On my first day in my new apartment, I found a dust-covered full-length mirror in the corner of my bedroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After wiping away the dust, I stood in front of the mirror to adjust my collar. My reflection mirrored my movements perfectly\u2014there was nothing out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on the third night, I noticed something was off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had clearly turned and walked toward the kitchen, yet out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of my reflection still standing rigidly in place, staring intently at my back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I spun around abruptly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My reflection had returned to its normal posture and was now following me toward the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I told myself I must have been too tired and was hallucinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the fourth day, I deliberately conducted a test in front of the mirror. I raised my left hand, and my reflection raised its right hand. When I lowered my hand, my reflection was half a beat behind, slowly lowering its own hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That half-second delay felt like a needle piercing my nerves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I began to fear looking in the mirror and covered it tightly with a black cloth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in the middle of the night, I was startled awake by a faint scraping sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The sound came from the corner of the bedroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I fumbled for my phone\u2019s flashlight; the beam swept across the room and finally settled on the mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The black cloth had fallen to the floor at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the mirror, there was no reflection of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its place stood a \u201cperson\u201d who looked exactly like me, standing on the other side of the frame, its mouth stretched into a grin with an arc no human could possibly achieve, laughing silently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It raised its hand and tapped lightly on the mirror\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThump, thump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The sound didn\u2019t come from the mirror, but from behind me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I turned my head stiffly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That \u201cme\u201d had, at some point, appeared beside my bed, holding the black cloth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It leaned close to my ear and whispered in a voice identical to mine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow, it\u2019s your turn to be inside.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next day, the landlord came to collect the rent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u201d opened the door, smiled, and handed over the rent\u2014behaving impeccably, without a single slip-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the landlord left, \u201cI\u201d walked into the bedroom and stood in front of the full-length mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the mirror, the real me was frantically pounding on the glass, mouth wide open in a silent scream, my face etched with despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u201d watched all this with satisfaction and reached out to pull the black cloth over the mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From then on, no one in that apartment ever heard any strange noises again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only occasionally, when someone passed by that bedroom, would they hear an extremely faint sound of fingernails scratching against glass coming from beneath the black cloth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Mirror That Reflects the Unusual<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense","tag-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}