The Good Girl

The kettle screamed before she did.

Mira reached out, turned off the flame, and exhaled — not in relief, but as if releasing another piece of herself into the air. The clock above the sink glowed 6:04 a.m. The day hadn’t begun yet, and already she was late.

Behind her, the washing machine hummed, the dryer buzzed, and the baby monitor flickered with restless static. A perfect symphony of modern domesticity — efficient, mechanical, and merciless.

Her phone screen lit up on the counter: " Good Morning, beta. Did you give kids haldi milk last night? "

Her mother’s text, punctual as sunrise.

Mira smiled faintly, typed Yes, Maa, though she hadn’t. She had meant to. But by the time the dishes were done and the clothes were organised, it was already past midnight and she had barely managed to drag herself to bed beside her husband, Arun, who was half-buried in the glow of his laptop.

The phone pinged again.

“You should also drink haldi milk. Your face looks tired these days in video calls. Arun must be so busy, na?”

Mira stared at the message, thumb hovering. The thought crossed her mind — to say something honest. Yes, Maa. I’m exhausted. Yes, Maa. I’m drowning.

But honesty required time, and she had none.

Instead, she typed a smiling emoji.

The safe one. The emoji that meant everything’s fine.

***

The kids woke one after the other, like alarms set at wrong intervals. Tara demanded pancakes. Veer refused his shoes. Someone spilled juice. Someone cried because the juice was now gone. The morning rushed by in a blur of voices and chores, and Mira moved through it like a well- trained ghost — efficient, invisible, indispensable.

When the door finally closed behind them — husband to office, kids to school — silence returned.

It was supposed to feel like peace.

Instead, it felt like the house was holding its breath, watching her.

She sat on the couch with her laptop, coffee in one hand, the other scrolling through unread emails. Work deadlines blinked red in her inbox — like little warnings, like heartbeats. The cursor blinked back at her on the blank document, waiting for something she could summon.

She tried to focus, but her mind kept looping — the same thoughts, the same reminders. Laundry. Groceries. Birthday invite. Parent-teacher meeting. Presentation. Dinner plan.

The to-do list pulsed inside her head like static — like the baby monitor still turned on even when the baby wasn’t crying.

***

By noon, the sunlight had crept across the kitchen floor, sharp and clinical. Mira reheated leftover pasta, ate standing up, and watched herself in the reflection of the microwave door — hollow-eyed, hair pulled into a hasty bun, a ghost mid-bite.

Somewhere in her reflection, she thought she saw someone else.

For a fraction of a second, the woman in the glass didn’t blink when she did.

Mira laughed it off. Just exhaustion. Just another day.

Her phone buzzed again— her father this time, on video call.

He was cheerful, retired, always curious.

“So, what did you cook today?” he asked, as if that were the measure of a woman’s day.

“Pasta, " Mira said. “Yesterday’s.”

“Still not feeding the kids Indian food properly? Western food, everyday? What will they learn of home, Mira?”

She smiled mechanically. “They like it, papa.”

He signed — that quiet sign that carried a lifetime of unspoken disappointment.

“You’ve changed,” he said softly. “You used to be so organized. Remember how neat your room was when you lived with us?”

She remembered.

But she also remembered having a mother who folded her laundry, and a father who paid the bill, and a world where she was not the axis of every demand.

After the call ended, Mira stared at her own reflection again — this time in the black laptop screen.

“You’ve changed,” the voice echoed in her head, but now it wasn’t her father’s voice. It was hers.

***

Evening arrived in fragments — school pickups, spilled milk, tantrums, reheated dinner. Tara had forgotten her art supplies at school, Veer’s teacher wanted a costume for the upcoming event, and Arun texted he’d be late.

Mira felt herself splitting into parts — worker, mother, wife, daughter — all running parallel, none meeting.

At 9:30, she was still cleaning up the kitchen when her phone buzzed again— this time a family group message.

Her mother had sent a video link: “7 habits of perfect women.”

Her sister had replied, “Mira should watch this.”

She stared at the screen for a long time before locking it.

The phone reflected her face — flat expression, tired eyes — and in the faint reflection, she thought her lips moved though she hadn’t spoken.

A whisper, low and scolding:

“You should be grateful.”

Mira turned around sharply. The air conditioner hummed. The fridge clicked. Nothing else.

She rubbed her arms, feeling suddenly cold.

***

When everyone finally slept, Mira lingered in the kitchen again. The silence was thick, the kind that listens. She switched off the last light and leaned against the counter.

The ticking of the clock grew louder, like footsteps approaching from somewhere unseen. Her to-do list still sat on the counter, half-ticked, accusing.

“You didn’t finish the laundry.”

She froze. Eyes bigger.

The voice wasn’t in her head — it had texture, resonance, as if someone had whispered it right behind her ear.

She turned sharply. No-one. Only shadows. Only the hum of the refrigerator.

“Who’s there?” she asked.

No answer.

But the next sound wasn’t silence. It was laughter — faint, amused, echoing from somewhere inside the house.

Her breath caught. She stepped toward the hallway, every sense sharp. The sound was gone now, replaced by the steady rhythm of the washing machine.

She opened the laundry door. The machine wasn’t running. Yet its drum rotated slowly, once, as if sighing.

The reflection on the chrome door showed her face again — but smiling, wide, unnatural.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. She blinked and it was gone.

“Sleep, " she whispered to herself. “I just need sleep.”

She left the laundry room door ajar as she went upstairs. The silence followed her — climbing each step in sync with her.

***

Mira couldn’t sleep.

Arun lay beside her, turned away, phone still glowing faintly with office messages. She watched the pale light flicker across his face — calm, detached — and wondered how he managed it.

Her own phone lit up on the nightstand:

1 new voice message — Maa.

She pressed play. Static filled the room first, then her mother’s voice, distorted and low. “Beta… you forgot to wish your dad happy birthday… you don’t sound happy these days… are you okay?”

It trailed off, replaced by static again. And then faintly, layered beneath it — her own voice.

“You should be grateful.”

Mira’s hand trembled as she replayed it. This time, it was gone — just her mother’s normal message, chirpy, harmless.

But that night, when she finally closed her eyes, she dreamt of her house watching her. The refrigerator’s hum became breathing. The washing machine clicked like teeth. And in every reflection — microwave, laptop, phone — a version of herself watched back, lips moving soundlessly, whispering all the things she was supposed to be.

Morning came quietly, as if the world itself has tiptoed into her room to check whether she had survived the night.

Mira woke to the faint hum of the washing machine again. Except she was sure — absolutely sure — she had-not turned it on.

Downstairs, the house looked too clean. Every surface gleamed, every chair stood perfectly aligned. The kids’ shoes sat neatly by the door, their water bottles filled, their tiffins packed.

Her heart sank.

She hadn’t done any of this.

On the counter lay a note — written in her handwriting

“See? When you really try, everything fits perfectly.”

Her skin prickled. The letters were hers, but the words… no. They carried a tone too precise — like the self-help post she scrolled past on social media.

Mira looked around, half-expecting someone to appear. But the house was still. Too still.

From the corner of her eye, the reflection in the microwave smiled again.

At work, she couldn’t focus. Colleagues’ faces blurred in video meetings, their voices turning metallic, warped by connection issues and her lack of sleep. Every so often, she thought she heard someone whisper her name between words.

“Mira?”

“Mira…”

“Mira, you forgot the laundry.”

She turned off her camera and stared at her own frozen image — that tired, smiling face she showed the world. The smile twitched.

Not hers. The reflection’s.

Then the mouth opened wider — pixelated teeth glinting through the blur — and whispered, “Smile more. You are being watched.”

Mira slammed her laptop shut. Her heart pounded so loudly it drowned out everything else.

By evening, her phone had flooded with messages — work reminders, school circulars, and family group chatter.

Her aunt had sent another video :

“ Why Modern Women Are Always Tired (And How to Fix It!)”

Under it, her sister commented, “So relatable! Mira, you’ll love this”

The laughter emoji burned in her vision.

She scrolled through the comments — all bright, cheerful, judgmental in their casual cruelty.

Maybe you just need better time management.

It’s all about priorities.

Gratitude fixes everything.

The words began to move. Literally move. The lines twisted across her screen, forming a spiral of letters that pulsed and reshaped into one sentence:

YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL.

Mira dropped the phone. It clattered onto the floor, the screen cracked.

And from the broken glass, faintly, came a sound — laughter. Familiar. Feminine. Hers.

That night, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Arun.

He would look at her with that mild concern that always ended in logic — You’re overworked, Mira. You need rest.

As if rest could fix something that followed her even in silence.

While he slept, she sat at the edge of the bed, staring at her reflection in the dressing mirror.

It didn’t blink.

“Mira,” it said softly. The voice was almost kind. “You’re not doing enough.”

She froze.

“You think you are, but look at you — tired, messy, failing. What would people say if they saw this version of you?”

“Stop it.”

“Your mother worries. Your husband is patient. Your children deserve better. You should be grateful for this life.”

“Stop!”

The reflection tilted its head, a smile cutting across its face like a wound.

“Then prove it.”

The lights flickered. For a second, the reflection multiplied — a dozen Miras behind her, all staring, all smiling that same mechanical smile.

They began whispering in unison.

“Perfect wife. Perfect mother. Perfect daughter.”

The chant grew louder, rhythmic, ritualistic.

“Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.”

She grabbed the mirror and flung it against the wall. It shattered into a hundred glittering pieces.

The whispers stopped.

Then — from every shard on the floor — they began again.

Each reflection moved on its own, mouths stretching wide, repeating:

“You should be grateful.”

The next morning, Arun found her sitting on the floor, surrounded by broken glass, her palms bleeding from trying to pick up the shards.

He said something — his voice muffled, distant. She just smiled at him. The same smile the reflections wore.

“Maybe take a day off, or go outside. You will feel better!” he said, touching her shoulder. He bandaged her cuts and asked her again - “Please, take a day off Mira! I will try to come early. Take care!!”

But when he left, she didn’t rest. She opened her laptop, needing to prove something — anything.

Her inbox blinked: (101 unread).

Every subject line said the same thing:

“Be Better.”

She clicked one.

It opened to a video — her mother, her aunt, her colleagues, her boss, her own face stitched together frame by frame, speaking in perfect sync.

“Mira,” the chorus said, “you have everything. Why are you tired? Why are you ungrateful? You wanted this life. You earned it. You built it. You should be proud.”

The camera in her laptop flickered on by itself.

The screen filled with her own face, smiling eerily back.

“I am proud,” the reflection said, though Mira hadn’t spoken.

“I am everything I was told to be.”

And then it reached through the screen.

Not physically — not yet. But the sensation was real: something invisible tightening around her wrists, pulling her toward the glow. The air smelled of burnt plastic and detergent.

Her phone buzzed again, vibrating against the counter. Without touching it, she watched the message appear — not typed, but carved into the background of her wallpaper:

“Stop resisting.”

By afternoon, Mira had lost sense of time.

Every clock in the house ticked at different speeds. The kettle boiled without water. The washing machine started itself again and again, cycling endlessly.

She tried to unplug it — the cord shocked her hand. Not with electricity, but with sound — a thousand tiny whispers crawling into her ears.

“You forgot to fold the laundry.”

“You didn’t call your mother.”

“You didn’t smile at Arun.”

“You didn’t…”

“You didn’t…”

“You didn’t…”

Her breath came shallow. Her chest felt full of static.

She stumbled toward the living room, where the television turned on by itself — displaying her family group chat on the screen. The messages typed themselves out, one by one:

Ma: “Mira, I’m proud of you, but maybe sleep early. Dark circles don’t look nice.”

Papa: “Your kids should learn their mother’s discipline.”

Aunt Rina: “Men don’t like tired faces.”

Society: “You’re lucky, Mira. You should be grateful.”

And then, one final message appeared — sent from her own account.

Mira: “I am grateful. I promise. I’ll be perfect.”

Her fingers weren’t even on the keyboard.

When Arun returned home, the lights were off. The house was spotless — unnaturally so. The kids were at their friend’s house, the dinner was served, the laundry folded.

“Mira?” he called softly.

She was standing in front of the television, motionless.

On the screen played a live feed of her — standing in front of the television. Infinite versions of her reflected in the loop, each smiling wider than the last.

“Hey,” Arun said, stepping closer. “You okay?”

She turned to him, face calm, voice serene.

“I finally did it,” she said.

“Did what?”

“Everything.”

Behind her, every reflection smiled back in sync.

Her phone buzzed once on the counter. The screen displayed one final message — no sender, no timestamp:

“Welcome, Mira. You’re now the ideal woman.”

The lights flickered, and for a split second, Arun thought the house was full of people — dozens of Miras reflected in every shiny surface, watching him.

When the power returned, only one Mira remained. She was still smiling.

Later that night, the washing machine began again. The drum turned, slowly, steadily, though no one was there to start it.

Inside, among the tumbling clothes, something pale flashed briefly under the light — a scrap of paper, soaked and wrinkled.

It read:

“See? When you really try, everything fits perfectly.”

The next morning, her mother texted her usual message.

“Good morning, beta 😊 Did you give kids haldi milk?”

The reply came instantly.

“Yes, Ma 😊 Everything’s perfect.”