Watching Her

Chapter 5

She had struggled to focus on watching television all evening because she kept glancing at the living room ceiling trying to work out what to do. When does she try the mirror again?

At nine o'clock, after spending an hour being wound up on the phone to her mum, and there being nothing good on television, she couldn't hold out any longer. Lucy clicked the light switch and tutted as she climbed the stairs in the dark with trepidation, as she looked up in the darkness and her shoulders sank, she was sure the switch worked this morning as her Dad had triumphantly put a new bulb in only the other day.

She climbed to the top of the stairs and was about to head into the bathroom when she checked in on her room, she had to take a double take as the lamp on the dressing table was now remarkably on. She couldn't remember physically turning it on when she came up to go to the toilet half an hour ago. She scratched her hair and then shook her head as she picked her pyjamas off the edge of the bed and headed into the bathroom to start her bedtime routine.

Thirty minutes later she came back out of the bathroom smelling sweetly after showering and shaving, wearing her light blue strappy pyjama top and winceyette bottoms carrying her clothes and underwear and placed them on the end of the bed. Her long hair was up as a turban in the towel. She growled as her green knickers fell on the floor, she bent down and picked them up and put them on the bed. She looked over her shoulder at her cotton covered bottom wobbling in the mirror and wobbled her pert ass again and frowned, the mirror was being normal again.

She turned around and sat down, opened the drawer and pulled out her hair dryer and untangled the cable and tutted, the plug was behind the mirror, she climbed down onto the floor and plugged the dryer in.

Lucy unravelled her long, dank hair from the towel, it instantly splattered turning her light blue top dark with the moisture in her hair. She then jumped proving her nerves are on edge when she turned the noisy blower on, she used her grandmothers comb to slowly make her way through untangling and drying the layers of her hair, watching the mirror intently to see what her reflection did, as she was halfway through, she glanced up, and then turned off the hair dryer and placed it on the floor, and leant forward on her arms on the dressing table and smiled closely at the mirror, her reflection smiled back and as it glanced down at the pack.

'Bingo' she smiled as she thought as she sat there holding her comb halfway up between her index and middle fingers.

Lucy and her Reflection nodded and smiled at each other as their hands moved in synchronicity towards the cigarette pack. As Lucy's fingers touched the pack they recoiled in fear. She really did not smoke, she glared at her Reflection.

"Mirror, I am not a smoker, I do not smoke, nor should my Reflection!" She almost chanted as she broke the silence as she shouted at the mirror, as her Reflection sat calmly, and stone faced.

Her Reflection ignored her and picked up the pack and gently tapped it on the desk and then flipped open the lid and looked at Lucy inviting her to do the same. Lucy snubbed the pack and picked up the comb and tapped it on the table in the same rhythm of the reflection had just done.

The Reflection wryly smiled and then pouted her pink lips as pulled out the long white cylinder from the pack and placed the orange-coloured filter between her pouty lips. Lucy tilted her head as she studied herself in the mirror. It looked so natural, yet Lucy was sitting there with a plastic comb between her fingers whilst her Reflection had a cigarette between its lips.

Lucy instinctively brought her hand to her mouth as her Reflection lit the cigarette. She watched as the face in the mirror's cheeks collapsed hard twice in quick succession to get the cigarette alight and to pull smoke into its lungs. The Reflection then removed the cigarette and pop. There was an explosion of smoke between the end of the cigarette and her lips, but it seemed like she waited an age before tilting her head up to the side and expelled large quantities of smoke from the lungs. The smoke drifted towards the light above her head. Lucy wiggled her frame on her buttocks to stay comfortable as she was mesmerised. The Reflection repeated the double drag and then exhaled directly at the mirror. She disappeared behind a thick cloud of exhaled smoke. As the cloud slowly dissipated Lucy was left sitting there watching herself gripping a black plastic comb handle pensively between her teeth.