The Mirror by J. Morris (read dune txt) 📕

         On the night of October 16, 2016, as Mary lay on her bed during one of her private, intimate moments, something caught her attention. Her eyes darted to the mirror and she screamed in horror, jumped from the bed onto the floor, and frantically ripped the sheet from the bed to cover herself.

          In the full-length mirror she saw a young man, around her age or a bit younger. The image was blurry but she could see clearly enough to realise it was a man in a bed somewhere. The longer she watched, the clearer the image became, like a demister clearing a car windshield. The room looked identical to hers but with different furniture.

          Mary’s mind was in turmoil. She was in disbelief. How is that even possible? The mirror is fixed to the wall. There is nothing behind it but the wall. And anyway the mirror was mounted to an external wall of her apartment. There was nothing on the other side of the wall but open air.  But… there he was, in his own private moments.

          Was she asleep? Dreaming? Mary didn’t know. But if she was dreaming it was the most vivid dream she had ever had. But it MUST be a dream. It’s the only explanation.

The image was so clear now that it was if they were in the same room. This was intimate. This was like being in a room with a guy, although Mary believed she was experiencing a vivid dream.

           Suddenly the boy looked at the mirror and his eyes widened, and Mary felt as if he was looking straight through it and directly at her. Dreaming or not, Mary was terrified. He was at the mirror now, trying to look through. Mary’s eyes were wide with fear and she quickly turned her lamp off, plunging the room into darkness. She sat dead-still in the dark and watched the boy for 2 or 3 minutes as he pressed his face against the other side of the glass, his hands shielding his eyes from the reflection of his lamp, trying to peer into her room. Eventually he gave up and switched his light off, leaving Mary in the darkness of her room, still staring wide eyed and unblinking into the blackness, in the direction of the now darkened mirror.

         What was it? she asked herself. If I was dreaming, why have I not woken? Why am I still sitting on the floor and not lying on the bed, awoken from a dream? Maybe I’m still asleep…still dreaming. She climbed into bed and tried to go to sleep, but the images in her mind kept her awake in the darkness until the early hours of the morning.

Chapter 3

As Mary ate her breakfast, she gazed from the kitchen through her bedroom at the mirror. Was it real, or just a crazy dream? A dream had never seemed so real to her. But if she wasn’t dreaming, she must be going mad. She finished her breakfast and went back to her bedroom to dress for work. She took off her pyjama top and suddenly felt uncomfortable, so she found an old bedsheet and some thumbtacks and hung it over the mirror, then finished dressing. This is so silly, it was just a dream. Get it out of your mind, she told herself.

           But Mary couldn’t get it out of her mind. Throughout the day the image of the young man haunted her. It was the embarrassment of possibly being seen in her most private moments. It was the image of his face as he suddenly caught her eye in the mirror, his realisation of her presence. It was the sudden shock. The embarrassment was so real that she had still felt it when she woke. The expression on his face had burned into her mind, and she couldn’t ‘unsee’ it. It was all too real.

          “What’s up Mary?” asked Adele, as she sat next to Mary at the work cafeteria. “You look lost. Preoccupied with something?”

“Oh,” Mary replied, “just some crazy dream I had last night.”

“Must have been a good one,” said Adele. “That’s usually the face of a girl who got lucky the night before,” and she gave Mary a friendly nudge. “Well come on, spill it. What was the dream about?”

Mary’s face turned red.

“It’s nothing. It was just weird, that’s all.” she said.

“Well, tell me about it then. I’m into weird, you know that. The weirder, the better.”

Mary could only drop her head, embarrassed.

            Adele looked at her strangely for an extended moment, and then dismissed it from her mind. She knew from experience that Mary had shut up shop as far as the subject was concerned, and that she wouldn’t talk about it further.

“The girls and I are going out tonight,” said Adele. “Why don’t you come along? It’s just a few drinks down at the pub. You never get out, Mary.”

“I just like staying at home,” she replied. “I don’t like crowds, and I don’t drink.”

“You don’t really do much of anything, Mary. Anyway look, the invitation’s there. We’d all like you to come. Let me know if you change your mind. Ok?”

            Adele looked at Mary, waiting for a response, but Mary didn’t look up.

“Ok?” she repeated, touching Mary’s upper arm.

“Yeh ok,” replied Mary, looking up at Adele and nodding, but they both knew she wouldn’t be changing her mind.

            The day crawled by and Mary was glad to hear the buzzer indicating the end of her shift. She said goodbye to Adele and headed home.

             Time went by and Mary had all but dismissed the mirror incident as a dream, but she still felt compelled to hang the bedsheet over the mirror. Around a week and a half later she was lying in bed in the darkness, trying to go to sleep, but his image was in her head. She relived the night in her imagination recalling his body, his shock as he appeared to see her in the mirror. She could see it in her mind’s eye as clear as day.

             Mary got out of bed, switched on her lamp on and went to the mirror. She gently pulled the sheet away just enough to see, and shrieked as she jumped backwards a step. There he was, lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. Mary watched him for about 10 minutes. She watched his every little move, fascinated. Staring at him, he appeared to be deep in thought. She wondered what he was thinking about. He began to stir, as if an uneasy feeling had come over him. He looked over at the mirror, straight at Mary, and she knew he could see her too.

              He rose from the bed without taking his eyes from hers, and walked toward the mirror. Mary took three steps back. He said something but there was no sound. They stood in silence - a Mexican standoff. Mary went to her bedside drawer and found a pen and paper. She pulled the sheet from the mirror. The view was so clear now that it was like being in two rooms separated by a glass window.

“Who are you?” she wrote and shakenly held it up for him to see.

He found some paper and replied.

“I’m Danny.”

“Yes but who ARE you? WHERE are you? Why are you in my mirror?”

 They stared for a minute or so studying each other’s faces.

Danny shrugged, mystified. “You’re in mine” he wrote.

Mary somehow no longer felt afraid.  She seemed to instinctively know there was nothing to fear from Danny. There was a kindness to his face, and there was also a sadness and loneliness that she saw in herself. Despite being unable to communicate with boys for most of her life, she felt naturally at ease with this strange boy.

“I’m Mary,” she wrote. “Your room looks like mine. Same timber panels on the walls. I can see the same view into your kitchen. Do you live in the same apartment block?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. I live in London. Stirling Road.”

“So do I,” wrote Mary.

“Number 2048.”

“Yeh. Me too” she wrote.

They studied each other, then he wrote “Third floor, room 27.”

Mary eyes widened. “That’s my room. How can that be?” she wrote.

He shrugged again, shaking his head in confusion. They were both searching for answers, but there were so many questions. They both wondered if they were dreaming, but they believed they were wide awake.

“Do you work around here?” he wrote, not knowing what else to say.

“Yes. At the postal distribution centre about three kilometers from here.”

“The new one at Islington?”

“It’s at Islington,” she replied. “But it’s been there for ages. I can remember it being there when I was just a kid.”

             Puzzled, Danny wrote something and held it up. “What’s your phone number? Let me call you.”

Mary shook her head. She wasn’t willing to do divulge that information.

He wrote something else. It was a phone number. He picked up his mobile phone from his bedside table and held it up, indicating for Mary to phone him. Mary looked at his phone. It was an old larger model Nokia with an aerial.

“That phone looks ancient,” she wrote.

“I just bought it last week. It’s the latest model,” he replied.

Mary got hers and held it to the mirror. A Galaxy S7. Danny looked closely in wonder. He saw the date on the home screen. May 28 2016. He switched his phone on and held it up for Mary. May 28 1997. They stared at each other in disbelief.

“I have to go,” wrote Mary. “This is just too weird.” She bent down to pick up the bed sheet to hang over the mirror, and when she looked up Danny was holding his paper to the glass.

“Will I see you again?” it said.

Without replying, Mary hung the sheet.

              Sleep did not come easy for Mary that night. Who was this guy? How is it even possible? Is he a figment of her imagination, a result of craving love and companionship? Her mind playing tricks? Mary tried to make sense of it all, to look at it logically, if there is actually any logic to it. He first appeared in her mirror when she was fantasising of being with a guy, at the same time he seemed to be doing the same. Did they open some kind of door to the past and future; their minds concentrating on a lover at the exact same moment? Or is she just going mad, insane?

 Hoping to wake up to a life of normality, she eventually fell into a dreamless sleep.

             When Mary woke the next morning, the image of Danny was the first thing to enter her mind. Did that really happen? She believed that it did. During her sleep her subconscious mind had accepted the phenomenon of the appearance of Danny, as strange and unbelievable as it was, as Mary had always been open to paranormal activities. She also thought it was romantic, like something out of a movie. Perhaps those movie themes came from actual occurrences. Who knows? The fact was that she didn’t see Danny as a danger - she saw him as someone sent to her. A Godsend. An answer to her need for a companion, emotionally and possibly even physically. It excited her…frightened her a little… but excited her, and she wanted to explore all the possibilities. She wanted to know him, everything about him, where he’s from, where he’s been, what he does. And she wanted to know if he felt anything for her. She recalled the last message he held to the mirror. “Will I see you again?” She didn’t answer. Oh, why didn’t I answer? She hoped she hadn’t messed things up. Maybe Danny thinks she’s not interested and won’t appear again. She could only hope now, but she had a good feeling about it.

Chapter 4

          “What are you grinning about?” asked Adele in the work cafeteria the following day at lunch.

Mary didn’t realise