Cursed Mirror

I opened the door and was greeted by a delivery guy leaning on a tall, skinny cardboard box. Big, bold black letters spelled out FRAGILE.

“Delivery for Bridget,” he said as I grabbed the pad he held out for me to sign. He continued to talk cordially with me. Apparently, he enjoyed his job and loved talking.

“Looks like it could be a mirror, ma’am. It was a rough journey for it. I hope it fared well.  I don’t want to be the one nailed with the seven years of bad luck that goes with a broken mirror if it gets damaged. Is that how that works? Is it the owner of the mirror or the one who did the breaking that gets cursed? No matter, I’m sure there is nothing to it. It’s not rattling,” he said as he gave the box a quick jiggle.

“Thank you. I’m sure it’s fine,” I said as I handed him back his signature pad. 

He playfully saluted with the device in his hand and said, "Have a good day." Before I could reply, he turned, jumped over my bed of blooming primroses and sauntered back to his truck.

I gave the box a quick tip to test its weight to see if I could carry it or would have to wait for my husband to bring it in when he got home. Not too bad. I should be able to carry it just fine. 

Upon closer inspection of the label, I noticed it was sent from Bane Bluff. Delilah, my deceased older sister, was from there. Her husband must be still settling her estate. I didn’t know she left me anything. We hadn’t talked for years, then suddenly she died. Strange. 

I opened the box to discover that the driver was indeed accurate in his estimations of it being a mirror and not being broken. I recognized it immediately. It was a family heirloom. Its rustic and intricate frame was adorned with a stamped metal plate at the top. A warning of crossed swords made an X underneath the number 1784. Below this, an inscription read, Verrant Ferris. I rubbed it with my thumb for no real reason other than to maybe magically suddenly have its meaning make sense. 

Nobody knew what the stamp or words stood for anymore. Some guessed that the date was for the thirteen colonies to finally gain their official independence. Nobody knew the meaning of the words or the cryptic X, but it was a very cool looking antique. I wonder why it was sent to me instead of giving it to one of her daughters? I guess I’ll pass it on to mine instead.

I remembered how this used to be in the hallway all the time when I was growing up. My mother used to wash all the mirrors in the house except this one. When I asked, she commented that her mom once told her to never clean it, so she just didn’t. She didn’t know why and I didn’t think much of it either. I guess we assumed because of how old it was.

Why did my sister’s husband risk it breaking by mailing it to me? Not because of the whole seven-year thing like the driver was talking about, but something more…even more than the loss of a part of history. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, just a sense of something significant would happen. Good or bad? I wasn’t sure, but Mom cherished this mirror and would not have approved of it being mailed. 

Oh well, it’s here now. So holding true to tradition, I placed it in my hallway and had no intentions of cleaning it. 

~~~~~

Years later…

‘Ugh,’ I thought to myself as I was lying on my bed in the middle of the day again, staring up at the ceiling. Another day of undiagnosable health issues with no answers from the doctors. Welcome to my life. Not sure why I’m throwing money away with no results except for them telling me it is all in my head. They used to say that about my mom too. I’m the same age she was when she had her cluster of strokes and we never got her back again. She changed.

It took everything I had just to sit up in bed. I had to rest a bit before the next step of standing and actually getting out of bed. I sighed out my frustration as I thought about how those same muscles easily withstood multiple Taekwondo kicks at the dojo.

As I sat on the foot of the bed staring down the hallway, I could see the mirror staring back at me. The person I once was wasn’t who was staring back at me. The tiny well-defined muscles that were once there looked like they were given sleeping pills. Muscle and skin were not discernible from each other and looking–as well as feeling–like they didn’t want to be a part of my skeleton anymore. I was deteriorating in front of my own eyes and nobody else could see it. A few months ago, I was still recognizable, but now…

I quit looking in the mirror. It’s like it was mocking me, just like the well-meaning comments of, “Well, you don’t look sick or hurt.” It didn't mean I wasn't. I wanted to cry, but crying took too much energy. It just wasn’t fair. Years ago when I could tell something changed, I wanted help cutting the problem off at the pass before it became a trainwreck. Nobody would listen...and I didn’t know what else to do. 

Some doctors labeled it chronic fatigue, but since it wasn’t treatable, they were able to be done with my nagging. Other doctors I saw didn’t even think chronic fatigue was a real thing. 

“Fine, then what is it?”

His mouth said, “I don’t know,” but his eyes said, there’s nothing to find. 

There is something about not only physically but mentally being tired all the time. Add the financial burden of what looked like pointless appointments to the pile and the load would get so heavy. Why throw money at them just to hear them say “You’re too sensitive,” or some other bullshit like that . It was soul-sucking. I would be better off to just flush it all down the toilet. That way, I’d save what precious little time and energy I possessed for my family instead of spending it all in a waiting room or a car. I’d save money also. Doctors offered no answers. They had nothing. It was getting difficult to maintain any kind of hope.

If I tried smiling into the mirror, the spark of life eluded my eyes. I felt like my spirit was missing. Tolerating the morphing of my body was too much when coupled with my lost ambitions. Striving to avoid the daily reminder, I just quit looking at the mirror. In fact, I decided to have my husband carry it to the basement for me. That way, I wouldn’t have to look at it, or should I say me, anymore. No more mirrors, please. I needed the hope that my outside still looked good and my inside was just taking a little longer to catch up with it. I didn’t want the opposite to be true even though my body was poking at me to believe it to be so.

~~~~~

Another fresh winter snowfall and my five-year-old daughter prompted a desire to find the Christmas decorations. Braving the basement stairs in the hope of being able to ascend them afterward, I went down looking for the boxes. I hoped to just open them and grab a couple of things from the tops. I would have my husband retrieve the rest later. 

I was taken aback when I saw the mirror again. I forgot it was down here. Glancing towards it, I inadvertently caught a glimpse of my figure. I don’t know if it was because of time passing since I last looked at myself or if it was because the snow had my nostalgic mind reminiscing about building snowmen with Delilah, but I thought the reflection looked more like her than me. It had been a while since I looked in a mirror, so I decided to look directly at it to get a good look. But the reflection looking back at me looked more like Delilah than me. I guess I had been letting my hair grow out, but I didn’t realize it had gotten darker as well. 

I approached the mirror in disbelief at what my eyes were seeing. Forgetting the long-time warning, I grabbed a rag close by and started frantically rubbing the glass to clean it off so that it would reflect correctly. But when that didn’t work and before I realized what I was doing, my other hand reached out to touch the hand reflecting back at me. What? I don’t have a ring on my hand…my sister’s ring?

So focused on the hand and ring that I didn’t see my reflection wasn’t mine either. When I touched the glassy part of the mirror it felt like I had touched metal outside on a particularly cold winter day. When I went to remove my hand, my fingers were stuck to its surface. Puzzled and shocked, I tried to pull away a little harder, but the skin was securely fastened to the mirror. Looking towards my face to find an answer, I realized it was no longer my face. It was my sister staring back at me with a sinister grin. What? I closed my eyes and shook my head to clear my thoughts, thinking I was too tired and my mind was playing tricks on me.

When I opened them again, everything seemed different. Simultaneously I found myself easily removing my hand from the mirror when before it wouldn’t budge, and I was looking at my sister fully alive in the clothes I was recently wearing. Cocking my head to the side in an effort to make sense of what I was seeing, I noticed the reflection did not copy me. Before my eyes, my dead sister’s face was very much alive. My mind started racing, grasping for understanding. She leaned toward the mirror’s surface until it was less than an inch from her face. 

“Now you know. And by the way, there is only one way out.”

Terrified, I looked around to gain my bearings, but there was nothing. Just blackness and void Only then did I realize we had swapped places. Not only was she wearing my clothes, she was in my reality. I was inside of the mirror!

“What…? What? I don’t understand. What is going on?”

“You are no longer you. Not only on the outside, but the inside as well. You and I have swapped places, just like mom did…and we didn’t even know it. I don’t know who she was swapped with, but when a person tries to clean the mirror it happens. I didn’t believe it either when someone else took over my body, restoring my health but destroying my reputation before dying. I could do nothing but watch. I was so thankful when I saw my daughters didn’t want the mirror and my husband sent it to you so they wouldn’t suffer this fate. Sorry sis,” she added with a mocking sneer.

Suddenly it all made sense. It explained so many things. Her extreme change before the end and why the end was so sudden. 

“I’m sorry it has to be this way. Wait, not really. You always thought you were better than me and now I am going to drag your name through the mud. All you are going to be able to do is sit and watch.”

I wanted to plead like I used to when we were younger. When mom and dad made her babysit me. When she would pick on me…torture me... She was the big sister, and I was the dead weight in her eyes. I knew my pleading wouldn’t change anything, just like it didn’t back then. But I did anyway. It was more like a programmed reflex. 

“Please, don’t do this.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get out eventually…once someone tries to clean the mirror, just like you did. Tsk. Tsk. I thought you were the sister who always did as she was told. I guess not. No worries. I have a plan. I’ll make sure nobody sees this mirror until I believe the time is right.”

“No,” I said as I watched her ascend the stairs effortlessly now. 

~~~~~

Being locked in the basement had me cut off from the world. I knew time was passing, but how much I could not tell. I was trapped and helpless and oh so frustrated. Dirt had built up on the mirror to where I could barely see out. 

One day, the door opened and light entered the basement along with my beautiful daughter. Oh, how I missed her. And by the looks of it, I missed getting to see her grow and mature into a young lady. She could have been my doppelganger when I was a teenager except her hair was long and wavy. 

My sister followed her down the stairs. She was energetic. Coming through this mirrored glass changed her in some way. The chronic fatigue body she claimed from me was changed. She was lifting boxes and moving items. I could hear them discussing working on a big project. It must have been what brought them downstairs. 

“Boy, it has gotten messy down here. Help me clean up. Why don’t you start with that mirror over there? It’s so filthy, you can’t even see a reflection in it.” 

Wait. NO! Did she just tell my daughter to clean this mirror? 

Between what my sister was now able to do in my body and what my mother never could, the pieces began to fit together. Taking someone else’s life with the mirror could give you back a life, but it just wouldn’t be the one you expected. My mom never cleaned the mirror,  and as a result, never got better. But my sister did. Someone else took her life and now she has taken mine. In order for me to break free, someone else would have to suffer. Delilah wanted it to be my daughter. 

In a state of panic, I put my hands on the backside of the mirror and began to push and shout, “No,” but they couldn’t hear me. 

I didn’t know of any other way to get her to not touch the mirror at all so I kept pushing and screaming, begging her to just walk away. 

I hadn’t realized yet, but something was happening. I wasn’t freeing myself, but like before, my hands stuck to the mirror. The harder I pushed the more of me became a part of the mirror. 

“Hey, this is a cool mirror,” my daughter said. “What does this say on top here?”

“I don’t know; it doesn’t matter,” Delilah replied. 

“Ver…rant… Fer…ris? Verrant Ferris. Strange. Looks kinda Latin in origin. I wonder if it means, trapped in reflections, or lost in fate…cycle...I don’t know.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Probably means nothing,” said my sister lying to my sweet child.

I saw my daughter grab a spray bottle and cloth to start wiping the mirror down and I pushed as hard as I could, screaming. But they still couldn’t hear me. 

With my last push, I heard a crack as my entire body became a part of the mirror. 

“Oh no, the mirror just cracked when I sprayed it!” said my daughter. “Does that mean seven years of bad luck?”

“No, frankly it’s probably just the opposite.”

“Well, should I still clean it?” 

“No, I believe it is finally finished,” said Delilah.