The Phantom in the Mirrored Dream

Chen Annie’s trembling fingers fumbled for the remote on the bedside table. She pressed the light switch with sudden force. Though the glow of the lamp reached every corner of the room, she kept her eyes tightly shut, unwilling to open them. A deep breath. The soft white light, gentle yet steady, seemed to pour courage into her as though charging a drained battery. Slowly, she lifted her lids, wrapping her nightdress closer around herself, and with hesitant, quivering steps, left the bedroom for the living room. From the water dispenser, a stream of cool liquid poured into her equally cold palm before she splashed it across her bloodless face. The droplets scattered in disarray, pattering onto the polished hardwood floor, soaking into her silk nightdress. The water spread upon the fabric like drifting clouds, clinging damply to her lower abdomen. A chill rose from there, prompting her to straighten her spine, tug lightly at her nightdress, and draw in another deep breath. A faint fragrance of lilies stole into her chest and lungs. She laughed—at herself, yet with a trace of helplessness. Her gaze fell upon the cup from which she had just drunk. Bruce Lee’s iconic stance, printed boldly across it, seemed to meet her eyes. With a mock “dragon’s roar” aimed at the cup, she struck the same signature pose. And in that moment, she was once again Chen Annie. Women, after all, were creatures quick to fear, yet quicker still to change. Only minutes ago, she had been too afraid to enter the bathroom because of the mirror above the sink; now she felt entirely revived. “If I have this dream again, I’ll make sure to ask the woman in the mirror who she really is,” she murmured softly to herself. The fear of a nightmare is most intense in that fragile space between dream and waking, when one cannot tell whether the mind is still trapped in illusion or already returned to reality. Once the mind recognises it as nothing more than a dream, most people find their fear dissolve. Terror, pain, sorrow—even hunger—cannot be truly understood unless one has lived them. No matter how vividly another recounts a nightmare, you cannot truly feel the horror they endured in that dream. Annie crouched on the floor, carefully dabbing the scattered droplets from the wood while replaying the fragments of her nightmare. A sudden realisation struck her—this dream was identical to the one she’d had a few nights before. Why this dream again? This was the third time. Who was the woman in the mirror? What was she trying to tell her? Questions surged forth, crowding her chest with no answer in sight. “Perhaps I missed something in the dream…” Annie’s grip tightened on the rag, and a bead of water fell again to the floor, spreading into a blurred stain. Her eyes narrowed slowly, and the dream began to take shape once more. She saw herself barefoot, standing before an open clearing outside a house. Through her own eyes, she gazed past a lush bamboo grove to the golden rice fields beyond—like a sea of molten gold, tossing gleefully in the wind. The golden waves rolled toward a sky as clear and crystalline as cut glass. Among the phoenix trees within the bamboo grove, several nameless birds flitted, chirping brightly. From within the house behind her came a woman’s voice: “Annie, come inside quickly. Guests will be here soon. Won’t you do your hair?” She turned at the sound and began to walk inside, feeling the faint sting beneath her soles—grit and gravel embedded in the wet earth. It was an old house, at once foreign and strangely familiar—foreign, because she knew she had never set foot there in waking life; familiar, because it had appeared three times now in her dreams. The building seemed to have weathered at least a century’s storms. The whitewashed exterior walls were worn and mottled, flaking into patches of ashen grey and water-stained yellow. The dark green eaves, the curved roof tiles, and the lattice-brick windows held an unspeakable charm. At the upturned corners of the eaves perched tiny carved stone beasts. Two straight wooden pillars—once lacquered a vivid red—rested firmly upon boulder-sized stones, their carved patterns worn beyond recognition. The half-closed wooden door, dulled by age and dimness, had long since lost its colour; only the tall threshold stood stark and solid before her. She crossed it with practiced ease, brushing against the door in passing. A long, high-pitched creak answered her touch. Inside stood a woman of her own age, whose face she had never seen before. Sunlight filtered in through what could barely be called windows, spreading a murky gold across the room. The woman’s hair was cropped short, and she wore a crimson silk cheongsam embroidered, it seemed, with black blossoms. “Hurry,” she urged Annie with a smile, “if you don’t fix your hair now, there’ll be no time.” She patted Annie’s shoulder with a familiar ease, guiding her toward what passed for a dressing table—a plain wooden stand with a mirror leaning against the wall. Annie took up the wooden comb laid out for her, gathered her hair, and loosened it with a gentle sweep. Stroke by stroke, the comb slid through until each strand was smooth as silk. She drew her hair over her back, letting it fall freely, then began to pluck away the loose hairs tangled in the comb’s teeth. She worked with unhurried care, as though afraid of snapping them. At last she pulled free the strands. A shaft of sunlight fell across them, and they melted into the gold like threads of spun sunlight. She smoothed her hair once more, raised her head toward the mirror to tie it— And froze. The woman in the glass was not her. Not the serene figure combing her hair moments ago, nor the stunned, motionless self she was now.