The Broken Frame

I’d only been at the salon for three weeks when the mirror frame snapped clean in two, the glass somehow untouched. It was issued to me on my first day—a standard handheld mirror, silver-plated frame, the kind you see in old hotels. I thought little of it at first; with three of us working, tools got knocked around, and clients sometimes grabbed the nearest thing to check their ends. But when I turned it in and got a replacement, the same thing happened: a clean break, right at the top where the handle meets the oval, as if someone had snapped it over a knee.

My manager, Diane, joked about it at the morning huddle. ‘You’re not secretly snapping these, are you?’ She laughed, but I saw the unease in her eyes. The salon was in the basement of the Exchange, a windowless space with fluorescent lights that hummed in a key that never felt right. We catered to the base wives and officers’ families, and the clientele was steady, but the place always had a draft that smelled of old copper and cold dust.

I shrugged it off. ‘At least it’s not the mirror itself. That would be seven years bad luck, and I don’t have that kind of time.’ Diane handed me a third mirror, still in its plastic wrap. ‘Try this one. I’ll order more.’

That evening, as I was closing up, I had my first real job: a young lieutenant’s wife, Mrs. Calhoun, getting her hair done for a dinner. She was chattering about her husband’s deployment, and I was half-listening, focusing on the sectioning. I needed to check the back, so I reached for the new mirror—only to find it already broken on the counter, the same clean snap. I froze. Mrs. Calhoun noticed. ‘Is everything okay?’ she asked, her voice a little too high.

I forced a smile. ‘Just clumsy. We’ve got backups.’ I grabbed a spare from the drawer, but my hand shook. As I positioned it to show her the nape of her neck, I saw it—a faint smudge on the glass, like a fingerprint, but it was on the inside. I wiped it with a cloth, but it remained. I told myself it was a defect, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me from behind that reflection.

The next week, the mirrors started breaking with more violence. Not just the frame—now there were hairline cracks spreading like spiderwebs from the top, and one even shattered in my hand, sending a shard slicing into my palm. Diane insisted I get it checked out, but the military clinic just said it was stress. I knew better. It was the mirror itself.

One night, I decided to stay late. The salon was dark, lit only by the emergency exit sign’s red glow. I pulled out a mirror I’d hidden in my locker—one I’d never used—and set it on the table. I placed my hand on the handle, and I could feel a faint vibration, like a heartbeat. I looked into it, expecting my own reflection, but instead I saw a woman—not me, but a woman with dark hair, a scar across her throat, and eyes that were too wide. She mouthed something, and I felt my lips move in unison.

I slammed the mirror face-down and backed away, heart hammering. I called my husband, but he was on patrol. I called Diane, and she laughed again, but I heard her say under her breath, ‘It’s the old one.’ When I pressed her, she grew quiet. ‘That salon used to be a barber shop back in the ’60s. A barber died in here—they say he was gutted in a fight over a woman. They found him holding a mirror, and the frame was broken, just like yours. Ever since, any new mirror that stays in this room too long gets broken, like he’s trying to get out.’

I didn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking about the woman in the reflection, and how she mouthed my name. The next day, I walked into the salon and found the mirror I’d hidden back on the counter, whole, but with a crack in the glass, right where the heart would be. On the counter, there was a note, handwritten in shaky letters: ‘He wants a witness. I’m waiting.’

I quit that week. But I took the mirror with me, wrapped in towels, buried at the bottom of my trunk. Even now, months later, I can sometimes feel it pulsing through the fabric, and when I open my eyes at night, I see her face in the dark, mouthing words I can’t hear. The frame is still broken. And I think it always will be.