Don’t Trust the Me in the Mirror
I’m a forensic pathologist. While dissecting a faceless male corpse, I found an oily-paper note tumble out of his stomach. “Don’t trust the person in the mirror.” At first, I thought it was a prank, until my assistant pointed out that my reflection lagged half a second behind when I turned around. A string of murders followed, and all the victims had bought antique mirrors and looked into them shortly before they died. As I investigated, I constantly felt watched, and things in my home mysteriously changed places. The security cameras caught a blurry white figure with exactly my build. At last, I tracked down the mirror shop owner as the killer. The moment I broke into his shop, a chill ran through me. He slowly took off his mask, and my face appeared in the mirror. “Don’t you understand?” he said with a smile, raising his knife. “We are one and the same.” As the blade came toward me, a pale hand suddenly reached out from the mirror behind me and grabbed me
The rain seemed to have turned vicious, pressing the city into a chaotic gray gloom. Fat raindrops pounded wildly against the small, high window of the forensic center’s autopsy room, making a dull, unending patter that merged into a suffocating background roar. The glaringly white surgical light hung overhead, pouring its cold light without restraint over the faceless male corpse on the autopsy table, making it look like a bizarre, icy sculpture. The air was thick with the overpowering smell of disinfectant, mixed with something deeper and more primal: the metallic sweetness of death itself. It weighed heavily on the chest.
