The Halloween Mirror

For the last three weeks, he’d been shaving. He was proud of that, I mean most of his friends had started a year or two ago. He hadn’t been able to find enough hair on his face to convince his dad to let him use the razor, up until then. 

So, that morning, he did what he had done for the last 20 days, he went into the bathroom to shave. He pulled the mirror his dad always used, down a little, and started to………..

Except there was one thing missing. One important thing.

He was missing. There was no reflection in the mirror. Oh, sure there were the walls and the shower behind him, but nothing stopping their reflections. He didn’t exist – as far as the mirror was concerned. He stupidly turned the mirror over to see if he was reflected on the mirror on the other side. He wasn’t.

He ran back into the bedroom to ensure he wasn’t still asleep and dreaming. But no. The bed was empty and the mirror in the bedroom was the same. No him.

He could hear his mother downstairs preparing the breakfast and he was unsure as to what he should do next. If he told her, she’d think he’d been on some drug or other – not that he had ever tried anything – but she tended to think the worst of all his exploits. He popped his head out into the hall, to see if the coast was clear – and another weird thing happened: he could see his reflection in the hall mirror …..except…..except…it, or rather his reflection, stuck a finger up in a rude gesture and ran away. Well disappeared out of the side of the mirror, that is.

He chased it to the mirror at the bottom of the stairs, but all his reflection did was laugh and run on to the next mirror. He knew there was a mirror in the kitchen and his mother was also in there. He walked in, trying not show any panic, and wished his mother a good morning. She asked if he wanted toast, and he said he did. She wasn’t looking, so he had a quick look in the mirror and sure enough his reflection was there. His mother turned around and scolded him for being so obsessed with his appearance. “You boys,” is what she’d normally say, and then laugh.

When his mother turned around, the reflection started to make stupid faces, and so he responded by giving a rude gesture back. It was as his mother was buttering the toast, that the reflection reached out from the mirror and grabbed him – so hard and fast, that he didn’t realise what was happening at first. The reflection pulled him into his side of the mirror. Then it jumped out into the kitchen.

“Your turn,” it said. “See how you like it.”

The reflection was in the kitchen getting toast from the boy’s mother. ‘Doesn’t she know it isn’t me?’ He thought. But she obviously didn’t. The reflection smiled back into the mirror – and because his mother was watching , he thought he should smile back – like a good mirror should.

Then the reflection and his mother left the kitchen.

 
And the boy? Well the boy and his unshaven face were stuck in the mirror wondering what the secret was to escaping. And how long he might be there. 

bobby stevenson 2018