The Mirror’s Debt

It was the afternoon of my final exam results at the university, and I had just returned from the registrar’s office with a slip of paper that felt far too light for something that held my future. My name is Mara, and I live in an old apartment building in the city of Verloren, a place where the streets twist like arteries and the fog rarely lifts. I had passed, barely, but the relief was hollow; a strange weight had settled in my chest since I woke, a foreboding that I couldn’t shake. To distract myself, I decided to photograph the apartment’s odd details—the cracked plaster, the dust motes dancing in the slanted light, the way the wallpaper pooled in the corners like folded skin. My mother had asked me to pick up some groceries, but I was in no hurry; the day felt suspended, as if waiting for something.

I found myself in the bathroom, a cramped space with a sink that had a permanent rust stain and a mirror that was older than the building, its glass slightly rippled and tarnished at the edges. I was applying a bit of tinted lip balm, not because I cared for my reflection that day, but because the mundane act felt like an anchor. As I stared into the warped glass, the air in the room began to blur, like heat rising from asphalt, but there was no warmth. The blur concentrated around my reflection, and then I saw it: behind me, in the mirror’s shallow depth, a figure moved. It was a boy, or the shape of one—hunched, with limbs that seemed too long, and a face I couldn’t quite focus on. My heart slammed against my ribs. I spun around, but the bathroom was empty except for the abandoned toothbrush and the dripping tap. When I turned back, the boy was still there, now standing closer, his head tilted at an unnatural angle, as if examining me with curiosity.

I slammed out of the bathroom, my breath ragged. I told myself it was a trick of the light, that my eyes were playing games from the stress of results day. But the image had burned itself into my memory: the boy’s face, which I had only glimpsed, had shown a wide, dark smile that didn’t fit his youthful features. Over the next few days, I tried to avoid the bathroom, but the apartment was small, and I had to pass it to reach the kitchen. Each time, I would look only at the floor, but I could feel something watching me from the mirror, a pressure against my skin like static. Then, at night, I began to hear a faint scratching, like nails on glass, coming from the bathroom. It was so subtle that I thought it might be a rat, except the building was too clean for that.

One evening, while I was brushing my teeth—I had forced myself to use the mirror, to prove I wasn’t scared—the figure appeared again, this time fully formed. He was maybe ten or twelve, with close-cropped hair and eyes that were too dark, like polished stones. He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at the toothbrush in my hand, and his smile was gone. He mouthed something, and I could not hear it, but I read his lips: ‘Run.’ I froze, and he repeated, more urgently, ‘Run, before he wakes.’ And then the mirror rippled, and a second figure appeared behind the boy—tall, gaunt, with a face that was blank, no features at all, just a smooth expanse of skin. The boy looked back, terror in his eyes, and the tall figure placed a long hand on his shoulder, and the boy was pulled backwards into the glass, vanishing. The mirror went clear, and I was staring at my own shocked face, my toothbrush still hanging from my mouth.

I called the building’s super, an elderly man named Mr. Aldous, who had a way of avoiding questions. I told him about the mirror, about seeing a boy, and he went pale. He finally admitted that a child had lived in this apartment decades ago, a boy named Samuel, who had been… taken. Nobody knew by whom, but there were rumors of a man who promised to teach him, and the child was never seen again. The mirror had been here since then. Mr. Aldous said, ‘You must not look into it after dark. It’s when the other one moves.’ I asked what other one, but he only shook his head and left. That night, I heard voices from the bathroom, two of them: one high and pleading, the other low and guttural, speaking in a language I didn’t know. I pressed my hands over my ears, but the sounds seeped through.

I could not leave the apartment because my findings on the results slip had tied me to the city for at least another year. So I made a decision: I would confront the mirror, not as a victim, but as a witness. I went into the bathroom with a small flashlight, determined to see what was really there. I aimed the beam at the mirror, and the glass became a window to another place—a room that was the exact replica of my bathroom, but gray and dusty, as if drained of life. And there, floating just behind the glass, was the boy, Samuel. He pressed his hands against the mirror from inside, and I saw that his fingers left smudges on the glass that faded. His lips moved, and I read his words: ‘He feeds on fear. When you look, you give him power. Don’t look. Break me out.’ I hesitated, because the mirror was old, but it was also a piece of the building’s history. Yet I felt a surge of pity for this trapped child.

I grabbed a hammer from the kitchen, returned to the bathroom, and, taking a breath, swung it at the center of the mirror. The glass shattered with a sound like a scream, and the shards flew, but as they fell, they seemed to hang in the air for a moment, each one reflecting a different scene—some showing me, some showing the tall faceless figure, some showing a field of wilting flowers. Then they clattered to the floor. In the silence, I heard a small gasp, and then nothing. I looked at the bare wall where the mirror had been, and I felt a sudden chill, as if something had slipped past me. I turned, and there, in the reflection of the tap’s metal spout, I saw the boy, now standing in my doorway, smiling gratefully. He mouthed, ‘Thank you,’ and then he faded.

But the mirror’s debt was not so easily paid. The next day, I saw a new mirror in the apartment—a small hand mirror that had appeared on my nightstand, gleaming and new. I picked it up, and in its surface, I saw not my reflection, but the tall faceless figure, now confined behind the glass. It pounded against the mirror from within, but the surface did not ripple. It seemed that I had swapped one prison for another. I now have that hand mirror locked in a drawer, wrapped in cloth, and I always keep it facing down. But sometimes, in the dark, I hear a faint scratching, and I know that the figure is waiting, for me to one day make a mistake and hold it up to my eyes. In the meantime, I search for ways to truly end it—to break the cycle that binds the boy’s spirit and the faceless entity. I am not a hero, but I have become a keeper of a secret, and I have learned that some mirrors reflect not what is, but what is trapped.