In the Darkness+18

Reflection

Elif pressed her face against the cold glass of the window, her breath fogging the pane. Below, the frantic dance of police lights felt like a scene from a movie, surreal and distant. They had shouted “Number 12.” But she was here, alive, inside number 12. The logic simply didn't exist.

A primal urge to flee seized her. She wrenched herself from the window and lunged for the door, twisting the handle—but it wouldn't turn. It was locked solid, as if fused with the frame. A moment ago, it had been wide open.

“Let me out!” she screamed, slamming her fists against the unyielding wood. Her voice was swallowed by the sudden, oppressive silence of the apartment.

Behind her, a soft rustling sound. The notebook on the table flipped open on its own. Its pages turned as if stirred by an invisible breeze, stopping on a fresh, blank sheet. From the very center of the page, a drop of liquid darkness, thicker than ink, began to bleed outwards, crawling across the paper to form letters:

“Your place is already prepared.”

Her legs gave way and she stumbled backward. As she reached out a trembling hand to slam the notebook shut, the pool of black ink in the middle of the page shimmered. It hardened into a slick, obsidian surface—a mirror. In it, she saw a reflection. But it was not her own.

The face staring back had her features, but its eyes were hollowed-out pits of shadow. Its skin was ashen. Its lips moved, and a sound like a dry rasp, a distorted echo of her own voice, whispered from the page:

“I am not complete without you.”

Elif cried out, stumbling back and knocking over her chair. The reflection warped, the mirror-like stain bulging upward as if something was pushing through from the other side. At that same instant, a deafening cacophony erupted from the hallway—the sound of every door in the building groaning open at once.

“This isn’t real, this can’t be real…” she chanted, her voice a desperate whisper.

A black mist, cold and tangible, began to seep under the crack of her door, slithering into the room like a living thing.

Panicked, Elif scrambled for the window, her only escape. The police cars were still there, a world away. As she prepared to scream for help, her eyes locked onto the white sheet on the ground below.

It moved.

Just a twitch at first. Then, the sheet slowly, deliberately, began to slide away from a face—a face pale and lifeless in the flashing lights.

It was her own.