Stories From Childhood: Chapter 1: Mirror

Stories from Childhood:
A collection of short stories about my nightmares, dreams and experiences as I remembered them.

Chapter 1: Mirror
An original short story
By Angelaask (aka redbewitch)


“We told Halloween stories in class today,” announced Amanda as she followed me into our bedroom.

“So what?” I said indifferently as I threw my heavy book bag on my bed, watching it bounce twice. I wasn’t surprise. They told scary stories on Halloween every year.

“Shaina told a really scary one.”

“What?” I asked with some interest.

“No, you might get scared if I told you,” teased Amanda.

Amanda had peak my interest with that remark, as she knew it would. As my twin sister she knew just how to push my buttons, which she did on a regular basis to my great annoyance. It amused her to no end. I think she just wanted to see how far she could push me and that was how most of our arguments began with her pushing me until I break and go after her with a broom swinging over my head. I loved my sister dearly but sometimes she could really be annoying. I knew exactly what she was doing, but like an idiot I fell for it every time. “Oh please,” I begged.

“Well Okay,” sighed Amanda with fake annoyance as if she wasn’t needling me to ask her in the first place. She walked past the long wall mirror that hung in the dark corner of our room right beside my bed and sat down in front of the mirror, motioning me to sit beside her. Once I made myself comfortable she began her story in a low whisper. “Well there is an old legend about a woman named Mary who disappeared or died somehow. Shaina didn’t know much about what had happened to her, but they say if you say Bloody Mary a hundred times while spinning around in front of a mirror, a woman believed to be Mary, will pull you into the mirror with her.”

“That’s not scary,” I said disappointedly.

“Wait, I haven’t got to the good part yet,” protested Amanda earnestly.

“Shaina didn’t believe the story either. So one day she decided prove it wrong once and for all. She began to spin around and around in a circle while saying Bloody Mary in front of the mirror,” Amanda hesitated, took a deep breath and begun again this time even quieter than before. “At sixty Bloody Marys Shaina saw something in the mirror.”

My eyes widen. “What was it?” I asked impatiently, my voice matching her hush tones.

“She claimed it was a woman trying to grab her.”

“What did she do?”

“She ran out the room!” cried Amanda excitedly.

“It was probably just her reflection she saw, but didn’t recognize it because she was so dizzy from spinning around,” I said nervously.

“That’s what I thought, but another girl in class said she did the same thing and saw a woman too,” cried Amanda.

I had to admit that I was quite gullible at that age but to my childlike mind it was very unlikely that two people would have seen the same thing. I mean, what was the probability of something like that happening to two different people.

“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” I whispered.

The story bothered me all day and left me with a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. That night I laid on my bed in the dark peering into the blackness that engulfed the long narrow mirror beside my bed. The lack of reflection made the mirror appeared cold and so very deep, almost bottomless like a black hole capable of holding countless of unknown dimensions. Hypnotized, I stared long and hard into the mirror focusing my eyes on nothing. Flashing lights appeared, dissipated and reappeared again, deep within the mirror’s depths. It must have been the light from my parents’ television that hummed throughout the night, I reasoned. Shadows created by the flickering lights of the television took shape and danced along the surface of the wall. I turned my back away from the eerie images and a chill ran down my spine as if someone was watching me. I turned around, nothing there. I settled down, closed my eyes at last to the scary images and attempted to go to sleep. I laid quietly in bed listening to the whispers and heavy breathing of the sleepers. Nevertheless, I couldn’t find my rest for strange frightening noises in the night crowded my head with ghastly images that sneaked into my dreams, filling them with ghostly women in white, covered with rich dark blood.


The End


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