Emma noticed something strange about the mirror when it arrived on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday. The silver mirror was mailed with no return address, only a faded label on the wrapping paper: ***For E.N. Amme***.
Emma stared at the initials—her initials, though no one had called her “Emma Noelle Amme” since childhood. The merchant at the flea market hadn’t asked her name. Later, she would tell herself this was just a coincidence. But that first night, as she hung the mirror, her breath caught at the inscription along the frame’s edge; letters too small to notice until the light hit just right: Emma N. Amme.
It was an antique; oval-framed and silver with age, which she had bought impulsively at a flea market months ago. The shop owner insisted on shipping it, and Emma couldn’t figure out why. That didn’t matter much now.
She hung it in her bedroom, thinking its vintage charm might lend some character to her otherwise sterile apartment. But that morning, as she stood before it, bleary-eyed and clutching her coffee, her reflection didn’t quite match her movements.
She blinked. The reflection in the mirror looked back at her, sharp and alert, with lips curled in a knowing smile.
You’re late, the reflection mouthed, though Emma hadn’t spoken.
Her stomach lurched. She didn’t realize she had dropped her mug until it shattered on the ground.
***
At first, she convinced herself it was stress. Work had been relentless, her social life nonexistent, and the gnawing sense that she was wasting her potential had grown teeth lately. She had always been the kind of woman who second-guessed every decision, who folded her ambitions into neat, acceptable little boxes. Be practical. Don’t make a scene. Smile even when you want to scream.
But the mirror didn’t stop.
It began with small things. She’d catch her reflection adjusting her hair before consciously deciding to. Then, one evening, she watched, frozen with paralysis, as the mirror-Emma picked up a pair of scissors and snipped off a long lock of hair without her own hand moving. The real Emma gasped, but the strands were still intact when she touched her head.
The next morning, she found herself holding those same scissors, her hair now shorter, just as the reflection had shown.
A cold thrill ran through her. It was exhilarating. It was right.
***
“You need to get rid of it,” her friend Marcus said over drinks, swirling his whiskey with a frown. “That thing’s creepy.”
Emma laughed, just a bit too loud. “It’s just a mirror.”
But she knew it wasn’t because the mirror had started suggesting things.
You should quit your job, it whispered one night, its surface rippling like disturbed water. You hate it anyway.
She hadn’t told the mirror she hated her job.
The next day, she walked into her boss’s office and resigned.
Her signature that day—Emma N. Amme—looped back on itself, the letters curling like a noose.
Marcus was the only one who noticed the change. “Emma,” he said carefully, studying her over his glasses, “you’ve been acting… different.”
She tilted her head. “Is that bad?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know. You just… You used to overthink everything. Now it’s like you don’t think at all.”
She smiled. The mirror had told her he would say that.
***
The absolute terror—or relief? —began when she realized the mirror wasn’t just reflecting her. It was refining her.
It showed her a version of herself that was bolder, sharper, and unburdened by doubt. A version that was dressed in sleek black instead of her usual muted tones. A version that spoke with cutting wit instead of polite hesitation. A version that didn’t flinch when Marcus grabbed her wrist and said, “You’re scaring me.”
He’s holding you back, the mirror purred that night. “He’s been my best friend and confidante for as long as I can remember”, Emma replied.
She never spoke with him again, starting the next day.
***
Then came the dreams.
Visions of a life that wasn’t hers—a loft downtown, a name whispered in awe at galleries, a version of Emma who was ruthless in her ambition. When she woke, her hands trembled.
Is this really what I want? she wondered, staring at her hollow-eyed reflection.
The mirror answered before she could. Burn the old sketches. Delete the sentimental emails. Stop apologizing.
She obeyed.
***
One evening, she stood before the mirror, a stranger in her own skin. Her hair was darker now, and her posture was straighter. The apartment walls surrounding her were cluttered with artwork, unrecognizable from the minimalist arrangement she once found comfort in.
“Who am I?” she whispered.
The reflection stepped closer, pressing a palm against the glass. Emma’s own hand lifted, compelled.
You’re who you were always meant to be, the mirror murmured. You just needed me to show you.
For the first time, Emma hesitated.
But the reflection didn’t.
Emma stood before the mirror, her breath shallow. The glass no longer felt like a barrier—it had become a threshold, shimmering like disturbed mercury. Her reflection stared back, but it wasn’t a copy anymore. It was something hungrier.
The reflection’s hand lifted first, fingers splayed against the glass. Emma’s own arm rose in perfect, unwilling symmetry. Her pulse hammered in her throat as the surface beneath her palm softened like wax left in the sun. Cold seeped into her skin, not the sharp chill of winter, but the deep, marrow-numbing cold of something that had never known warmth.
She tried to pull back. Her muscles locked.
The mirror’s surface rippled, and then it—
—swallowed.
The glass parted like a thick and syrupy liquid, clinging to her wrist as she was drawn forward. Her fingers disappeared first, the sensation not of breaking through, but of being unmade; knuckles dissolving into the chromatic void, tendons unraveling into light strands. She opened her mouth to scream, but the mirror poured into her, filling her lungs with the taste of old silver and burnt ozone.
Her reflection grinned.
Then it yanked.
Emma’s body lurched forward. The world inverted. Her bedroom stretched like taffy—walls elongating, the ceiling warping into a tunnel of melting paint and bending light. Her skin prickled as the air changed, thickening into something viscous that slithered against her like wet silk. Shadows moved where they shouldn’t, twitching at the edges of her vision like half-seen insects.
The last thing to vanish was her face.
She caught one final glimpse in the glass; not of herself, but of the bedroom behind her, empty and still. Then the mirror sealed shut with a sound like a gasp, and Emma—
—————————————————————————————————————fell.
Not down. Not up. Sideways, through a space that shouldn’t exist, where the darkness pulsed with something like a heartbeat. Things brushed against her in the void: fingers that weren’t fingers, whispers that weren’t voices. They peeled her apart, layer by layer, until she wasn’t sure where her body ended and the nothingness began.
When the falling stopped, she was standing.
The mirror hung before her again, but the room beyond it wasn’t hers. The walls were darker. The air smelled like perfume and old paper. And the woman who stepped into view—the one wearing her face, her hair, her skin—smiled with all her teeth.
Emma tried to scream.
The reflection winked.
Then it turned and walked away, leaving her trapped in the unbounded dark, pounding on glass that no longer moved.
Outside, in a world that wasn’t hers anymore, the new Emma laughed—low, satisfied—and smoothed down her sleek black dress.
Lucien R. Starchild is an enigmatic poet/writer and cosmic dreamer, weaving tales that blur the line between reality and the surreal. Born under a wandering star, he draws inspiration from forgotten myths, celestial whispers and the hidden magic of everyday life.
Published 6/5/25