Short Stories

Prompt #29

A/N - It's a little shorter this month but I'm struggling with burnout at the moment so I hope this is enough for you guys <3

"You just walked into a room full of antique mirrors, and there's one that caught your eye especially..."

It was one simple task, all he needed was a new mirror to hang in his apartment. There had obviously been one hung in the main room by the previous owners and it seemed sensible enough to reuse the fixings they had left behind and put his own mirror on there too. The only issue being, he needed a mirror to do that.

So here he was, shopping in a antique shop looking for a cheap mirror with some character that would finish up the room and make it feel complete. He had finished unloading the stacks of cardboard boxes the previous night and had put them away with his other storage items and the apartment had finally looked liveable and homely, a place he could settle in and call his own.

As he entered the shop, the telltale jingle of the bell as he stepped through the door, he saw no mirrors in sight. He thought they were just simply out of sight, but upon taking a short walk around the store all he could find were small pocket mirrors and make-up mirrors. He was determined to find one, so took it upon himself to ask the store owner if they had any.

It was a surprise when the kind gentleman turned around and chuckled, before leading him into a room full of them, each wall with an assortment of sizes and frames, some much visibly older than others.

He skipped immediately past the mirrors that were way too large and moved around to the ones that looked about right. He had measured the space that it needed to fill beforehand at his mother's suggestion and he was grateful she had reminded him, otherwise he would've been clueless to how big of a mirror he actually needed.

The first mirror he found was covered in scratches on the glass, but he couldn't help admiring the gold leaf framing with patterned vines swirling around the corners. The one just beside it was just as scratched and it's poor frame had suffered a similar amount of damage, it's once shining frame now dulled and chipped away.

Walking alongside his reflection, he stopped about halfway into the room when he found more mirrors close to the size he was looking for. However, one caught his eye in particular.

Or rather it's what it did that got his attention.

As his reflection left the previous mirror it stepped into the new mirror, morphed and then disappeared.

Confused he stepped back in front of the last mirror and upon waving at his own reflection and confirming it was there, he stepped forwards once more and watched as his reflection walked into a vortex again and vanished. He stood blinking at the mirror, staring at the empty glass in confusion. Was he seeing things?

He stepped past the strange mirror to a new one and there it was again, his reflection staring back at him with the same look of questioning on his brow. Was it a trick mirror?

Wanting to check, he headed back into the main store and eagerly dragged its owner towards the mirror that made him question his sanity. He pointed at it and demonstrated with the mirrors either side that it was only this mirror that seemed to be erasing his reflection. Yet as the store owner stepped in front of the glass he was shocked.

There in the glass was a perfect reflection of the store owner, crystal clear and copying his actions.

The store owner looked to him in confusion and determined to prove his point he stepped alongside the man and proved the loss of his reflection in the mirror.

The man chuckled, "another one huh?"

Another one?

Before he had time to respond the gentleman's appearance morphed. In the mirror was no longer a kind antique store owner, instead was a cloaked individual with symbols and sigils spread across his skin, a third eye in his forehead and his figure taller, much much longer and it was all draped in a black cloak that covered his body.

"Welcome home," he welcomed him.

The man was confused. "Home?"

He was offered no explanations, no clues or hints, instead he was suddenly pushed into the arms of the lanky reflection. He froze as his body was being sucked into the vortex, morphing into the glass. As his face began to be consumed, on the back of his neck the gentleman whispered, "It's time to wake up."