROLOGUE

Since I was younger I've been terrified of mirrors. I hated what I saw, not because I was ugly or insecure but, mirrors were actually kind of...terrifying.

When I first turned six I remember sitting in a stool in front of the mirror as my mom braided my hair. I was kicking my feet back and forth staring at myself in wonder. Behind me were shadows moving around, people whispering, and darkness everywhere. But in reality I was sitting in the bright bathroom with my mom. I had asked my mom, "Why can't you see the people in the mirror?"

At the time my mom just thought I was imagining things and humored me, "I've heard only very special people can see the people in the mirror, so you must be very special. " She kissed my cheek then sending me off to school. I spent the entire day at school telling all my friends I was very special because I could see the people in the mirror.

Now I'm seventeen, and nothings really changed. Other than the fact that I realized the "People in the mirror" aren't really people, but other people's reflections living in their own dimensions. I could see them, other's couldn't simple as that, right?

Wrong. I didn't just see other reflections. I saw portals, creatures, demons, and darkness everywhere. I convinced myself for the longest time I was crazy, overimagitive. But the older I got the more I realized just how real they were. The day I truly believed I was completely different from the world was the day my reflection spoke to me.

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"Leila, come here please." My mother called from the kitchen. I heard the sizzling sound of bacon cooking on the stove as I walked into the kitchen.

"Yeah?"

"I know tomorrow is your birthday...but do you think you could help me down at the pet shelter anyway? Please? For me?" My mom asked poking out her lip. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight bun, she wore a pink apron with apples covering the front of it.

"Yeah, I don't mind." I smiled at her kissing her cheek before heading back to the bathroom to get ready for middle school. I was turning fifteen tomorrow and I couldn't be any happier.

I had a few plans with a couple of my friends, but I still didn't mind working at the pet shelter. My mom knew I enjoyed working with the animals and I would've ended up there anyway. I looked in the mirror trying to get dressed as quickly as possible. The dark shadows in the mirror urked my nerves.

I brushed my hair back into a sideways ponytail, and I grabbed a yellow bow off the rack of many bows, as my mom called it, and pinned it to my hair.

The longer I looked in the mirror the different I began to look, instead of my happy smiling face, my reflection was worried with large scared eyes. I leaned closer gently touching my fingers to the glass staring at the reflection that really wasn't me.

"How can you see me?" It asked in a voice that was the same as my own. I wanted to scream, or run, but at that moment my feet were glued to that spot my hand touching the mirror.

"I-I don't know." I answered back. As if it were another person my reflection moved away from me leaving me to stare into blackness.

"The bus is here!" My mother yelled. I backed away from the empty mirror still starring into absolute darkness before running from the bathroom trying my hardest to play off the entire incident as a hallucination from lack of sleep.

Thing was I know it wasn't lack of sleep. Even though my reflection has never spoken to me again, I can just pick out the differences. Sometimes when I'm smiling, she's frowning, or maybe she blinks when I didn't, there's even been times when she moves towards the glass barrier between us and touches it, as of she's testing it.

But just like me she can't pass through.

I'm crazy, trust me I know. At least that's what everyone's convinced me to believe, considering I'm the only one who can see them.

No one knows about the things I see, but with nightmares, sleepwalking, and 'hallucinations' I couldn't exactly pretend the whole normal facade.

I just wanted to be a normal teenager, I didn't want to pretend I was fine and have to lie to my friends and family, or take medication that doesn't work, or talk to strangers about my problems, I just wanted to live life, like a normal 17 year old girl.

But it wasn't possible. Not when all you had to do, was touch The Mirror and you would pass straight through it.