Antonio was in his bathroom. He didn’t know what had just happened, but he could clearly see he was in his bathroom and that the mirror had been broken. By what, he didn’t know, but he was pretty sure it had done everything on its own.
Who’s gonna explain that to Maria now? he thought to himself as he decided it was too deep in the night to worry about all of this.
He opened the door.
And noticed immediately something was wrong.
He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Maybe it was the complete absence of the stairs that were usually right in front of the bathroom door. Or maybe it was the fact that every single painting in the corridor looked like Picasso on acids had painted them.
Or maybe, oh, it was the fact that the walls in front of him were moving.
Yep, those shrimps really did a number on me.
And he closed the door to the bathroom, hiding inside.
Only, now, even the bathroom wasn’t safe anymore, because the toilet had already become a mouth with a big, blue, tongue lolling out. It was panting like a dog would, which was disturbing on so many levels.
Ok, what the hell is happening?
But he already knew the answer to that question. He had read the books, explored the online forums, tried to find every possible explanation. Every detail fit perfectly in this progressively more and more horrifying puzzle.
He was in the Mirror World. The version of earth that existed on the other side of every mirror. He’d somehow managed to end in this place, after every possible research he had ever looked up had concluded it was impossible for things from earth to go to the Mirror World. Or was it Mirror Earth? Or Htrae?
I have to stop or I’ll start laughing, and God knows what’s listening.
There were theories about what actually existed on the other side of the mirrors. First it was said there were copies of every human on earth, doppelgangers that mirrored everything we did, all our lives and ideas and beliefs, a perfect copy of earth. But those theories had been debunked after the first… things, had began to appear. Entities, they were called, and they were the closest thing to a true monster humanity had ever seen.
Spindly, contorted and distorted things that tried to copy humans, they flesh made out of inverted colors, their voices like someone had put a mulfunctioning loudspeaker in place of their voiceboxes.
And that had only been the beginning. The simplest things to keep under control. Difficult to kill, sure, because they had no heart and blood, only muscles under that skin, and bits and pieces of bones placed seemingly at random.
The news had gone crazy at the time.
That’s how it began. After that… true nightmares had come.
And then, just as suddenly as they had started to appear, they stopped. The news began talking about normal things again. The newspapers had seemingly forgotten about all that had happened. All was back to a sort of normality.
The number of people disappearing had increased, sure, as had the demand for, well, pretty much all jobs, from janitors to soldiers to scientists and people with any form of higher level education.
For one reason or another, the world had gone crazy, and now it was getting better. Few people could bring themselves to believe it was just the government doing its job though. Like, come on! After decades of managing to only barely keep the ship floating, suddenly they patched everything up and began sailing again? It was simply impossible.
Yet it was happening.
But that didn’t matter right now.
What mattered was that Antonio was on the other side of the mirror, where all those monsters from when it had all began came from. And he was rightfully fearing for his life.
Ok. Ok. Think, Antonio, think! What do you do? What should you do?
The answer to that was, actually, quite simple: stay silent, and look around this strange version of his house to find anything that could come in handy.
He slowly walked out of the toilet, because there really wasn’t anything useful, and the toilet kept glancing at his butt. He shivered.
Then, with a sigh, he opened the door to the bathroom, and immediately cringed as it practically screeched on what seemed to have become century old rusted over hinges. The sound was so loud he was sure it could be heard everywhere around the house.
He stopped and hid back behind the door.
And stayed hidden for five minutes.
I’m making the basic horror game mistake. Hide in the same place for too long. Chances are in a few seconds a Xenomorph will appear outta nowhere and eat my face.
Luckily for Antonio, Xenomorphs weren’t real. Or, if they were, they’d never looked into a mirror. Which meant the Mirror World had no reference for creating distorted and even more monstrous copies of them.
In the end, he walked out of the toilet and turned right, because to his left the corridor ended with a blank wall.
On his right, though, it kept going for what felt like a few hundred meters. He could see its end; there were lights after all, and not a single one was off or flickering.
He walked, half expecting for the light bulbs to begin popping one by one, turning the place completely dark before a monster appeared. He felt his hands itch, memories of Resident Evil 2 (the original, not the remake) making him desire for a gun or anything that could rensemble a weapon even remotely. But there was nothing here, because this was a house, and this was Italy. People here didn’t keep an AK-47 or a Glock or anything like that. This wasn’t America. Usually only the mafia had collections of weapons, and the ones you could see were actually old things that were no longer used, like tommyguns.
Anyways, he walked, looking around, trying to understand how fucked he was.
And everything was calm.
Because this was a house, and that meant something even in the Land of Mirrors.
He reached the end of the corridor, where he saw a window. Its wooden structure was painted white, just like in his house. That didn’t surprise him: what did was the glass the windows were made of. Or rather, the absolute lack of it. Instead, where normally glass would sit, there was something that looked suspiciously like a soap bubble.
But why?
He didn’t know. Truth be told, nobody knew anything about the Mirror World. Nobody except its inhabitants.
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Interview Log 114 – 1
Interviewer: Dr. Ballista ■■■■■
Interviewed: Entity – 114
Begin Log:
Dr. Ballista: Good morning, 114.
Entity – 114: Good morning doctor. Please, just call me Cardsharp. It’s my approved codename, am I right?
B: Very well, Cardsharp. Would you please answer a few questions?
E – 114: Depends on the question.
B: Our exploration team has found various cities and houses during their explorations in the Mirror World. They have discovered that, apparently, anything normally made out of glass is built out of substitutes, from simple plastic to, and I quote, “actual soap bubbles”. Why is that?
E – 114: Oh, that is a rather simple question little doctor. You already know the answer. Because, with the right light, glass can become a mirror. And you know how much those are disliked on the other side. We wouldn’t want to suddenly stabilize an area… from the wrong side. That could hurt someone.
B: Understandable. Thank you. Now, for the next question: [Static]
[Error…]
[Unauthorized Access Detected]
End of Transmission
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Whatever, now wasn’t the time to wonder about these things. Instead, Antonio simply looked outside.
And what he saw left him speechless.
It was his city, San Benedetto Po, but it was… changed. Different yet the same. He lived near the ciy center, by a big church that, he liked to think, could qualify for as a cathedral. The window looked outside, on the plaza where every week there was the market was set up (no windows in his house actually looked that way).
The church looked wobbly now, as if someone had hired Gaudi to create it and he’d decided to build the whole thing out of white pongo with the help of a three year old.
It writhed and kept changing form, creating spires out of nothing, collapsing them in on themselves, or creating bridges and ridges to connect them.
The clocktower kept kept getting higher and higher, beating gravity with the help of said spires and shooting ropes of pongo-rock at the nearby windows.
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The road outside, made out of pebbles and rocks, became smooth pavement and began a war, with the nearby green area, trying and failing to overtake it in a strange sort of tug-o-war. Trees bloomed in the grass, oaks and palms and birches and other, stranger, plants that probably couldn’t be found anywhere on earth. Not anymore, at least.
The houses around kept trying to eat each other, fusing together in groteque imitations of what they had once been. There was a speed, a frenzy, a desire to it. It was like watching a child who had been denied colors all his life finally being given a box of crayons with the instructions to “go nuts with them”.
He understood, then, that this wasn’t some sort of war of dominance as much as a game, where the winner got to build, no, become, whatever it desired, before someone else took over. A strange sort of King of the Hill.
His house, though, or whatever it had become, wasn’t joining the game. Maybe because it was older?
Ok, thinking of his house as a living thing was doing things to his head he really didn’t like.
I promise to keep you cleaner when I get back.
He thought as he patted the wall.
The house rumbled a bit, which he rightfully interpreted as a purr.
Oh god his house had just purred.
He looked to his left, away from the window and the games of houses and nature, and saw the stairs, walking down them. They creaked a bit, but it was good creaking. It was the sound made by a well lived, worn but well kept, house. It was gratifying, in a sense. The house was old: it had been built decades ago, it was older than him, yet it had been cared for. This was just the inevitability of age, what couldn’t be fixed without rebuilding the whole body.
Antonio reached the bottom of the stairs.
And was greeted by a grand living room. A sofa that could probably hold a dozen people stretched from one end of the room to the other, gently bending to an L shape at the right end, where a small, wooden, table covered by a white, embroidered, tablecloth, held a centerpiece of wax and steel in the form of an octopus with big, googly, eyes. It was staring right at him.
Right beside the sofa had been built a fireplace. It was clean, unlit, six small logs sitting on the right, ready to feed a flame. The fireplace was simple yet elegant, made of red bricks with a marble top decorated to look like an oblong corintian column. There were three photo frames, all holding the same gray paper behind the plastic that was there instead of the glass.
All in all, it looked comfortable. Sure, he had yet to find a single bedroom, but one could live here indefinitely and comfortably.
Only that I’m not planning to live here. I want to go back. Maria already lost a daughter, she’s not going to lose her husband as well.
But how would he leave?
And for the matter, did he really want to leave? After all, this was the place where his daughter had disappeared last year. Oh, the police had looked at the case. They had tried to find any form of proof that she hadn’t just disappeared. For a while they had even considered the possibility that they themselves had made the daughter disappear. That had been disproven rapidly though.
In the end, they’d given up. There were worse things to deal with than a disappeared child at the time, like monsters coming out of mirrors and killing people.
Now he was here, in the only place where he was sure his daughter could’ve ended up, with no clue on how to get out. Maybe he could… use this situation to his advantage! Yes! He would get out of this house and start looking for her. Yes, she could be anywhere, but… what else could he do? Nothing, that’s what.
Or, at least, that’s what he told himself. What he wanted to believe. What he needed to believe. Because, otherwise, he would lose all hope.
He knew this, in a subconscious part of his brain, and he did exactly that.
Yes. He would look for her. His dear Lucia. He would find her, bring her back, back to her mother, and they would be happy again.
For that reason, he walked out of a door.
And found the kitchen.
Because of course there was supposed to be a kitchen.
It looked old, unused, filled with dust and dirty. Compared to the rest of the house it looked as if a drunk Lurch from the Addams Family had just passed through while spewing dust from his trusty vacuum cleaner in reverse mode.
It was pure chaos, yet in a sort of organized way.
It reminded him of how his grandma kept her kitchen. She said that the chaos was her own form of order and she knew exactly what was where at any given time, and be damned anyone who tried to move things around!
He stepped in, and immediately his foot hit a pot, which clattered around making a horrible racket.
There goes the stealth.
He looked around, expecting something to jump him, but there was nothing. The house remained silent.
After a minute where he didn’t move a single muscle, Antonio finally sighed in relief and began looking around. If he was to leave the safety of this house, he would need a weapon. And this was a kitchen. Sure, he wouldn’t find a gun, but a knife would be better than nothing anyways.
And, sure enough, he found one. Well, it was more of a cleaver than a knife, seeing how long it was, but that didn’t matter. Bigger is better and yadda yadda.
He walked out back into the living room and began walking towards the only door he hadn’t opened yet. It was made out of wood, reinforced with iron on the borders. Nothing unusual in Italy. You could find those everywhere. Made it more difficult for thieves to come in, since apparently hitting a thief in the head with a crowbar when he was in your house could get you in prison if the thief hadn’t meant to hurt you in the first place. No, that wasn’t a joke. It had actually happened to many people. Not with a crowbar, but you get the idea.
He began walking towards the door.
And noticed something.
Something amiss.
He turned his head slowly.
And right there, where the small statue of the squid with googly eyes had been, was nothing but air.
He froze in place, waiting to hear anything.
There was only the ever present silence, disturbed only by the shuffling and changing world outside.
Slowly, very slowly, Antonio began looking up… then thought better and stopped.
Nope! That’s your typical horror trope. The moment I look up something’s gonna attack and kill me. NOPE! I’m outta here!
That said, he turned back towards the door and made to open it up.
Only for a tentacle to shoot down from the ceiling and block it while trying to coil around his arm.
With a shout, he jumped back, barely managing to dodge it.
Then, finally, he looked up.
And, sure enough, the octopus with googly eyes was staring right at him. Problem, what had once been a small statue had grown in size. Like, a lot. Enough that now the writhing mass of tentacles with a central body covered a good half of the ceiling, managing to somehow be both horrifying and cute. Because come on!, we all know that googly eyes make anything and everything cute and stupid looking.
Sadly, Antonio was a bit too scared for his life to appreciate the intrinsic beauty of googly eyed tentacle monsters that seem to stare right into your soul, judging you.
A few seconds into that staring contest, the octopus seemed to realize that staring at an enemy wasn’t enough to make them disappear, even if said enemy tried his best to do just that, and sent one of the seemingly hundreds of tentacles smashing down towards his prey.
Antonio was shocked out of his reverie and, again, managed to dodge. After all, big meant clumsy. And the octopus was just that, being quite literally a newborn in the Mirror World.
A moment later, the man finally remembered about the knife he was still holding in a white-knuckled grip and did the one thing you’re really supposed to do with knives: he stabbed the tentacle.
The blade cut through the soft, waxy, skin of the monster, going through like a heated knife through butter. That is, until it met resistance. With a nearly comic clang the knife struck something solid, metallic. And that’s when Antonio remembered that the octopus had been made out of wax with some decorations made out of iron when it was just a centerpiece on the table.
Apparently the metal wasn’t just there to decorate, but also to create the actual internal structure to which the wax was anchored.
Well, fuck.
And then another tentacle hit him right in the chest, making him fly and lose his grip on the impromptu weapon.
The octopus raised the “wounded” appendage up, its head turning to let the googly eyes stare at the piece of metal embedded in the wax, looking at it with curiosity. It inclined its head, not understanding what was happening completely.
After all, they were in a house, and it had just been trying to help the strange man who wasn’t of the mirrors leave. It wanted to open the door for him like any good host would. Then why had the man given it a knife? Was it a gift? Surely it must be. Maybe the man wanted to thank it for trying to open the door. But it hadn’t managed to yet. Its tentacles were so clumsy. It was sure it would get the hang of them soon enough, but for now there was still the problem that it had received a gift for doing nothing.
That wasn’t good. It had to repay the gift in kind, because that’s what good hosts did!
Yes, that’s exactly it!
It extended a tentacle towards the kitchen. Oh, for the love of all reflections, the place was a mess. It wurbled, displeased. It was so sorry the man had to see it in such a sorry state. But no worries, it would put everything where it belonged soon. Meanwhile, it looked for a knife and, soon enough, found one. There were many, after all. This one was smaller than the one the man had kindly given it. Only natural, truth be told. It couldn’t proceed to install the present if the blade was too big.
The man groaned on the ground.
Oh, reflections, had it used too much strength when it had tried to shoo him away from giving it such a good present? Must be that. It was extremely sorry. It hoped this would fix everything.
It reached down towards the man on the ground with two tentacles, lifting him from the ground and gently placing him on the big sofa. Was it comfortable? It hoped it was. It didn’t have the nerve endings to perceive softness, it being made out of wax and iron.
It retrieved the tentacle from the kitchen, gingerly holding the knife, and reached out towards the man. Who, in turn, began to scream.
But it couldn’t understand what he was saying. He wasn’t speaking in Shine, the language of the mirror world. It guessed he was telling it there was no need to give him a present in return. But it couldn’t just accept that, or it wouldn’t be a good host!
It placed the knife on the man’s skin, right on the right arm, pushing in like the man had done with it. Something red began to come out. Strange. Had someone filled the man with red wax? That was unusual. But not impossible. It knew that some of its kind had been crafted to look even more realistic than it. Maybe someone had done the same with this man. How lucky of him. It really would like better eyes. The ones it currently hadcouldn’t move around a lot.
It pushed the knife in, until nothing of it was visible from the outside. After all, it wouldn’t want to ruin the look of that perfect skin.
Although… hmmm… the red wax kept coming out. Now, that wasn’t good!
It gently placed a tentacle on the wound and let some wax drip on the opening, closing it completely.
Then the thing happened. The one that had given it life.
The wax shaped itself around the man’s wrist and oozed down his hand. But the interesting stuff actually happened on the inside, where the wax mixed with Antonio’s blood. It tasted the irony liquid, felt the oxygen and the carbon dioxide fizzle on its surface, touched bones and muscles and ligaments, seeing just how resistant and elastic they were, and finally reached the knife.
Then the wax knew what to do. It understood that the knife wasn’t actually supposed to be there, but it was still wax from the octopus, and it believed that the knife was a gift and, as such, should stay where it was. But the knife, where it was, couldn’t really be useful. Sure, some gifts existed only to be admired, but man had given the octopus a rather practical gift, which meant he should be able to use the knife himself.
Because the wax understood this, it began to work: it melted and reshaped bone and muscle and ligament, making sure the hand could still be used, but at the same time upgrading the whole thing. It would have to make the area a bit more elastic and frictionless, but that was no problem seeing just how much liquid ran around the man’s body. Sure, it was filled with these small red and white things, but those could be easily filtered out using this really helpful skin! Oh, how wonderful! The possibilities were simply endless!
The wax worked and worked, and Antonio laid unconscious on the sofa.
The octopus let him stay where he was. He could see he was clearly sleeping, and it wouldn’t be a good host if it woke hm up. So it instead crawled towards the kitchen and started putting everything where it belonged. Had the house had a bedroom the octopus would’ve put the man there, but the house was currently waiting for the younger ones’ game of capture the walls to end, where it would get back the part of itself it had given them to play around. Then the bedroom would be back. Until then, well, it believed the sofa was comfortable enough.
Slowly, the octopus began cleaning up the kitchen.
It was good, simple, work, and it had fun doing it.
Until the phone rang.
Reflections! It had forgotten that loud and obnoxious thing was in here! It should answer immediately, ‘less it wake up its guest.
A tentacle reached out to the positively ancient rotary phone and picked up the receiver.
“Blrlrlbblblrlrb?”
It asked.
A voice on the other side asked if it could kindly give a man called Antonio, who was supposedly in its house, some information.
The octopus wurbled in agreement.
It was told a set of words, which it promptly traduced from Bubble Speech to Shine, and was rapidly told more or less how the letters in italian were supposed to look like.
The octoups wrote everything down, then showed what it’d done to the phone, which agreed it was good enough. The thing on the other side thanked it for its kindness, complimented it on its good manners and its impeccable attitude as a host, and said goodbye.
The octopus was extremely happy and wiggled around in self satisfaction. Then it placed the message right on the table besides the sleeping man, which it now knew was called Antonio, and finished putting everything in place.
Now, time to go up and wait for the bedroom to come back. The house had given it a specific curfiew of [Incomprehensible].