The Mirror’s Whisper

The peeling wallpaper of Apartment 3B seemed to breathe in the dim light, damp stains forming grotesque faces that watched Clara as she unpacked. The landlady had warned her about the old mirror in the hallway—“Don’t look too long after midnight; some things linger where they shouldn’t”—but Clara dismissed it as a cheap attempt to seem quirky.
The first night, she heard whispers. Not from outside, but inside the mirror, faint and garbled, as if someone spoke through water. When she approached, her reflection smiled—too wide, teeth sharp—but Clara blamed the exhaustion. The next evening, the mirror fogged on its own, and a single word appeared in condensation: “Stay.”
On the third night, Clara woke to find the mirror’s surface rippling like black water. A figure emerged—her own reflection, but wrong. It stepped out, skin pale as ash, eyes hollow sockets leaking ink-black tears. “You saw me,” it croaked, voice a rusty scrape. “Now I see you.”
Clara ran, but the apartment had changed. Hallways looped endlessly, doors leading to pitch-black voids. The mirror creature followed, its grin stretching wider with each step. She slammed herself into the bathroom, locking the door, but the mirror here was also moving, another figure rising behind her—this one wearing her face, but older, with scars crisscrossing its neck.
“Join us,” both creatures hissed in unison. The bathroom walls closed in, tiles cracking to reveal rotting wood beneath. Clara screamed as the mirror’s edge tore into her vision, the last thing she saw her own reflection reaching out, fingers dripping with shadow, pulling her into the glass where countless trapped souls echoed her cry, forever doomed to wander the mirror’s endless corridors.