MirrorMirror

8 / The Response

Slowly, Cassidy pushed back the quilt and sat up on the edge of the bed.

With his eyes never leaving the mirror, he stood and walked over to it. The writing was, once again, in something that looked like lipstick. It was too light to be blood, something that seemed more evident in the low light than before. He couldn't have taken notice of the colour previously, which surprised him. Something like that, a message out of nowhere, should have meant he'd have taken in all aspects of it.

The colour didn't matter, anyway. Why fixate on something so trivial? The fact it was there at all was the main thing. There again.

But was it really? Could he be... no. It wasn't an apparition. It wasn't all in his mind. He reached out and ran his finger over one of the letters, just as he had the first time. He could feel the slightly raised surface. He could see how the 'ink' spread under his touch and between his fingers. It was real.

He asked his smart speaker to turn on the main light, or 'big' light. The sudden illumination made him blink. When his eyes focussed once again on the message, it was intact. He couldn't see where he'd rubbed at it, yet there were still the remnants on his finger and thumb tips. He frowned and raised his hand, his index finger was poised next to the 'H.' Was he going mad to be treating this as reality? Was he still asleep, dreaming? Had the previous message been nothing more than a dream?

He remembered something. If you thought you might be dreaming, you couldn't be. The mind accepted what it saw as genuine. If he was curious about his wakefulness, surely that meant he must be awake, didn't it? Wasn't that the same with insanity? If you thought you might be crazy, you had to be sane? Cassidy wasn't sure. He did think, though, that he couldn't be asleep if he was questioning it.

OK.

He pressed his finger to the mirror and moved it across, cutting through each letter and dragging the lipstick sideways. By the time, a fraction of a second, he'd cut through the 'O,' he could see the fragments of the 'H' moving back into place. Then the rest of the word.

"No!"

He tried again, faster. Again, the word was re-formed. He attempted to erase it a third time, now swiping from side to side, scrubbing the message into a mess of cosmetics.

Hello.

He knew there was no one else in the house. No one was standing beside him, rewriting as he obliterated. Just him.

Hello, the message said.

OK.

"Hello," he said.

And the message was gone. Vanished. Cassidy hadn't blinked. He hadn't looked away. It was no longer there. The mirror was clean, apart from the mark across the top, the window wiper of a greasy hand. The residue was gone from his fingers.

"Hello?" he repeated.

"Hello!"

The glass remained free of any further markings. After a few minutes of standing in front of it, Cass went back to his bed. He laid curled up, his hands between his thighs. His eyes didn't leave the mirror.

Sure he would be awake for the rest of the night, he told himself to stay vigilant. He'd keep watch for any further changes. The forming of another message. He'd keep watch. He'd keep...

He awoke an hour or two later and wearily asked for the light to be turned off. He was asleep again before he could wonder about anything untoward.

When he opened his eyes again, he was facing the opposite way. His back was to the door and the wardrobe, and he watched a spider drift down on its web until it was past the edge of the bed. He had no issue with spiders. If he saw one, he would usually leave it where it was, unless it was directly above his pillows. Then it would have to go. He would gently catch it in a piece of tissue, then set it free out of the window.