Wait, what?
Maz blinks as fast as she can, as hard as she can, to force a reflection to admit its mistake.
The fluorescent buzz goes quiet as the light dips. It returns louder and stays.
In her next blink, her reflection seems to be what the mirror promised it should have been in the first place.
Her thumb shakes over the phone screen.
Maybe you shouldn’t read on. Just pocket the phone. Yep. Splash some water. Mascara be damned. Just leave before you can freak out.
Instead, she scrolls lower to the comments.
***
Comments:
“At the seventh, speak your truth together, or the door forgets you. You want that seam lit, or do you still choose the dark?”
– Weaver
“Not all truths are for unknotting. Seven steps, one mistake, and the road ends where it began. It’ll be hard to tell if you’re walking out or back in.”
– Elysinth
***
She frowns and moves the phone further away a notch before reading it again.
What is all this? Did you see that Elysinth one before? Or is this the third time it’s changed? Are you still awake?
Her finger taps the ‘Reload’ icon.
The page refreshes. When it comes back, both Weaver’s and Elysinth’s comments wiggle throughout. The letters swap places. The ascender of an ‘h’ breaks out resembling an ‘n’, the descender of a ‘g’ gives way to its best impression of a ‘u’.
What reassembles forms different words, where the leftover letters drop to the bottom of the screen, all piled on top of each other into nonsense.
The comments section reads something different.
***
Comments:
“To light the door’s true seam in the dark, one will choose for you to forget the seventh.”
– Weaver
“If you can’t find the truth, don’t wake Weaver. She’s still holding on to our threads.”
– Elysinth
***
She scrolls up and down quickly, though sheer speed isn’t able to shuffle the letters back into place. Her eyes catch on the last line of her story. Her own words fracture there, too.
‘…Stay—He–did——Stay—He…did—’
“No.” She gives the screen repetitive taps.
“That… That’s not what was there.” Her voice comes out so dry that it cracks at the end and makes it sound like a question at the last moment.
She reads the lines again, aloud this time, as if she could snatch one back and catch the trick.
You saw it. You did. You didn’t make them do that. There’s no way you did that.
Her thumb jabs the screen without aiming for any gentleness and selects ‘Reply’ without checking under which box, and she starts typing without thinking.
The letters detach and shift on the screen as she writes. She doesn’t stop. All her freshly typed letters lean out of their container and drop onto the gibberish pile at the bottom.
She smacks the phone face down on the sink, leaves her hand on top, and looks up into the mirror.
“What the…” Her reflection lags, a frame behind, lips moving after the fact.
Are you sure you’re not dreaming? Is this what Ari meant? Is this withdrawal? Or something worse?
She sees Eli in the mirror for a moment. His figure stands behind her in the glass. Except he isn’t there. Her hand clenches the phone as her eyes lock on it.
Say his name. Or check the door. Or blink. Any of those would be normal.
The door creaks behind her.
Eli stops at the doorway with his foot raised to take another step. His gaze tries to find hers in the mirror as his reflection moves a second early before it snaps back.
His face looks like itself and a much older version at the same time; the frame seems too pronounced, and eyes hold more light than they should, as if the fluorescents managed to crank up the contrast too high on him.
“You’re seeing – tell me you’re seeing that.” Maz stares at the reflections.
He watches the mirror version of himself stagger before it corrects itself again.
That’s not how normal reflections work, is it?
“Yeah.” He looks at the corners of the mirror.
“How’s that even…?”
Unless the glass is warped, but then the image would distort, not… trail. Let’s say the light’s off, so a delay in… No. Mine’s earlier, hers is later. I saw it. It happened. I’ll figure out why later.
Maz’s phone lights up in her hand when she unlocks the screen. She lifts it facing the mirror for Eli to see it in the glass. Her fingers shake. The light trembles with it across the tiles.
“Did you…?” Her finger points at Elysinth’s comment.
He steps in close and reads the words, brow furrowing deep.
“Elysinth again?”
How am I so sure how to even pronounce that name?
His eyes lift to the mirror’s edge.
The words feel like they could be mine. They’re not mine, though. I’m not sure how. How can I possibly know?
“I… don’t think so? I was there. I think. Right?” A laugh escapes that breaks off too soon.
“I’d remember writing that. But… I know that line. Somehow.”
He looks at her in the mirror.
“Who’s Weaver?”
Maz’s shoulders give a slight lift for the stiffest of shrugs.
“Someone who shouldn’t know our word. It feels like we know them. Just…”
Don’t you dare say it. Don’t make it real. Let it go.
“Not from here.”
The lights overhead buzz louder and surrender the room to darkness. They return in stuttering stages with their usual grumble.
Eli keeps his eyes on the mirror as if it might turn out to be able to reveal an answer any moment now.
Okay. What am I exactly looking for here? Proof this is real? Proof it’s not? Confirmation that I’m supposed to understand what’s happening and somehow forgot the rules?
Maz taps the screen, nowhere in particular, and Elysinth’s comment disappears from the thread.
“How? I… I didn’t mean to…” She tilts the phone his way.
What did you do? It’s gone. Was it ever there?
She shakes her head. The move still looks slower in the mirror.
If you turn away, maybe it fixes itself. If you don’t, maybe you disappear too, and he stays, or…
He comes closer to her side. They stand shoulder to shoulder. The static between them prickles. The hairs along the nape of their necks lift.
It makes Eli’s inhale stutter and stall.
There it is again. That… tightness? No, pull… in my chest. Happened before when we… I stay close to her, and it evens out somehow.
He leans his shoulder on to hers until his breathing finds a patchy balance.
Maz’s pulse gives a jump of a thump behind her mouth, as if her heart were asking for permission to be out. Her vision becomes clearer as she watches their reflections wobble. They seem layered and misaligned; one moment looks too clear, another worn smooth.
“Eli.” Her whisper is calmer than her hands holding onto the phone and the sink.
“What’s happening to us?”
“If I say I remember this, am I lying?”
Her effort at a smile wilts before her reflected face distorts for a second.
“If you are, then… we’re worse off than we thought.”
“I keep thinking there’s a step we must have missed somewhere. Like we were halfway through… something? And… I don’t know. Forgot the cue?”
“What, a ritual you only get to remember in fragments? Nice.” She looks into the sink.
Just take the scale and forget the question. Maybe the mirror will forget this too.
He attempts to reach for her shoulder and stops before turning the touch into reality.
I can tell her it’s all right. Is it, though? This is obviously why we need the scales.
She looks up and watches his hand in the mirror as the reflected hand closes the distance and holds her reflection’s shoulder.
What? Stop looking. You’re fine. You’re here.
Eli’s arm wraps around her to gather her shoulders in before he pulls her closer. The outlines of their reflections start to blur and ripple as the couple in the glass leaves a sliver of space between them.
Maz lets go of the sink as she leans against him.
Just be here. Wait… Has he always been this warm?
His other hand picks and pinches at the stitching on his pocket.
Let’s say the world’s always been this broken. I still would’ve remembered something like this. Right. How’s this not feeling entirely wrong?
He murmurs to the reflection.
“We… We’ve been here before.” His eyes never leave the mirror.
Not here. Here.
Maz listens to his breaths that begin to settle into a pattern before she lets out an exhale.
“We lost more than a few moments, didn’t we?”
Eli huffs a laugh.
“I guess… we’ll find out.”
Not even sure which side of the glass I’m talking to.
The staff room door outside bangs shut.
The lights go out once more. When they sputter back on, Maz and Eli find themselves staring at the mirror. The glass forgets their doubled and misaligned images. It behaves as a perfectly ordinary mirror again, with all its smudges and the reflection of two people pretending to be fine.
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