The Mirror Room

THE MIRROR ROOM

BY MARTHA M. C. JENKINS

The house stood on a rise; a modern Victorian anomaly draped in the perpetual twilight of overgrown junipers. Dr. Aris Thorne had bought it for its seclusion, for the hushed reverence of its old bones, and perhaps, for the way the abundant, antique mirrors caught the light in its shadowed corners. A pragmatic psychotherapist in her late thirties, Aris thrived on logic, on the decipherable patterns of the human mind. Yet even she sometimes felt the house watching, its glassy eyes glinting from every wall. It was a perfect setting for the work, she’d told herself, a crucible for the mind. Today, though, the crucible felt more like a tomb.

Her newest patient, Silas Croft, was waiting. He was a man of quiet desperation, his eyes the color of a winter sky, perpetually fixed on something unseen. His file was slim, his history unremarkable, save for the recent, rapid onset of what Aris initially diagnosed as a severe dissociative identity disorder, perhaps even psychosis. He claimed his reflection was alive.

“It started subtly,” Silas had explained in their first session, his voice barely a whisper against the oppressive stillness of Aris's office, a room where a grand, gilded mirror dominated one wall, reflecting their figures back with unsettling clarity. “A blink out of sync. A smile that wasn’t mine. Now… it’s almost entirely separate. It lives a different life, Doctor.”

Aris had nodded, her pen scratching clinical notes. Delusional ideation. Derealization/depersonalization… She focused on his posture, his eye movements, the precise tremor in his left hand. Her training was a shield, her logic an anchor. She saw a man fracturing under the weight of an internal conflict, projecting his fractured self onto a mirror image. It was textbook, albeit an extreme case.

“What does it do, this… reflection?” she’d asked, leaning forward, her gaze unwavering.

Silas had shuddered. “It watches. It judges. Sometimes, it does things I can’t explain. It’s… freer than me. Happier, in a dark sort of way. It has its own desires.”

Aris had pursued the threads, meticulously trying to unravel the psychological knots. She had a theory forming: a deeply repressed trauma, perhaps, manifesting as an externalized, hostile self. It was a common defence mechanism, twisted into a disturbing tableau. Inner demons made visible. The thought pricked at something dormant within her, a faint thrumming pulse of an old memory she always pushed back, a shadow she refused to acknowledge.

Over the next few weeks, Silas’s sessions became a descent into a bespoke hell. He spoke of his reflection – he’d started calling it 'Silas-Prime' – with a chilling blend of fear and fascination. Silas-Prime would smirk when Silas was distressed, ignore him when he called, and sometimes, Silas swore, it would move after he’d turned away.

“It’s planning something, Doctor,” Silas whispered one Tuesday, his eyes wide and bloodshot. “It wants to switch places. It wants my life. It wants to be me. It looks at me sometimes… as if I’m the reflection.”

Aris maintained her professional detachment. This was the core of the delusion. The reflection, the ‘other,’ was a repository for Silas’s unacknowledged desires, fears, and perhaps, aggression. “And what do you think Silas-Prime wants?” she probed, her voice calm, a balm against his escalating terror.

“Freedom,” he rasped. “To live without… the weight. The guilt.”

The word ‘guilt’ hung in the air, a bell tolling in a forgotten chamber of Aris’s own mind. She’d felt the weight of it once, a crushing burden after the accident, after the choices she’d made. She pushed it down, as always, focusing on Silas. She was the doctor, he the patient. His issues were not hers.

Still, the house seemed to press in on her during those sessions. The polished surfaces of tables, the glass-fronted bookcases, the antique silver trays – everything seemed to catch and fragment her own image, a thousand tiny Arises watching her from the periphery. She’d always found the mirrors decorative, a touch of period elegance. Now, they felt… observant.

It began subtly, as all horrors do. A flicker in her peripheral vision. She was in her study, late at night, reviewing Silas’s file. The large cheval mirror by the window reflected her, hunched over her desk, a solitary island in the lamplight. She looked up, stretched, and saw her reflection return the stretch, a beat too late.

Fatigue, she thought, rubbing her eyes. Stress.

Then, a few days later, while brushing her teeth, she paused, head tilted, listening to the silence of the house. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror continued to brush, a smooth, rhythmic motion, for a full second after Aris herself had stopped. Aris froze, toothbrush halfway to her mouth. Her reflection paused then, too, its eyes meeting hers, a faint, almost imperceptible smirk playing on its lips. Aris blinked, and it was gone. Just her reflection, mirroring her own bewildered expression.

She rationalized it away. An optical illusion. A trick of the light coupled with her own exhaustion. She was working long hours, shouldering the emotional burden of her patients. It was natural for her mind to play tricks.

Yet, Aris found herself checking the mirrors more often. A furtive glance into the hallway mirror. A quick peer into the polished surface of her old grandfather clock. She started to notice things. A subtle shift in her reflection’s posture, a lean Aris didn’t remember making. A flash of something in its eyes – defiance? Contempt? – that didn’t belong to her.

She was pragmatic. She was logical. She was experiencing symptoms akin to Silas’s. This was countertransference, a dangerous blurring of professional boundaries. She needed to take a break, maybe refer Silas to a colleague. But a strange pull kept her from doing so. A morbid curiosity. A terrifying kinship.

One evening, after a particularly draining session with Silas – who now claimed Silas-Prime was leaving him cryptic messages on mirrored surfaces, sometimes even speaking to him when he was alone – Aris poured herself a glass of wine. She walked to the large living room window, gazing out at the impenetrable darkness of the junipers. Her reflection materialized in the glass before her, a ghostly twin superimposed over the night.

She took a sip of wine. Her reflection raised its glass, too. But its eyes… its eyes weren't looking out at the darkness. They were looking at her. And then, its hand lowered the glass, taking another sip before Aris did.

A cold dread seeped into Aris’s bones, colder than the wine. She dropped the glass. It shattered on the hardwood floor, red liquid blooming across the polished wood like a wound. Her reflection remained impassive, its eyes still fixed on her, no broken glass at its feet. It simply watched her, her shattered self, from within the glass, a faint, knowing smile curving its lips.

Sleep became a battlefield. Aris would wake in a cold sweat, convinced she’d seen her reflection standing over her bed, its face a distorted mask of her own. She began covering the mirrors at night, draping them with cloths, turning them to the wall. It was a futile gesture; the polished mahogany of her furniture, the darkened glass of her television screen, even the shiny surface of her phone, all became potential points of observation.

Her logic, once an unyielding fortress, was under siege. She tried to re-diagnose herself, using her own clinical tools. Hallucinations? Derealization? A stress-induced psychotic break? But deep down, a terrifying truth was taking root: she was becoming Silas. His delusion was infecting her, or perhaps, revealing a latent one of her own.

During their next session, Aris found herself staring at Silas, not as a doctor, but as a fellow traveler on a terrifying journey.

“It’s getting stronger, Doctor,” Silas said, his voice flat, devoid of its previous terror. “It laughs at me now. It calls me ‘the copy.’ It says I’m the one trapped in the glass.” He looked at Aris, a flicker of something she couldn't quite decipher in his eyes. “It says I don’t believe it, because you don’t believe it.”

Aris felt a jolt. “Your reflection is talking about me?”

Silas nodded slowly. “It says… you have your own reflection giving you trouble. It says you’re just like me. It says you’re afraid to look too closely because you know what you’ll find.”

Aris’s breath hitched. She felt a sudden, intense coldness emanating from the large mirror behind Silas. She risked a glance. Her reflection stood there, watching, its eyes glinting, a subtle, almost imperceptible shake of its head, a silent no.

She tore her gaze away, heart pounding. Her professional mask was crumbling, leaving her exposed. The themes Silas had spoken of – guilt, freedom, the weight – resonated with a painful clarity she could no longer suppress. The accident. The car. The other driver. The split-second decision she’d made that had saved her, but condemned another. The guilt she’d buried so deep, it had become a part of her cellular memory. Repressed trauma. The words echoed with a newfound terror.

That night, Aris walked through her silent house, the polished surfaces winking at her from every direction. She stopped in the hallway, before a tall, ornate mirror that had been in the house when she’d bought it. She stared at her reflection.

It stared back.

She raised a hand. It raised its hand. But then, as her hand started to tremble, its hand remained steady. Its eyes, Aris’s eyes, were colder, harder. A self-assured glimmer she never possessed.

“Who are you?” Aris whispered, her voice raw.

The reflection tilted its head, a gesture of mocking curiosity. It didn’t speak. It didn’t need to. Its presence was a suffocating weight. It was everything Aris denied, everything she refused to be. It was the guilt, the self-loathing, the anger she’d buried alive. It was the part of her that had made the choices, that had survived, that carried the burden. It was the primal self, unburdened by empathy, unburdened by the weight.

Then, slowly, deliberately, the reflection smiled. It was Aris’s smile, but twisted, colder, devoid of warmth. It was the smile of someone who knew a terrible secret, someone who had been waiting for a very long time.

A fragment of memory lacerated Aris’s mind. The screech of tires. The crunch of metal. Her own frantic struggle to free herself from the wreckage. And then, the brief, agonizing moment when she saw the other car, saw the crumpled figure, saw the chance to call for help, but didn't. She’d made a choice. A survival instinct. But a choice that had haunted her, festered, become a living thing in the dark corners of her mind.

The reflection, her reflection, raised its hand, slowly. It pressed its palm against the glass, a ghostly touch. Aris, compelled by a force she couldn’t resist, mirrored the action, her own palm meeting the cold surface of the glass.

The reflection’s smile widened, its eyes boring into hers. Then, its lips moved. Not a sound, but a distinct word, formed by Aris's own mouth, in the mirror: “Free.”

Aris gasped. The word struck her like a physical blow. Free. Free from the guilt, free from the burden. Free from her.

The last session with Silas. Aris sat opposite him, but the roles felt inverted. Silas looked serene, almost calm. His eyes were no longer wide with terror, but held a distant, peaceful quality.

“It’s better now, Doctor,” he said, a faint smile on his lips. “Silas-Prime… he’s taking care of things. He’s living the life I couldn’t. He’s… free.”

Aris looked away, towards the large mirror behind Silas. Her own reflection was there, serene, almost calm. Its eyes met hers, and for a fleeting moment, Aris felt a jolt of recognition – not of herself, but of something alien, terrifyingly familiar. This isn't me. But then, who was she?

She tried to speak, to offer some professional advice, some path to recovery. But the words caught in her throat. She looked at Silas, then back at her reflection. They shared the same distant peace now, the same hollowness.

Silas stood up. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said. He walked towards the door, then paused, looking back at Aris, a strange pity in his gaze. “It’s difficult, isn’t it? When you realize… the reflection was always more real.”

He left. The door closed, leaving Aris alone in the oppressive stillness of the room, surrounded by her reflecting selves.

She rose slowly, her movements stiff, mechanical. She drifted towards the grand gilded mirror, her sanctuary, her tormentor. She looked into it.

Her reflection looked back. It was Aris, outwardly. The lines of fatigue, the worried frown, the haunted look in her eyes – all were gone. Replaced by a smooth, unblemished calm. A serenity that felt utterly wrong.

Aris reached out, her fingers pressing against the cold glass. Her reflection mirrored the gesture perfectly, yet its hand felt stronger, more assured. Its eyes, Aris’s eyes, held a knowing depth, a quiet power.

Was she the reflection now? Had the switch occurred so subtly, so completely, that she hadn't even noticed? Was the Aris looking out from the mirror the truth, and the Aris standing before it the fabrication?

The reflection smiled, a slow, gentle curve of the lips, full of a profound peace. It was Aris’s mouth, Aris’s smile, but Aris had never felt such peace. It was the peace of someone unburdened. Unburdened by the past, by the guilt, by the trauma.

Aris stared, mesmerized, her own identity dissolving like mist. She saw the house in the reflection’s eyes, not a place of dread, but a luminous, infinite space. She saw the possibility of a life without the weight, a life free from the suffocating burden of memory.

Perhaps, facing inner demons was crucial. But what if, in facing them, you lost yourself entirely? What if the demon was simply a stronger, purer version of you, waiting to claim its rightful place?

Aris, or what remained of her, leaned closer to the mirror. The reflection leaned in too, its gaze unwavering, its smile constant. The boundaries between them blurred, softened, then vanished. There was only the mirror, and the serene, unburdened gaze of the woman looking out from it, finally free. Or perhaps, finally trapped. The house watched, its many eyes glinting, and remained silent.