(Short story I wrote in a few minutes. I have no idea where this came from. ._. And this has no editing or whatever, I just finished it.)


    At first, she would only appear for a split second. I would see her turn a corner in the hallways of my house and quickly run to see if anyone was there, only to find nothing. I would catch a glimpse of her in a crowded place, standing still and looking at me. I would see her in my dreams, and whenever she turned up in them, they quickly turned to nightmares. No one else ever seemed to notice her, but I always did. I never said anything about it, and after a while I completely ignored her appearances.
    I remember one night staring into the mirror. Staring straight into the eyes of my reflection, touching the surface and feeling the cold glass beneath my fingers. Dark brown eyes would stare into my soul as I pondered the many thoughts that were swimming around in my head. I would always have crazy things going through my mind. This particular occasion was what mirrors really were. They’d always intrigued me; how you could look at it from an extreme angle yet still see the reflection of what was past it. I would think about things that I’d heard in movies and stories about mirrors being portals to different worlds. And I just though to myself, what if they were? What if they were just doors? Doors to another universe that perfectly mirrored this one. Whenever you tried to go through the door, the you from the other universe would also try, and you would stop each other. I began to think about the myth about bad luck from breaking mirrors. What if the bad luck was because you opened the door? What if things from that universe escaped into ours through them?
    I pondered these thoughts for what felt like hours. I was only interrupted by what I thought I saw behind me, a faint movement. When I turned around, there was nothing there. It was probably just my imagination.
    It was after that night that I began to see her. The girl who I was convinced was just a hallucination. I remembered all those crazy thoughts and theories that always ran through my head and just assumed I was going insane. So I ignored her.
    She didn’t like being ignored.
    Whenever she showed up, I would see her longer. Over time it grew longer, and longer. Her form would linger. Most of the time, I would see her in a corner, staring at me. I tried to talk to her a few times. Each time, she just smirked, shook her head, and disappeared. I was genuinely worried now. But I lacked common sense at the time, and I continued to ignore it.
    The nightmares got worse. They were always the calm type of nightmares. The nightmares that gave you that unsettling feeling. The ones where you know something’s wrong. And the source of that feeling would be right in front of you, but you would never notice it. She would always be there. Watching me, somehow. Sometimes the dreams would start out normal, with her and I talking to each other, at a café or maybe at a park. They would then grow uncomfortable and then she would say or do something terrifying, which is when I would wake up. But other times, they were horrible from start to finish. They were sometimes gruesome, but not always. I would look in a mirror and see my corpse, rotten and having a horrified expression. Or maybe blood would stain the walls and I would see myself lying on the ground, dead, and I would soon find that I was the girl who was haunting me. But the worst dreams were when I would look at myself in the mirror. I would have no reflection. And when I realized my lack of reflection, everything would start to grow colorless and I’d find myself facing the girl instead of the mirror. She would have this smile on her face. This innocent grin that would make it seem like everything was perfect in the world. Then, in a split second, her face would become distorted and she would lunge at me. That was when I would awake, bolting upright in bead and covered with sweat.
    The worst part is that sometimes, she was there when I woke up.
    She started talking to me. I would try my best to not pay attention. I would tell myself to keep on ignoring, that she wasn’t real. She would walk in circles around me and speak slowly. She would tell me to stop pretending she wasn’t there. She would drop vague hints but I would never pay attention. I regret that. I should’ve listened.
    She was I. She was very much I. She looked exactly like me in every way. If I pulled my hair up, she would pull hers up, too. Each time I saw her, she was a copy of me. The only difference was that her image was flipped. Flipped like looking in a mirror.
    I would never see her and my reflection at the same time. No, that’s not right. Whenever I could see my reflection, she wouldn’t appear. But the thing that was unsettling was that when I looked at my reflection too long, it would change. My reflection would do something that I didn’t. It was always small, but it always terrified me.
    I remember the first time I looked in the mirror when she was with me.
    My reflection wasn’t there. Neither was hers. We both lacked an image in the shiny surface. I panicked and it took me about thirty seconds to realize what was going on. She was my reflection. She was the embodiment of it, and somehow, she had broken the barrier.
    I remember the last words she spoke to me before I woke up in this world.
    “This is your fault.”
    I remember waking up, but everything was flipped. Everything. Words, letters, numbers, objects, everything. I looked in the mirror and I saw that everything on the other side was back to normal. I also saw my reflection. Only she was smirking at me and I knew I had a horrified expression that came with the realization.
    “Your theories were correct.”
    Mirrors were definitely doors to other worlds. More specifically, one world. A world just like ours, only flipped. A mirror image.
    “Your thinking allowed me to escape.”
    We had traded places. She is now in your world, the one I belong to. And I am in hers. I hate to imagine what she’s doing while posing as me. Then I remember, she’s doing whatever I’m doing. Or I’m doing whatever she’s doing. I honestly don’t know.
    “Enjoy the flip.”