The Mirror's Tenant

Fiction

Father, I know how this sounds. I know the weight of the words I am asking you to carry. Please, do not look away. I am speaking to you from the only place I have left: the silvering of the mirror behind you. It happened on a Tuesday. I was shaving. I remember the scent of the sandalwood soap and the way the steam clouded the edges of the glass. I leaned in to clear a spot, and for a second, the reflection didn't lean back. He stayed still. He watched me. Then, he reached out. His hand didn't hit glass; it slipped through like a stone into a still pond. He grabbed my collar and pulled. There was no sound, only a sudden, freezing pressure, and then I was on the other side. I watched him step into my bathroom. I watched him pick up my razor. He looked at me through the glass, and he smiled. It was my smile, but it was too wide. It didn't fade the way a real smile does; it just stopped. He is failing, Father. He thinks he is a perfect copy, but the world is not a mirror. I can see him from the hallways, from the polished surfaces of the tea kettle, from the windows at night. He does not blink. He will stand in the kitchen for ten minutes, staring at a piece of toast, without once closing his eyes. It is a hungry, vacant stare. And his heart. I heard it last night when he leaned against the bedroom wall. I could hear the thrumming through the plaster. It is beating on the right side of his chest. It does not pulse in the rhythm of a living man; it sounds like a clock running backward, a stuttering, reverse cadence that makes my own skin crawl. He tries to mimic my gait, but he is too symmetrical. He swings both arms in perfect unison, like a soldier in a parade, forgetting that humans lean, that we limp, that we are uneven. He is a painting of a man, a precise rendering of a ghost. I am trapped in the grey. Everything here is a smudge of what it should be. But I can see you. I can see the way you are shaking your head. Please, Father, tell my wife that I am still here. Tell her to look at the mirror and see that the man standing beside her is missing a soul.