Estimated reading time — 10 minutes

I feel compelled to tell you all a story. One about mirrors. They are so much more than you could ever imagine. They aren’t simply vessels for reflections. They are a gateway into an entire world, a dying realm on the brink of collapse. My friends and I call it “The Other Side.” Over there exists versions of every single one of us. Unfortunately, we’ve learned some disturbing truths about these “Othersiders.”

First, they can view us from anything that casts a reflection. Second, they want to take our place in this world.

Why weren’t you aware of this? You need a certain level of paranormal awareness to see the truth inside a mirror. Knowing about it comes with its own set of problems. You’re only at risk to be taken if you have enough awareness. The more you know, the more vulnerable you are. That awareness can come naturally… or from simply learning too much. I’m one of the unlucky few who grew up with an innate ability for it.

From what I’ve been told, there aren’t many differences between us and our mirror selves. The main one is that they have a kind of sixth sense for communicating with others of their own kind, regardless of whether they’re in our world or theirs. As I understand it, telepathy, more or less.

This means you have to keep your inner circle close. You never know when someone birthed in another realm may be watching and communicating with someone here to come after you or your loved ones. I haven’t always been disciplined or careful, and it nearly cost me my friend Darius.

“Remember how you saved me that day, Walker? I was seconds away from being swapped, and out of nowhere, you swooped in, shattered that mirror and saved my life,” he’d say. Just thinking about it put a pit in my stomach.

Not only did I nearly lose my friend that day…I tipped off the Othersiders that I may be a weak link. Ever since, I’ve had a target on my back and the mirror version of me has increased his efforts to swap places. The constant paranoia of him watching me or directing others to do so has led me to give him the name Stalker. Yeah, I know, no one ever accused me of being creative.

There are certain parameters that need to be met for a ‘transference’ to occur. You need to ‘have the gift of awareness.’ Next, both you and your mirror-self need to place a bare hand on a mirror or glass simultaneously.

“Remember this last part, Walker. One of you must initiate the swap verbally in some way.”

That’s it. I’m sure you can think of countless situations that happen on a daily basis where one lapse in judgement sends you to a dying world forever.

There’s only one way to stop a transference once it’s begun. You have to shatter the object. That’ll kill the doppelganger. You just better hope the object is breakable. I know this because of Darius. He’s the most cautious person I know. His constant need to remind me of things I already know is annoying. But I guess that’s just who he is.

Besides, being annoying is low on our list of worries right now. Stalker has gained influence on the other side, and he’s made it clear he’s not just coming for me…but everyone I care about. That brings us to the present. Darius and I were on our way to meet with someone else like us, Noelle.

We walked down the street in silence, every sound slightly distorted, every movement slightly delayed, like reality was buffering around us. Storefront windows flashed our reflections as we passed. A puddle stood in our path. Darius stepped in it, and for a split second, the reflection wasn’t his. The figure didn’t match the angle of his body. Its grin was too wide and in the blink of an eye, it vanished into ripples.

He cursed under his breath, “They’re getting bolder.”

“Or desperate.”

Our reflections were everywhere. In car doors. In broken fragments of glass on the sidewalk. And every time we tried to ignore them, they moved just a fraction slower than we did. Watching. Learning.

We kept walking. Then turned a corner. That’s when it came.

A whisper.

“Waaaalker…”

The sound was coming from every direction.

Ahead of us, there was a mirror, out in the open. I saw it just in time to witness it shudder and crack.

“Oh my god.”

Something was coming through.

An arm burst through the glass. Long, pale, stretched. Unnatural. Then another.

This wasn’t an Othersider. It was a hunter. A monstrosity. A being from the Other Side that shouldn’t exist in either world.

It dragged its emaciated form out of the mirror, crawling forward on all fours.

Then it moved.

Fast.

It flickered forward across the sidewalk, covering twenty feet in a heartbeat.

Then it stopped.

Its head tilted. Limbs stretching beyond human capabilities.

“Darius…” I whispered.

“I know,” he said, pulling me behind a parked car.

It turned toward us, but not its head. Its reflection in a broken windshield nearby spun first. Then its body followed. Almost like it needed to see us from another world before it could act in this one.

“Time to go.”

We ran.

I didn’t even feel my legs move. Just a pounding in my chest.

The Hunter didn’t run.

It glided.

We passed a convenience store window.

Its face was already there*.* Its eyes were locked in on us.

Then its hand lunged through the glass.

Darius grabbed my arm and pulled me sideways.

The Hunter’s claw struck where my skull had been, cracking brick and sending shards spraying like shrapnel.

“Keep moving!” Darius shouted.

Another window. A puddle. A rearview mirror on a rusted car.

Everywhere I looked, it was there.

Just for a flicker. A frame. A leg stepping through a storefront. An eye blinking from a rain-slicked gutter. A full silhouette running inside the reflection of a bus window even though the sidewalk was empty.

“THROUGH HERE!” Darius yelled, diving into the open side door of a long-abandoned building.

I followed, into cold air and the smell of mildew. The walls were lined with broken vanity mirrors. A busted hair salon.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Then came the inhuman screech. Like bones being ground between gears, the sound echoed through the corridor.

We sprinted. Behind us, the mirrors shimmered. I saw us running and behind us, in every pane…

It.

Moving faster than we were.

We hit a fork. Two doors. One left. One right.

Darius spun. “I’ve got left. You go right”

“Not a chance”

He grabbed me by the collar, eyes wild with fear. “No time to argue. If it follows me, you live. If it follows you, I’ll find you.”

Then the mirror behind us exploded. A shard flew by my ear and sliced the wall like a razor. We were out of time.

He shoved open the left door and vanished into the dark.

I took the right.

The hallway pulsed with red from an emergency light. Pipes overhead hissed. Steam flooded the air. The walls were lined with dirty tiles and broken glass from shattered picture frames.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard a tapping noise. Was the hunter…walking on the walls?

A sudden hiss of steam. A pipe burst beside me.

I ducked. It didn’t matter.

It landed on me with unnatural speed, weightless and crushing at the same time. Claws like bone punctured my side. Teeth like shattered glass sank into my shoulder.

I screamed. And then…

Darkness.

I don’t know how long I was out. I only know that I woke up to silence.

My entire body ached. I tried to breathe, but each breath scraped against my insides.

The room was dim. The air stale. The walls were…glass. Or at least, what was left of them.

It took me a moment to realize where I was. The ruined enclosures. The eerie stench of damp concrete and old blood. The mangled animal cages.

An abandoned zoo.

Come on. How many abandoned places can there be around here?

Everywhere I looked…were mirrors. Clearly, I was not the first to be taken here.

I stumbled to my feet, and with every step a jolt of pain shot down my legs. My hand found the wall for support, but I immediately jerked it back.

A chill ran down my spine. There were no animals here anymore. And yet I could feel eyes everywhere. Not dozens. Not hundreds.

Thousands.

All watching me.

I entered what had once been the aquarium. The ceiling had collapsed. The floor creaked beneath my weight.

I turned, heart pounding, looking for a way out. There was my reflection, barely visible through the film of dust and time.

Then the reflection blinked. I didn’t.

The light above flickered, and with each one, the reflection grew closer. On the other side of the glass, surrounded by darkness, stood a man with my face.

Except it wasn’t my face. The features were too symmetrical. Too pristine. Like someone had constructed me from memory but missed the soul behind the eyes.

Stalker.

“Where is the hunter?” I asked.

“It served its purpose.” the voice responded.

“What are you going to do to me?” I said.

“Nothing. All I want to do is talk,” he replied. His form vanished from the glass only to reappear on a metal beam a few feet away.

“You went to great lengths to talk.”

“Desperate times,” he replied. I wiped my forehead, trying to use my hand as cover to quickly survey my surroundings. He continued, “I’ll be blunt. Allow me to take your place, and we will save your world.”

“You haven’t done a great job taking care of your own. I think we’re better off handling ours, thanks.”

“You think that because you’re being manipulated. All of your kind are.”

“Spare me your bullshit,” I responded.

“Bullshit you say? Who are the most reviled in your kinds history?”

“What? I don’t know. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Humor me.”

“Probably the Nazis?” I said, puzzled.

“Splendid example,” he smirked, “What happened to them?”

“They lost.”

Then Stalker laughed.

“Why is that funny?”

“They didn’t lose. Your people took their best and brightest, gave them new identities and set them loose in the most powerful country of your world. NASA. MKULTRA. Full of nazi involvement. They experimented on your citizens for decades…after the war. Under the supervision of your government. You were lied to about it for decades. When discovered? No consequences were ever faced.”

“That…”

“Not enough? Banks conspired to steal your freedom, and you let them.”

“This happened decades ago,” I responded.

“The most notorious sex trafficker in history has secrets your government is protecting RIGHT NOW. They tell you to believe a billionaire decided to kill himself for sex trafficking thousands of children to no one.”

He continued.

“You have been manipulated for so long you don’t even know what free will is. Yes, our world is dying, but yours? Your world is evil. Walker, you, humanity, are your own worst enemy.”

“Those things disgust me, sure. We aren’t perfect, I get that. No one said we were. But we’re not trying to eradicate you, like you are us.”

“If your government knew of us, they surely would. Normally, we have rules that keep us in check. But in the end, all life strives to survive. This is our only option. You are evil that is incapable of curing yourselves. Therefore, you no longer deserve to exist.”

“Spare me the sanctimonious bullshit. I’m sure if we saw the darkest things your side has done, we’d say the same about you. There’s a lot of good left in this world.”

Stalker stepped back from the glass. For a moment, the room was still. The only sound was my own breathing, ragged and sharp.

Then he stepped back forward, hand pressed flat against the cracked glass between us. His reflection shimmered. Like something glitching in from another world.

“There’s more good in ours. Initiate it, Walker. Let me in.”

The mirrors around the room, shattered tanks, broken panels, glass walls, began to hum with a low sound. I could feel it in my molars. Behind the shimmer, dozens of figures twitched inside the reflections.

Some whispered. Some scratched. One was laughing.

I stepped forward, trying to keep my voice steady, though my body trembled like a tuning fork. “You want this so badly?” I asked. “Then you initiate it.”

Stalker tilted his head, ever so slightly.

“You know I can’t.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why not?”

“What game are you playing?” He asked.

The mirrors behind him rippled, faces pressing against them. My friends. My family. One of them bled from the eyes. Another tried to scream but had no mouth.

“That’s what this was?” I said. “You were trying to convince me?”

“Like I said, you’re already being manipulated. Might as well be by me.”

“I will never help you.”

He snapped.

Stalker lunged forward, his face smashing against the glass. From every angle, his voice poured out, layered and echoing in a chorus of variations.

“Do it, Walker. If you don’t, I will kill them all. You’ll hear them scream for you while I watch from behind your eyes. Your mother. Your father. Darius. Noelle. Anyone who has ever shown you kindness. LET ME IN.”

My hand twitched.

The pressure was unbearable. My skull throbbed. The whispers were inside my head, repeating a rhythm: LET ME IN.

His face contorted. It twisted like melting wax.

From the tanks, the mirror creatures surged, arms pressing against glass, trying to break through. Fingers scraped and snapped, leaving streaks of blood and static. The whole structure groaned, like it was about to collapse inward.

Stalker howled.

“WHY WON’T YOU BREAK?”

The searing pain going through my brain was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Voices inside kept speaking: Touch the glass. Say the words. Then all the pain will go away.

Suddenly, the mirror ruptured, imploded into a thousand teeth of glass. Stalker collapsed to his knees, hands over his ears as blood and light poured from his mouth. He looked at me, eyes seething.

“We…are always watching…and…we always will be…until one of us ceases to exist.”

And then, like a projection losing power, he began to glitch apart. His scream wasn’t words anymore, just raw sound, scraping and unnatural. His skull split down the middle like a pane of glass catching a hammer.

The mirror beasts screeched. A few shattered inside their reflections. One pressed a hand against the glass and begged with its eyes. It was too late. A pulse of white light exploded outward.

Followed by silence.

The room was cold again. Still. Only broken glass and my own ragged breathing remained.

How did that even happen? I didn’t break the glass.

“Told you I’d find you,” came a familiar voice. It was Darius, holding a smoking gun.

“You don’t know how grateful I am for this Walker,” Darius said, toss the gun aside..

“Probably not as grateful as I am to be alive,” I laughed. I began leaning back and my body collapsed to the floor. Everything ached.

“You truly are amazing. Having the fortitude to withstand him when he’s inside your head? Not just anyone could do that. But that’s why I chose you. You’re special,” he said.

“What did you say?”

“That you’re special my friend,” he grinnned.

“No…the other part.”

“Oh, that,” he sighed. “When I found out how naturally gifted you were, I chose you to do my bidding. And you’ve done an excellent job.”

“Chose me? What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been manipulating your memories for a while now. Making you believe what I want you to believe. Take Darius for example, you never did save him,” he said.

“But that…”

“Yes, it means he’s gone. Has been for quite some time,” he said, pointing up to the sky. “You’re a little too powerful to completely control, but if I use short incantations, followed by quick messages, that does the trick. It was easy to make you forget that we have abilities beyond telepathy. Or how strongly you pass on awareness onto others.”

“Why go through all this? Why fight Stalker?” My eyes darted back and forth looking for anything I could use to help me in this situation.

“Because I will now be free to do things my way, without consequence.”

“How long have you been using me?” I needed him to keep talking. There had to be something here I could use. There had to be a way out. Or…

We started circling each other. Perfect.

“Let’s just say, with your gifts I’ve swapped countless members from your realm to mine. You simply don’t remember,” he said. Hearing that made my heart drop. Was this what the feelings in my gut had been for? How much damage have I done? “It wasn’t in the way that he meant, but Stalker was right about one thing. You are always being manipulated. You truly are your own worst enemy.” He reached out his to place on my shoulder. “Now let’s get going, we have more work to do my friend.”

But I had other plans. I dove for the gun, picking it up, and aiming it right at him.

“What makes you think I won’t take you out right here and now,” I asked.

“Remember when you thought this was all a bad dream? Then you felt compelled to talk about it online, because awareness is…key.”

Credit: Sam Gallenberger

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