01.The Thing in the Mirror
There was an extremely handsome boy who looked like he was just one sunset away from disappearing.
A boy and a girl were sitting on a bed, facing each other. The room felt strangely weightless, as though even their whispers floated instead of falling. They didn't notice anything around them because they were completely absorbed in each other, lost in the intimacy of the moment.
Behind them, a shadow smiled, realizing it hadn't been seen for years.
The boy continued kissing the girl, but out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the shadow breathing a little too loudly. The warmth of the moment made him forget what he'd seen. As they leaned closer, the shadow quietly stole a memory from the corner of the room.
Then the girl noticed something strange in the mirror.
The shadow had taken the boy's appearance.
Suddenly, the kiss felt like it was happening in two different realities at once. In the mirror, their reflections appeared to be sharing an intimacy far beyond what was happening in reality. That they were Naked and the Boy was having sex with her.
They were frightened now.
They finally noticed the shadow, and it smiled back as if it had been waiting years for that moment.
Suddenly, the shadow jumped out of the mirror and entered the boy's body.
The boy's body stiffened. His back arched, his fingers curled, and his eyes turned red. The whites of his eyes became completely black.
He continued kissing the girl, but something about him had changed. When he tried to force himself on her, she fought him off and slapped him hard across the face.
SMACK!
A horrifying shriek erupted from his throat.
The shadow burst out of his body and shot backward into the mirror.
The boy collapsed, gasping for breath. His eyes slowly returned to normal. The girl stared at him, relieved to see that he was himself again. Then she looked toward the mirror.The shadow stood behind the broken glass, staring directly at her with its glowing red eyes.
It smiled.
"You shouldn't have done that," it whispered.
Before the girl could react, the shadow slipped out of the mirror and entered her body.
The boy didn't notice.
The girl turned toward him and began kissing him again. He believed she was herself and let her draw him into the moment. She pushed in on the Bed put put his Thing inside her and started Riding him .
But something else was moving her now.
Only when he gently held her face in his hands and looked into her eyes did he realize something was wrong.
Her pupils were red.
The whites of her eyes had turned completely black.
For a heartbeat, he couldn't move. He stared into the unfamiliar eyes, desperately trying to recognize the girl he loved behind them. Then the shadow came out of her mouth and entered the boy's mouth again. This time, he tasted the shadow like cold metal, realizing too late that it was inside him once more, seeing the world through his eyes.
Neither of them understood what had just happened. And boy's Body started moving, continuing the sex. Then, in the middle of their intimacy, an extra heartbeat began.
It wasn't his.
It wasn't hers.
It was simply there, listening.
The heartbeat grew slower and slower until it faded into silence. And the man really loudly and the boy climaxed inside her. In Seconds.
The girl discovered she was pregnant.
But something about the pregnancy was unnatural. The instant passed, and her body began changing.
One minute passed.
She was one month pregnant.
Another minute passed.
Two months.
With every passing minute, her pregnancy advanced by another month.
Three months.
Four.
Five.
She clutched the boy's arm as her stomach continued to grow.
Six months.
Seven.
Eight.
Then the ninth month arrived.
She was nine months pregnant.
The room fell silent.
The boy stared at her, unable to understand how something so impossible could have happened.From deep inside him, the shadow whispered:
"This one will remember me."
Suddenly, the girl cried out as the birth began. The room trembled. The lights flickered, and the walls seemed to pulse with the rhythm of an enormous heartbeat.
The boy heard a voice that wasn't his whisper:
"It's Time."
The girl screamed as the creature tore its way out of her stomach. The baby emerged in a horrifying burst of darkness and blood.
For a moment, it lay motionless.
Then its eyes opened.
They glowed bright red.
The baby looked like a demon. And it smiled.
CRASH!
The mirror behind them shattered from the inside.
Dozens of identical shadows appeared in the broken glass, their red eyes glowing in the darkness. They began whispering together:
"Our father has finally given us a way into this world."
The man stared at the broken mirror. In the darkness behind the shattered glass, he saw himself. His reflection had red eyes against a completely black background.
And the person in the mirror was smiling.
The man wasn't.
He slowly realized that the smile wasn't his at all.
It was the shadow pretending to be him.
And somewhere beyond the broken mirror, something ancient finally entered the world.
The End.
