Humans are known to be very superstitious, especially with what they don’t understand.

Ah, this sentence would make it sound like I’m some sort of creature from another world, but unfortunately, I’m a plain old man with nothing special about himself. And the fact that I’m the most ordinary person you could find makes my judgment on my fellow humans more valid than one would think. I mean, you wouldn’t trust the sayings of someone with a screw lose in his head, right?

So, where was I already?

Ah yeah, superstitions.

They come from anywhere at any given era.

I’m sure you yourself must have heard one or two in elementary school or something.

I can’t give you an exact example that would resonate with you, but here is one that I would hear every time back in the days.

‘If you stand in front of a mirror at midnight and say three times Aïsha Kandisha, don’t close your eyes. Because when you open them again, she will appear in the other side!!’

Fortunately, I’m one of the few who remembers clearly their childhood, so I can assure you, the second I heard it, I laughed at the face of the friend who told me this ridiculous story. And the next day, I see that the whole school was already spreading stories about her.

Who you say? Aïsha Kandisha of course, pay attention dammit.

Wait, where was I already?

Ah yeah, superstitions—they can’t be trusted.

That would seem obvious considering how unrealistic they seem, but when I tell you that way too much people actively believe in superstitions, you better trust me. Because you most probably do.

Here, when I say black cat, you immediately associate this with bad luck don’t you? Of course it’s possible that you first thought of the black cat in Kiki’s delivery service or that annoying one in Persona 5, but I’m sure that somewhere in your mind you thought of bad luck. Rationally, you know that seeing a black cat won’t do you much, but with how hammered it was in general media that black cats are a sign of bad luck, you can’t help it but feel a bit of fear as your initial reaction when you meet one.

If that one didn’t work, here are a few others: Walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, Friday the 13th, opening an umbrella inside or even the number 666. All of that along with crossing paths with a black cat is supposed to bring bad luck or some kind of impending disaster. And I’m not even wasting time on those that are supposed to bring good luck, like finding a four-leaf clover or making a wish while blowing your birthday candles.

Whatever we want it or not, we all know of superstitions. And society made sure that they are thrown around every now and then. In the most unlikely case that you don’t know any of those, you’re either back from a veeery long social reclusion of some sort since your childhood, or you’re just two years old. And knowing you neither is your case, so you must know of one. It might be biased since I’ve ever heard them in my continent, but I’m sure that if you had a normal childhood —by which I mean, if you lived in a normal society— then no matter the area you’re from, you must have heard of a superstition. And it’s quite possible that you believe in it like it’s real.

Let me repeat myself, those are not reliable.

And this unreliability sterns from our specie’s weak mind.

Well, I say our specie assuming that you are a human, but I don’t really know do I?

Alright alright, I’ll stop teasing you already.

Anyway, let me explain myself.

While reading the Monogatari Series, I don’t remember the book or who said it, but I remember somewhere being written that ghost stories were made to explain the unexplainable. I would agree with that, and the same applies with superstitions.

…Well, no it doesn’t strictly applies here, but you get the point.

…You don’t? So I have to explain?

How dumber can you get? It should be evident, really.

Ah— Hey, stop crying, I was joking. I swear you’re not a dumbass. No, I’m the dumbass here, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that…

You’re okay? Ah, good… To the explanation then.

Let’s say one day you wake up, early in the morning, without being able to move, nor breath. No matter how much you try, no air gets in, not a muscle moves, and the only thing that you can move are your eyes. Then at the corner of your room, you see some sort of monster that you wouldn’t be able to describe but as dreadful. And then as he disappears, you suddenly find yourself able to move, able to breathe. What I’ve just described is your first experience of sleep paralysis, but the one to whom it first happened in the history of humanity will find a meaning to this experience, something among the lines of ‘People who live a sinful life will be cursed at night by a dreadful devil’, and spread it out to the people he knows. After many centuries, the ‘reason’ for his ‘curse’ becomes a superstition transformed into a scary story that goes like ‘Children who misbehave will be eaten by the monster under the bed’.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

…Okay, the example may not have been that good, but I believe you get the point.

People gets superstitious over things that aren’t under their control.

Like sleep paralysis, luck, fate, and children.

Yes, while there are people who make superstitions over things they don’t understand or control, there are people who make superstitions—stories in order to control something. Like parents who cannot manage their own children that make stories to scare them off bad behaviors. And then came the invention of the story of Aïsha Kandisha.

Although, this one really has no meaning nor use to exist at all.

It may have been invented among the children using her as a basis, you know? Like, making stories about ghosts, vampires or demons, and propagating the story to your friends in elementary school. It’s the same here, but with that ghost woman.

This story would not even qualify as a superstition, but to believe in her existence makes one of it. If you make up anything taking a preexisting superstitious concept, suddenly, your lie becomes a superstition. Like how breaking a mirror would bring more than simple bad luck, but seven years of misfortune, and someone adds up later that it’s seven and eight more years.

Lies upon lies upon lies.

That’s how I see this concept.

But I digress.

Now imagine you time-skip back in time to your days of childhood, around your seven years old, and first hear of Aïsha Kandisha that eats the children, and that if you say her name at midnight three time while looking at the mirror, she would appear the instant you blinked. Obviously you would try the very moment you start believing in it.

Hmm? You would not dare? I guess it depends on the person then...

Well, I tried. I may have laughed at the concept at first, but that didn’t stop me from trying when the whole school began to talk about it. And guess what? When I did it, the only thing I saw was my face, and it truly hurt me.

All the time since that story began to really take off, with people swearing that they really saw that woman in the mirror, barely escaping with their lives, I was excited at the idea of seeing something paranormal with my own eyes, of living something that is only possible in fictions. My head brimming with scenarios to come, possibilities beyond. But when I found out that it was all but a lie, I felt a pain like I’ve never had before in my heart, so real that I clenched it with my hands. It was the first time I saw my exceptions betrayed.

Damn, I think I was even depressed at the time.

I mean, finding out that my friend lied had me angry at him, so when I went to ask for explanations, it ended in a big fight that made us enemies ever since. Next the whole school began to talk on my back, and everyone that I knew slowly got away from me, until came the day that I became all alone. Since, I’ve made many realizations on the workings of a human society that I never found out until then, about how people would resort to lie for their benefit, or how people with bad reputation are avoided like the pest. And as if to finish me off, my parents divorced.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I was depressed.

Without praising myself or anything, the little me had a many friends to hang out with.

Going from the cheery guy with lots of friends to the loner of the school must’ve been a hard hit on my mental state. Yeah, I know I said that I remember my childhood with clarity, but even I would have some memories about those dark days sealed off somewhere deep inside my mind.

Euh? Crying again? What did I do this time?

Nothing you say? It’s not my fault? Ah, I see what’s going on.

You really don’t have to feel empathetic for the embarrassing mess it had been, especially not you. And I’m fine anyway now, aren’t I? What matters is that I came out of it alive.

As sad as that experience may have been, I can only be thankful that I’ve been through all that. It taught me something that most don’t tend to apply in everyday life.

To not expect something good to happen to you. That’s the only way you can protect yourself from the pain of having your hopes crushed underfoot. At the end of the day, Aïsha Kandisha from behind the mirror did not eat me. Of course she didn’t, the mirror cannot eat you after all, it don’t even have a stomach! To expect something unreal like that to happen was childish of me, just like how believing in superstitions is childish. But I guess you can’t blame the child that I was to believe in superstitions or scary stories.

Gosh, I really talked a lot about my life story here didn’t I? That atmosphere is so heavy… Here, have a apology snack, shrimp flavored instant noodles, raw or cooked they’re the best! Want me to open them for you? You’re good? Alright then.

Well, superstitions are not to be trusted. I know I’m repeating myself again, but I want you to understand this. No matter what kind of superstition you have in mind, or if you believe in it or not, you would better let go of it right now. You’ll be wiser as a person.

…No, I did not assume that you’re dumb for believing in black cats bringing bad luck, not at all, please don’t cry or the neighbors gonna call the police on me again.

—sigh— Now the epilogue, or what one would call the punchline of this story.

At the end, Aïsha Kandisha was absolutely not supposed to be a children eating woman, but a woman that would seduce the invaders of her country to have them ambushed by her associates, and that turned crazy for having her husband executed as a punishment, and exiled herself in a forest all alone… at least from what I remember reading.

That’s another thing that further proves my point: Ghost stories are not real, superstitions are pointless, and letting your life led by them is nothing but a loss of time that can’t be brought back. May it be astrology, tarot, ghost stories or just anything of the kind.

The mirror will not eat you—it does not have a stomach to do so.

The child eating woman is not real—because she never ate children to begin with.

Now, with all of that in mind.

Please, look right there and tell me.

What the hell am I seeing in that mirror Liv?