Day 196 - Hand Story

Hand Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The hand reached right out of the mirror and grabbed her. Ena was surprised, but not as surprised as one might think she should have been. Ena saw things. She had always seen things. Not all the time, but certainly often enough and for most of her life. She was aware of something that always lurked around the corner. It was just out of sight. When she turned it was gone. But it had been there. She knew it. If she could zone out or meditate or let her mind wander, she could see things in her peripheral vision, but if she focused, it would disappear. She hated mirrors because of this. She could walk into a room with a mirror and if she wasn’t paying attention, she would see the other set of eyes, watching her. If she walked into a dark room and turned the lights on she could sometimes catch a glimpse as it disappeared out of view. She tried talking to the mirrors, befriending whatever it was. But that just made her look crazy. The mirrors never talked back. Eventually she began removing mirrors from her life.

On her twenty-third birthday, Ena was approached by a man that seemed to know all about what she was experiencing. How Jerry found her she didn’t know. He too hated mirrors, but beyond that had an overall dread of anything reflective. He was so paranoid he wouldn’t look at doorknobs or glass or anything else that could reflect back at him. He believed the reflections were windows to another dimension and there was something deadly trying to escape. Ena didn’t believe that, but she did believe the man was seeing what she was seeing. A month later she found out he was dead, killed in a hit-and-run car accident. She wondered if he had been too busy trying to make sure he didn’t see anything reflective that he missed the oncoming car altogether. Or maybe he had seen the car, but it was waxed and shined too brightly and he caught a glimpse of something he wasn’t supposed to see. She would never know. She couldn’t ask him.

That was when Ena finally removed all the mirrors from her life, all except one. She kept a compact mirror so she could take quick looks and see what was behind her. She would walk the street, holding out the compact, watching what was behind her more than what was before her. She began to lose sight of what was in front of her. More often than not she knew all her surroundings except what was directly next. She wondered if maybe that was what had killed Jerry. Maybe that was why he hadn’t seen the car. He was too focused elsewhere.

She was making herself paranoid. But the one thing she knew was that as long as she focused on the mirrors or reflections or whatever, then nothing would ever appear. She had learned that long ago. It was a wandering mind that allowed it to creep in, or so she thought.

It was a powerful hand and it collapsed quickly around her neck. Ena tried to fight it, but whatever it was attached to was a stronger beast than she.

Earlier that day Ena had seen things. It had been months since she had seen anything, but for some reason it began again that day. What had frightened her most was that it was happening when she was wide awake and fully lucid. Something was there and it was extremely powerful. She had used a public restroom, something she almost never did. She had looked in the mirror above the sink, something she hadn’t done in years. And she had seen nothing. Nothing at all. It was empty. It was a void. And she had become transfixed, hypnotized. The nothingness called out to her and she began to reach for it. She lifted her hand, ready to make contact. And that was when the other hand appeared and made its own form of contact.

The restroom was empty when the next visitor arrived. The mirror above the sink was cracked, creating a broken reflection. Inside the reflection Ena gazed at the woman, the woman unaware she was being watched. Ena could almost remember what it was like to be there, to be real. She wanted to feel it again, to get it back. She reached out, but her hand hit against the inside of the mirror. In the restroom the woman heard a tapping noise, but shrugged it off as nothing important. Inside the reflection Ena slowly ran her hand over the inside of the mirror. She would find a way. The mirror was weak and was already cracked. Her will was strong. She would find a way to break through it and feel the world again, and if she did, she would grab it with all her strength and never let go.