the self isn't safe either- part 1

The mirror never shattered, yet everything around it did. It stood still in the middle of the room like a witness that had seen far too much, silent but swollen with memory. Walls peeled back like old skin, ceiling fans twisted mid-spin, frozen in some half-formed scream. The floor beneath her kept changing, tile to marble to sand to water to tile again- as if unsure what this place even was anymore. A hospital corridor? A bathroom? A temple? A bedroom with locked doors and eyes that wouldn’t meet hers the next morning? The air pulsed with the smell of antiseptic and incense, of old perfume and rust. Her reflection didn’t mimic her; it observed. Watched with the kind of patience only something eternal could afford. Not blinking. Not human. Her face looked foreign, mouth a little too wide, eyes holding the weight of things that hadn’t happened yet. A dried petal hung from her hair, blackened and crisp, like it had been plucked from mourning itself.

Each step closer to the mirror was met with resistance. The lights flickered, evoking memories that stuttered in and out of existence. Her father was yelling behind a closed door. The sound of glass breaking underwater. A hand where it shouldn’t have been. A voice saying “shh” like it was a lullaby. She reached out, and her hand went through her face, rippling like ink in a bowl. Behind the reflection, the room was different- better lit, emptier, sterile. That version of her smiled. But it wasn’t reassurance; it was mockery. The kind of grin that predators wear just before the pounce. And when the mirror blinked, she staggered back, realizing she wasn’t looking into a mirror anymore. The reflection wasn’t hers. It was the version of her that had never spoken out, never screamed, never told anyone. The girl who swallowed the weight and learned to smile with a bleeding tongue.

It whispered now, without moving lips. Not a sound but a thought: "We were never the same. You just wore me better." The walls curved inward, like the room itself was breathing, suffocating under its silence. Muffled voices bled through the ceiling- questions, blame, a language made of interrogation marks.

Did you say no? Were you sure? Why now?

She turned to run, but the door was gone. Or maybe there never was one. Just frame after frame of her, all watching from glassless mirrors nailed to the air. Some crying, some grinning, one with her wrists wrapped in red ribbons. None of them were blinking. She wasn’t haunted by what happened. She was haunted by what was never said. And in this room that shifted like memory, twisted like a nightmare half-remembered, the self wasn’t safe either.

She tried to blink it away, whatever it was that warped the corners of her vision, but the mirror clung to her like skin. It moved with her, whispered when she breathed. Not words, but tones- like wind dragging nails across frozen pavement. Her reflection had stopped mimicking her. It simply stared, slightly tilted, slightly wrong, as if understanding things she hadn’t lived through yet. Behind it, the background kept shifting. Her bedroom gave way to hospital walls, wet tile floors, and a school corridor she hadn’t walked in ten years. The lights in the mirror buzzed and dimmed, flickering like they were trying to signal her in Morse. Her mouth stayed closed. Her reflection opened its own, slow and soundless, mouthing something she didn’t know she knew:

“You left me here.”

And the worst part? She had.

She pressed her hands to the mirror. Cold glass gave way like soft flesh. Her fingers didn’t stop at the surface- they slipped through, swallowed wrist-deep. On the other side: nothingness, not black, not grey, but a pulsing void that breathed. It felt wet, and not in a water kind of way. It was the kind of wet you associate with blood, with basements, with things buried too long under floorboards. She should’ve screamed. But she was too transfixed by her teeth. In the mirror, they were rotting, cracking, falling. She watched herself swallow the shards without flinching. Her skin there was bruised in places she didn’t remember hurting. Her eyes blinked out and back again. Then all at once-

The reflection smiled.

But not at her.

At something behind her.

She walked away from the mirror, but something stayed behind. It was the silence. The kind that follows after something inside you dies quietly, without a scene. No scream, no fight. Just a part of her....gone. And no one even noticed.

thank you so much for reading and, yea, as the title suggests ,there WILL be more parts. not sure on the number, but i am thinking 3? the parts won't be connecting, but the idea around the mirrors would be the same, hence the series. anyways- just for the disclaimer, it is completely fictional and imaginary.

sending love.

anss.