“Hey,” the voice took me by surprise, as far as I knew I was all alone in the house. My parents had gone out, like they usually did on weekends when I was a teen so I shouldn’t have been hearing any voices at all. The voice itself was strange, it sounded kind of like mine, but not, like if you heard a recording of yourself talking.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. We had just gotten it, from an estate sale my Dad went too. It was beautiful and ornate, with a black carved exterior of plants and flowers all around it, while inside sat my reflection. Long blonde hair, blue eyes, thin lips and a crooked nose. Yep, my reflection alright, so when it’s mouth moved and I heard “Hey,” again, I froze in fear. My reflections mouth may have moved, but I certainly could not feel mine do the same.

“Hey,” my reflection called out again,

“H… hey,” I replied sheepishly,

“Guess what,” the reflection smiled,

“What?”

“I know what you’ll look like in ten years, do you wanna see?”

Now, obviously I can understand that talking to my reflection was crazy enough, and that letting it show me my future was just asking for bad news, but I was a teenage girl back then. A self-conscious one at that. Would I be really hot? Would I be just as gangly and awkward as I was back then? I really wanted to know, so I asked the mirror to show me.

The whole mirror turned black, like an ink slowly spread over and consumed it. Seconds later the ink dissolved and I saw myself, beautiful, a long, black, dress. My lips were full and luscious, my crooked nose fixed. My hair had so much body to it. My eyebrows and makeup looked so perfect, far better then my amateur attempts and beauty. I looked incredible. Like I always wanted to look. Like I always dreamed I would look.

“Touch me,” the reflection smiled. I reached my arm out, slowly bringing it towards the mirror. There was so much wrong with this, all of this. My heart was pounding and I was desperately trying to break the urge to do what the reflection asked. My arm stopped right before the mirror’s glass and I sighed. Just as I was about to pull arm away the reflection reached out of the mirror and grabbed it. I instinctively screamed, and it must have been loud, because the startled reflection loosened its grip on my arm and I pulled it away before it could be pulled in.

The mirror became inky again. When the image returned it was me, but with missing teeth, an even more crooked nose, and severely overweight. My hair was thin and poorly maintained, while facial hair seemed to sprout from all sorts of unsightly places on my face. Deep down it was an image of everything I didn’t like about myself. The reflection started to scream and I screamed too, screams of pure horror, until finally I grabbed a nearby vase and threw it with all my strength into the mirror. It smashed into a million pieces, and I stared at the remains in shock and terror for some time. They say that breaking a mirror gives seven years of bad luck, but after meeting that demon... I think my bad luck started before then.

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