The Story That Shouldn’t Have Been Read… Until Now

The Story That Shouldn’t Have Been Read… Until Now

When I finally pressed “publish,” I had no ending in mind. I’d stitched this story together over twenty-four frenetic months—rough sentences scrawled on coffee-stained napkins, creased receipts, the backs of old court filings. Every fragment was soaked in midnight panic, swollen with grief so raw it clawed at my throat, laced with an anger I tasted on my tongue. It was, I told myself, pure invention. A safe exorcism about the day my little sister, Callie, vanished without a trace.

I didn’t proofread. I didn’t purchase a cover. I even gave it a lowercase title, as if whispering a secret in a graveyard: the girl in the paper mirror. Then I clicked go.

Three hours later, five downloads. One review.

“I saw her too.”

It was from an account called paperwatcher33. No profile picture. Zero followers. No earthly reason for them to know about the attic mirror—the final thing I ever saw before Callie dissolved into thin air.

My grandmother’s attic was frigid—even in the mercy of July’s blaze. Thick wooden beams overhead. Dust motes drifting in slices of light. And in the corner, that mirror: an immense antique trap, beveled glass set in a frame of blackened vine-carved wood. The air around it always smelled of cedar polish and something decayed, like wilted roses left too long atop a grave.

I remember the day it happened: Callie stood before the mirror, brushing her honey-blond hair. The bristles tip-tapped on her scalp in a lazy, humming rhythm. She hummed, too, a light, joyous melody, the kind only children invent. And then, in the soft hum, something shifted.

I blinked.

Her reflection remained. The brush slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor. But Callie herself was gone. No shattering glass. No echoing footsteps. No shriek suspended in the rafters. Just a ghost trapped behind the surface of that horrid mirror.

I told the police she had slipped out the back door. I told my parents I’d been fast asleep in the guest room. Every word was a lie. I swore I’d bury the mirror in silence.

But when I tried to remove the story from that website, wherever it had lived, there was no 'erase' button. No “unpublish.” No bloody settings tab. Just a brand, new second chapter I never wrote.

Its heading: She’s Still in the Mirror

Line one: “Callie watches you sleep. She whispers your name when the lights go out.”

Line two: “She’s been waiting for you to write her name again.”

I stared until my eyes burned, then slammed the laptop shut—and the power died as if the house itself swallowed every electron. In the choking blackness, I could almost hear the faint echo of that attic humming, trailing down the stairs.

Morning came in sallow gray. Comments had multiplied:

“I thought I was crazy. she was in mine too.”

“not just her. there’s more.”

“they’re hungry now.”

I combed through my computer’s file history. No trace of Chapter Two. Yet the platform’s download counter ticked upward—hundreds, then thousands. Each new reader unwittingly became a vessel, spreading the cursed narrative.

Then Chapter Three arrived, titled Don’t Look Too Long. It detailed, in agonizing detail, a dream I’d barely slept through last night, how I stood before the attic mirror, watching a swirl of fog pool over its surface. In that mist, Callie’s face formed: waxy, unblinking eyes that stared straight into me, a smile slipping half a beat behind. Horrors I never wrote invaded my own writing. My narration had bled into the text.

I yanked the router from its socket. I threw my phone in the trash. At dawn, I climbed into the attic armed with a sledgehammer. Each furious blow I landed on that mirror boomed through the joists like a drowning scream. Splinters of glass rained down, redolent of cedar and decay.

That night, the humming came back. Low. Insistent. Soothing and menacing at once—like the lullaby of demons. I dreamed of a thousand shattered mirrors, each reflecting just vanished faces clawing to escape.

When daylight broke, the story had reached three thousand downloads. And there it was: Chapter Five—You Read This, She’s Free. No text. No author credit. Only that chilling title and a link that auto-downloaded onto every device that dared open the story. Some tried to delete it; their phones were locked forever. Others printed it out and fed the pages to flame, but the embers whispered as they burned.

Comments poured in by the minute:

“the mirror’s back”

“she walked out of mine”

“thank you”

“she’s not… her anymore”

I haven’t set foot outside in days. The hallway where the mirror stood flickers with uneven light whenever I pass—bulbs sputtering as if something breathes too close. This morning, I found a single word traced on the condensation of my bathroom mirror:

Author.

Not Avery. Not my given name. Author, as if the story itself was branding me, warning those still alive.

I don’t know how many eyes have devoured that cursed text now. The counter climbs so fast it chokes my browser every time I pause. I want to believe I didn’t unleash this horror. That I’m not the one who set her loose.

But I knew, don’t you see? I knew the story had teeth. I felt the cold weight of the mirror’s promise when I first lifted my pen to write. And still, I dared to keep writing.

She hasn’t come knocking at my door yet. But I can hear her scratching at every reflective surface: windows, teacups, the dark sheen of my phone screen. And when I close my eyes, I see her standing there: pale face pressed against glass that shouldn’t exist.

So if you’re reading this—

if you found it online or someone emailed it to you — don’t try to delete it.

Don’t highlight it. Don’t look in the glass.

And for the love of whatever still keeps you warm at night…

Don’t write her name.