The dead body after being held up to the mirror did indeed have a reflection, an infinite number of them as a matter of fact. The police were amused by the two-mirror illusion. The frantic scrabblings by the bedside were dismissed as the ravings of madness.
The cause of death was determined to be that of a heart attack brought on by stress. That’s how the story ended.
*
The infinite mirror trick is a lie. You know how it goes, you stand between two mirrors facing each other and you’re greeted by an infinite line of yous, disappearing into the horizon, but in truth mirrors don’t reflect 100 percent of light, so each repeated reflection is a little dimmer than before. So if you strain your eyes long enough, you can see your reflections disappear into blackness.
When I moved into the dingy room, there was only a pathetic bulb dangling from the ceiling, illuminating the walls covered in two large mirrors, which reflected the room back and forth over and over. Because of that, I never felt I was living in a cramped room but in a long corridor, with a million mes on a million beds, but isn’t there always something a little creepy when the ends of a corridor veer off into complete darkness.
Lying on my bed, nothing to do, I’d let my eyes wonder and I swear the first night I was there, I gazed towards the lightless abyss just beyond my reflection and I saw almost for a second, two bright glinting eyes peering out towards me.
I blinked and laughed it off as tiredness but the next week, I had one hell of a nightmare. There I was, staring at the infinite rows of beds, my army of doppelgangers sitting upon them and from out of the blackness I thought I saw, an inky figure leaping over the beds like a hurdler, and this goblin-like creature was running towards me.
I woke up shaking a little and turning on my bedside light, gasped as I saw that six rows down a bloody mess upon that particular bed. I rubbed my eyes, got up and standing by the mirror, noticed a gap between my long line of clones.
What had happened?
So, night after night, I saw the goblin leaping from one bed to the other and I saw myself scream in agony as it’s sharp teeth, went for the jugular as the fountain of blood issued forth.
I no longer have a reflection, and whilst there’s a line of blood-soaked beds stretching off into the darkness, there’s no me sitting upon them.
Tonight, he’s coming for the last time.
