Chapter 7 — The Fever That Follows Me
659 Words
The next morning should’ve felt normal.
It didn’t.
Even with the fever gone, even with my body cooled down and my forehead dry, every sound felt too sharp—too loud. The sunlight coming through the window stung my eyes. And every time I blinked, I saw flashes of that room.
The cracked mirror.
The backwards clock.
The… other me.
I sat up slowly, feeling the blanket slide off like a shedding skin. My head didn’t hurt, but something else did—something deeper, like pressure underneath my memories, trying to break through.
Mom peeked into my room.
“You’re awake,” she said softly. “Fever’s gone?”
I nodded.
She gave a relieved smile. “Good. You scared me. You were burning up.”
I wanted to tell her about the dream.
But the words got stuck on my tongue, frozen.
Because how do you explain a nightmare that felt more real than the room you’re standing in? How do you say “I met myself in a mirror that wasn’t a mirror” without sounding insane?
So I just said, “Yeah. I’m fine.”
A lie that immediately made my stomach twist.
Mom left for work after fussing over me for a few minutes, and finally the room fell silent again. Too silent.
I kept thinking about the message on the table in the dream:
“Remember before time resets.”
What was I supposed to remember?
Why was I writing things in my own dreams?
And that boy—
No, not boy.
Me.
The version of me trapped behind the glass.
He had looked at me like I was the one who left him there.
Like it was my fault.
I rubbed my temples. Maybe I should’ve gone back to sleep, but I was scared. Not scared of the dream—scared of how much I wanted to go back.
Craving a nightmare… that wasn’t normal.
I picked up my phone.
Notifications. Messages. Reels. Stuff that usually distracted me from everything.
Not today.
I opened the camera instead. Don’t know why—just instinct.
I turned it to the front camera and stared.
My face looked normal.
Except…
For one second—barely a blink—I saw it.
A c***k.
Running diagonally across my reflection.
Like the mirror in the dream.
I flinched backward, almost dropping my phone. My heart slammed in my chest. I blinked fast. The c***k disappeared.
Just imagination?
Or something following me out of the dream?
The phone screen suddenly flickered.
Static.
Only for half a second.
Then black.
Then back to normal.
But my reflection… didn’t move.
I froze.
My reflection stared right at me—expression blank—while I was breathing hard, panicking.
Then it tilted its head slowly.
Too slowly.
Too wrong.
My blood went cold.
My reflection’s lips moved.
No sound.
But I read it clearly:
“Come back.”
I threw the phone onto the bed like it was burning me.
My hands shook. My breathing went uneven.
This wasn’t just a dream anymore.
Something from that world—whatever it was—was reaching into mine.
I pressed my palms to my eyes, trying to think, trying to calm down.
When I opened them again, I nearly screamed.
On my desk—right in front of me—
Lay a small, old-fashioned clock.
Not mine.
Not from my house.
It was the same backward-ticking clock from the dream.
Except here… in my real room… it wasn’t ticking backward.
It wasn’t ticking at all.
It was counting down.
Numbers glowing in dim, soft blue:
03:00:00
Three hours.
The sound of the mirror boy’s voice echoed in my head:
“Time is folding.”
I swallowed hard.
The countdown flickered.
02:59:59
02:59:58
It was real.
The dream was bleeding into reality.
Something terrible was coming.
And I had three hours to figure out what.
Or remember what I was trying so hard to forget.
- Writer
